Numbers and strange happenings

The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 appear throughout the series, both in sequence and individually. They were broadcast from the Island's radio transmitter, and it was this message that drew Rousseau's expedition there. Although she later changes the message after the deaths of the rest of her team, the digits had also been heard by other people, eventually making their way to Hurley, who used them to win a lottery. After those around him suffer a series of misfortunes, he begins to believe the numbers are cursed. In the episode "Numbers", it is revealed that Hurley heard the numbers from Leonard Sims, a patient at a mental hospital. Sims had received them from Sam Toomey, with whom he had served in the U.S. Navy, at "a listening post monitoring longwave transmissions over the Pacific" 16 (one of the numbers) years earlier. The numbers are prevalent throughout the modern-day island, as they are engraved on the hatch of the Swan station, appear on medicine bottles, and constitute a code that must be entered into the Swan station's terminal. The sum of these numbers, 108, has become significant in connection to the DHARMA Initiative, and is the amount of time in minutes between entry into the station's computer. Also, the product of the numbers is 7418880, which appears on a piece of electronic equipment in a polar research station in the message: ">/ 7418880 Electromagnetic Anomaly Detected". Each of the numbers frequently make appearances as representing significant things in the show's plot, especially in the flashbacks. This includes both individual numbers and groups of them, such as "1516". For example, the survivors were on Oceanic Flight 815, which left Sydney from gate 23. Also, Jack's seat number was 23 and Ana Lucia's was 42. In Two For the Road the line of Police cars are visibly numbered 15, 16, 23, and 42 in the next row. According to the DHARMA Orientation video in the Lost Experience, the Numbers represent the core factors of the Valenzetti Equation, which claims to accurately predict when humanity will be extinguished. The broadcasting of the equation on a private frequency is based on real-life Numbers stations.

Miracles

Some castaways have expressed belief that they have been miraculously healed since the crash. Prior to his arrival, Locke was confined to a wheelchair, but he regained the use of his legs immediately after the crash; he tells Walt that a miracle happened to him ("Pilot, Part 2"). Locke also makes a miraculously fast recovery in the episode, "Through the Looking Glass," after being shot and left for dead by Ben in the episode, "The Man Behind the Curtain."
Similarly, Rose had been dying of cancer before crashing on the island; after the crash, she feels as if the cancer has "left her body" and credits the island as her cure ("S.O.S."). Sun becomes pregnant, despite the fact that a doctor had previously (secretly) declared her husband Jin to be medically incapable of fathering a child. She informs Jin of the true diagnosis, although she does not tell him about her recent affair (in Korea) with her English teacher, Jae Lee; Jin declares that the conception is a miracle ("The Whole Truth"). In the episode "D.O.C.", Juliet reveals that men on the island have five times the normal yield of sperm, explaining why Jin was able to impregnate Sun.
Despite his apparent death when John Locke pushed him through the invisible security fence surrounding the Others' encampment in the episode "Par Avion," Mikhail Bakunin later returns and stops the internal bleeding of the helicopter pilot Naomi. He claims she will be fine in about a day, much to Charlie's surprise. While that is not the normal recovery time for such an injury, Mikhail states that "things work differently" on the island. In the episode, "The Man Behind the Curtain." Mikhail tells Ben that the fence was in fact not set to a lethal level, seemingly explaining away his brush with death. However, in the Season 3 finale, "Through the Looking Glass," Mikhail is shot through the chest with a spear gun by Desmond and yet again seems to have been killed. Mikhail, however, undergoes another miraculous recovery, revives (off-camera), and swims out of the station, then blows open a porthole, flooding the control room and killing Charlie.
The Others appear to operate on the assumption that cancer is impossible on the island (or at least within their own population) ("One of Us"); Ben Linus is deeply shocked when he learns he has a tumour on his spine.
The island does not appear to heal all people equally. Richard Alpert says in "The Brig" that Locke's spine healing itself is not a normal event, even by the island's standards; it is a sign of Locke being somehow "special". The effects of this specialness can apparently extend to other people; after his spinal surgery, Ben was paralyzed for over a week, but regained the feeling in his legs immediately after coming in contact with Locke, and was able to walk (with the aid of a cane) only days afterward.

The Statue

In the episode "Live Together, Die Alone" while at sea, Sayid, Jin, and Sun sight what appears to be the remnants of a massive statue — a large, four-toed marble foot broken off at the ankle, standing upon a rock in the surf. Sayid remarks that he does not know which is more disturbing: the fact that the rest of the statue is missing or that the foot has only four toes. Many fans are also puzzled by the origins of the statue, and some have compared it to the Colossus of Rhodes.[4] Further ruins are revealed in "The Brig" when the Others tie Locke's father to the broken base of a large, stone column. Though they look ancient, the age of these ruins has yet to be confirmed.
The Whispers
At various points in the series whispering voices have been heard by the characters, with no visible source of origin. Rousseau claims these voices are of the Others. They seem to have a connection with the visions; before Ana Lucia shot Shannon who was chasing an image of Walt, they heard the whispering around them. In season 3, there was whispering before Walt showed up at the mass grave, and before Richard, one of the others, appeared before a young Ben.

The Sickness

Rousseau claims to have killed her team due to them catching a mysterious disease which necessitated their executions. She claims the Others were the carriers of disease. A mysterious vaccine was provided by DHARMA food drops and was taken regularly by Kelvin and Desmond in the Swan Station, and administered to Claire by Ethan after her kidnapping, although it is not known whether or not Kelvin and Ethan were deceiving Desmond and Claire about the necessity of the injections.

Pregnancy

Since season 3, an important theory is being explored. Apparently, any human female who conceives on the island dies before the baby is born. Other species of placental mammals like the wild boars, do not die due to pregnancy. Several women have already given birth (Danielle, Claire), but they conceived before coming to the island. It has been revealed that Sun became pregnant with Jin's child while on the island, and viewers have speculated that Kate may have conceived when she had sex with Sawyer. The Others have known about this for a long time and enlisted the help of Juliet, a fertility researcher, to help find out why this happened. So far, no progress has been made in preventing these deaths. As it seems, Sun and possibly Kate are doomed to die in 6 months (based on statements by Juliet in "D.O.C."). However, in "flashforwards" in the season 3 finale "Through the Looking Glass," it is revealed that Kate apparently survived and left the island.

Crossovers

Prior to their arrival on the island, both major and minor characters had occasion to interact, often unknowingly, sometimes affecting each others' lives. These are revealed through characters' flashbacks, and are typically only obvious to viewers. Some intersections are quite noticeable, with different characters conversing with each other, but most often they are oblivious to these crossovers, with characters sometimes appearing on televisions or being glimpsed in the background. Damon Lindelof has stated that these are not "Easter eggs," but rather a larger part of the mythology of the series.


NAVIGATION BAR		The numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 appear throughout the series, both in sequence and individually. They were broadcast from the Island's radio transmitter, and it was this message that drew Rousseau's expedition there. Although she later changes the message after the deaths of the rest of her team, the digits had also been heard by other people, eventually making their way to Hurley, who used them to win a lottery. After those around him suffer a series of misfortunes, he begins to believe the numbers are cursed. In the episode "Numbers", it is revealed that Hurley heard the numbers from Leonard Sims, a patient at a mental hospital. Sims had received them from Sam Toomey, with whom he had served in the U.S. Navy, at "a listening post monitoring longwave transmissions over the Pacific" 16 (one of the numbers) years earlier. The numbers are prevalent throughout the modern-day island, as they are engraved on the hatch of the Swan station, appear on medicine bottles, and constitute a code that must be entered into the Swan station's terminal. The sum of these numbers, 108, has become significant in connection to the DHARMA Initiative, and is the amount of time in minutes between entry into the station's computer. Also, the product of the numbers is 7418880, which appears on a piece of electronic equipment in a polar research station in the message: ">/ 7418880 Electromagnetic Anomaly Detected". Each of the numbers frequently make appearances as representing significant things in the show's plot, especially in the flashbacks. This includes both individual numbers and groups of them, such as "1516". For example, the survivors were on Oceanic Flight 815, which left Sydney from gate 23. Also, Jack's seat number was 23 and Ana Lucia's was 42. In Two For the Road the line of Police cars are visibly numbered 15, 16, 23, and 42 in the next row. According to the DHARMA Orientation video in the Lost Experience, the Numbers represent the core factors of the Valenzetti Equation, which claims to accurately predict when humanity will be extinguished. The broadcasting of the equation on a private frequency is based on real-life Numbers stations.

	STRANGE ISLAND HAPPENINGS On the Island, numerous characters experience auditory and visual hallucination-like phenomena, including apparent visions and messages from deceased family members. Both Jack and Eko receive visitations from dead relatives whose bodies are present on the island. Similarly, Locke converses with the deceased Boone during a vision quest in "Further Instructions". Previously, he received a similar vision, directing him to the site of a crashed airplane, while Boone was still alive. In the episode "The Man Behind the Curtain", Ben sees his deceased mother on the island twice as a child, and this eventually leads him to join "the others". An image of Walt appears to Shannon on a number of occasions during Season Two, and is later seen by Sayid, just prior to Shannon's death. In "Man of Science, Man of Faith", a water-drenched Walt appears before Shannon, and whispers incomprehensibly, which has been ascribed to reversed speech. Walt is seen twice more by Shannon: the first time, he again speaks in reversed speech, which according to Entertainment Weekly, sounds like, "They're coming and they're close". When Walt appears a second time, he puts his index finger to his mouth and made a "sshhh" sound right before he leads Shannon to her death. And finally, in the season finale of the third season ("Through the Looking Glass"), Walt is standing over Locke as he lies bleeding with a wound caused by Benjamin Linus (In the episode "The Man Behind the Curtain"), who, after realizing Locke had heard the powerful man known as "Jacob", shoots Locke in the stomach. Locke wakes up and attempts to shoot himself, but Walt tells Locke to "put the gun down", and "get up" because he "has work to do". It can be assumed that this subsequently lead to Locke trying to stop Jack from contacting the outside world for help. It is possible that Walt's appearances were not related to the Island's capabilities, as it has been hinted several times that Walt possesses some kind of paranormal abilities. Hurley experiences visions of Dave, an imaginary friend who he had seen before while in a mental institution. Dave goads Hurley into briefly believing that the Island itself is his hallucination, and that he can only reawaken to his real life (in the mental institution) by leaping from a cliff ("Dave"). Kate receives two apparent visitations from her past: the seemingly channelled message from her deceased step-father, spoken by Sawyer while in delirium; and later, an appearance of a black horse which she believes is the same one which enabled her escape from custody. It is worth noting that the horse was seen by Sawyer as well, and both he and Kate touched it and concluded that it was real. Desmond apparently has the power of precognition, first discussed in "Flashes Before Your Eyes". There has also been an occasion when a living person (apart from Walt) on the island was seen as a vision. A few days after they crashed, Boone saw a vision of Shannon being attacked by the "monster". This led him to try to rescue her but unfortunately he failed causing Shannon to die. He was shocked, however, when Locke told him Shannon was alive and well. The cat of a woman who Sayid had previously tortured prior to the crash is seen by Sayid on the island, although it seems likely that this is merely a similar cat. Miracles Some castaways have expressed belief that they have been miraculously healed since the crash. Prior to his arrival, Locke was confined to a wheelchair, but he regained the use of his legs immediately after the crash; he tells Walt that a miracle happened to him ("Pilot, Part 2"). Locke also makes a miraculously fast recovery in the episode, "Through the Looking Glass," after being shot and left for dead by Ben in the episode, "The Man Behind the Curtain." Similarly, Rose had been dying of cancer before crashing on the island; after the crash, she feels as if the cancer has "left her body" and credits the island as her cure ("S.O.S."). Sun becomes pregnant, despite the fact that a doctor had previously (secretly) declared her husband Jin to be medically incapable of fathering a child. She informs Jin of the true diagnosis, although she does not tell him about her recent affair (in Korea) with her English teacher, Jae Lee; Jin declares that the conception is a miracle ("The Whole Truth"). In the episode "D.O.C.", Juliet reveals that men on the island have five times the normal yield of sperm, explaining why Jin was able to impregnate Sun. Despite his apparent death when John Locke pushed him through the invisible security fence surrounding the Others' encampment in the episode "Par Avion," Mikhail Bakunin later returns and stops the internal bleeding of the helicopter pilot Naomi. He claims she will be fine in about a day, much to Charlie's surprise. While that is not the normal recovery time for such an injury, Mikhail states that "things work differently" on the island. In the episode, "The Man Behind the Curtain." Mikhail tells Ben that the fence was in fact not set to a lethal level, seemingly explaining away his brush with death. However, in the Season 3 finale, "Through the Looking Glass," Mikhail is shot through the chest with a spear gun by Desmond and yet again seems to have been killed. Mikhail, however, undergoes another miraculous recovery, revives (off-camera), and swims out of the station, then blows open a porthole, flooding the control room and killing Charlie. The Others appear to operate on the assumption that cancer is impossible on the island (or at least within their own population) ("One of Us"); Ben Linus is deeply shocked when he learns he has a tumour on his spine. The island does not appear to heal all people equally. Richard Alpert says in "The Brig" that Locke's spine healing itself is not a normal event, even by the island's standards; it is a sign of Locke being somehow "special". The effects of this specialness can apparently extend to other people; after his spinal surgery, Ben was paralyzed for over a week, but regained the feeling in his legs immediately after coming in contact with Locke, and was able to walk (with the aid of a cane) only days afterward. The Statue In the episode "Live Together, Die Alone" while at sea, Sayid, Jin, and Sun sight what appears to be the remnants of a massive statue — a large, four-toed marble foot broken off at the ankle, standing upon a rock in the surf. Sayid remarks that he does not know which is more disturbing: the fact that the rest of the statue is missing or that the foot has only four toes. Many fans are also puzzled by the origins of the statue, and some have compared it to the Colossus of Rhodes.[4] Further ruins are revealed in "The Brig" when the Others tie Locke's father to the broken base of a large, stone column. Though they look ancient, the age of these ruins has yet to be confirmed. The Whispers At various points in the series whispering voices have been heard by the characters, with no visible source of origin. Rousseau claims these voices are of the Others. They seem to have a connection with the visions; before Ana Lucia shot Shannon who was chasing an image of Walt, they heard the whispering around them. In season 3, there was whispering before Walt showed up at the mass grave, and before Richard, one of the others, appeared before a young Ben. The Sickness Rousseau claims to have killed her team due to them catching a mysterious disease which necessitated their executions. She claims the Others were the carriers of disease. A mysterious vaccine was provided by DHARMA food drops and was taken regularly by Kelvin and Desmond in the Swan Station, and administered to Claire by Ethan after her kidnapping, although it is not known whether or not Kelvin and Ethan were deceiving Desmond and Claire about the necessity of the injections. Pregnancy Since season 3, an important theory is being explored. Apparently, any human female who conceives on the island dies before the baby is born. Other species of placental mammals like the wild boars, do not die due to pregnancy. Several women have already given birth (Danielle, Claire), but they conceived before coming to the island. It has been revealed that Sun became pregnant with Jin's child while on the island, and viewers have speculated that Kate may have conceived when she had sex with Sawyer. The Others have known about this for a long time and enlisted the help of Juliet, a fertility researcher, to help find out why this happened. So far, no progress has been made in preventing these deaths. As it seems, Sun and possibly Kate are doomed to die in 6 months (based on statements by Juliet in "D.O.C."). However, in "flashforwards" in the season 3 finale "Through the Looking Glass," it is revealed that Kate apparently survived and left the island. Crossovers Prior to their arrival on the island, both major and minor characters had occasion to interact, often unknowingly, sometimes affecting each others' lives. These are revealed through characters' flashbacks, and are typically only obvious to viewers. Some intersections are quite noticeable, with different characters conversing with each other, but most often they are oblivious to these crossovers, with characters sometimes appearing on televisions or being glimpsed in the background. Damon Lindelof has stated that these are not "Easter eggs," but rather a larger part of the mythology of the series.

STRANGE ISLAND HAPPENINGS

Miracles

The Statue

The Sickness

Pregnancy

Crossovers