On Exclusive Members of the UFO Paparazzi.

Another Dream of Lights in the Sky.

It’s nighttime, the blackest of conceivable black, cloudless and entirely absent of light pollution during what appears to be the deepest, most dead hours of the night. My family and I are just outside my parents’ house, and I’m meandering about their beautiful, rural property, watching the crystalline clear night sky, bathing in its cosmic beauty as I so often did during my insomniac-plagued teens and twenties, when I still lived here.

I think it was the eldest of my two younger sisters, the middle child, that first drew our attention to them: these strange lights above, dancing in the heavens. As soon as all our eyes were brought to the skies, they began producing these bizarre, hypnotic displays. Veering across the full length of the property, they executed these breathtaking aerobatics and luminous, seemingly miraculous acts in this grand light show far above our silly, dumbstruck heads. All of us are utterly captivated. We watch them with increasing enthusiasm and elevating, entranced attention, drawn into their ominous and unearthly beauty. Investing more focus than we would if we were witnessing something even as awesome as a meteor shower, fireworks display, or those heavenly, truly illuminating lightning storms above the forest lining the front yard that we always enjoyed observing from the safety of the garage, from out its open door, when my sisters and I were young.

After an enduring period of total psychological absorption, I finally break free from the trace long enough to realize how important it is to document this profound experience, to acquire evidence. How mindless I had been until this moment. So I grab my phone, open it, tap video, and try to record the astounding, otherworldly light display that our eyes had for so long been permitted to behold. Despite my efforts, though, I simply couldn’t catch it. However much I tried, I always seemed to fail. It was so real, but yet again, I had no documentation. Nothing even approximating substantial evidence. Nothing tangible to hold onto.

And with that frustration, the dream ended.

I awoke on the early morning of March 2nd, 2024, with just another rendition of the same general dream I’ve had now since the middle of December, 1994, just circling around in my waking mind like a goddamn psychological whirlpool. That recurring fucking dream theme of watching mysterious lights, objects, or anomalous phenomena in the sky. I was so frustrated upon my exit from the dream that I refused to open my eyes, roll over, and record the specific details immediately after it ended. Fuck it, I thought to myself. Fuck it all to hell. What’s the goddamn point? Consequently, all throughout my subsequent dreams the nonverbal mantra persisted: write it down, write it down, write it down…

After awakening that morning, I finally did. Most of the details were out of reach, but the general story, a story I knew all too goddamn well, it was undeniably cemented, imprinted, burned into my consciousness.

Generally speaking, I’ve been unable to find a trigger for these dreams over the last 30 years or so, but on this particular occasion the stimulus was pretty fucking obvious. Just the evening before, I’d watched yet another UFO documentary. This one was suggested to me on YouTube, an offering from the almighty algorithm ever-amplifying our echo-chambers, and it sprung from a channel called Mountain Beast Mysteries (MBM). The video itself, just over 49 minutes long, was entitled “The Beings From Beyond.” I’d only vaguely recalled it having been referenced in something I’d heard, watched, or read rather recently, which led me at the time to make a nearly-forgotten mental note to watch it. I still don’t recall its origins or why I thought it would strike my interest – aside from the general subject being the UFO phenomenon, of course – but in any case, I’m certainly glad it drove me to do so.

Even if it triggered another one of these wonderfully cosmic, yet undeniably ominous, and endlessly frustrating dreams of mine. I’ve not only accepted them as inevitable but, if I can be honest, I actually look forward to them. I always feel as if they provide for me something my mundane life is lacking, even starving me of, and both the dream and the video that inspired it unquestionably provided me with that psychospiritual sustenence.

This, of course, brings us to the video in question, and to the strange case of Justin Chernipeski in general.

Regarding The Beings From Beyond.

As I would later learn, Chernipeski is certainly no stranger to the weird. After all, he had started MBM, which was exclusively geared for years, as it’s homepage explains, towards “providing information and stories on the subjects of Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch) and conspiracy theories relating to it.” While his focus had been on Bigfoot, he was well-aquainted with the UFO subject and had even engaged in some meditation practices over the years that some claimed had the ability to summon UFOs. He honestly didn’t expect it to work, however, and still isn’t confident that this was what triggered what eventually happened to him.

Regardless of the cause, as is often the case in life, shit inevitably happened.

During the period in which he shot the videos, he was living in an apartment building in downtown Edmonton, Alberta, and he believes it was on May 30th, 2022 that the first event occured. It was a clear night. He was heading inside from the patio through the sliding glass door when he noticed a flash of light out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw a row of six or seven lights spinning like the rotors of a helicopter in a way he later described as very calculated, very precise. It was entirely silent and traveling in a straight line right over him, heading from north to south.

He fully confesses to having freaked out at that point. He ran inside, slamming shut the sliding door behind him, and proceeded to pace, trying to come to grips with what he had just seen. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep, once he managed to calm down a bit he decided that he wanted evidence to ensure himself and others that he wasn’t just going batshit insane. So he went back outside in the attempt to capture it on video. While the object he had seen was gone, he managed to capture some strange and silent lights on camera nonetheless, though freely admits the footage was of an awful quality. He was finally able to get to sleep around three in the morning and subsequently made a YouTube video describing what happened. Afterward, he admits that his looming fear was either getting abducted or getting a visit from the Men in Black. To me, this at the very least confirmed his allegations that he was familiar enough with the subject.

Interestingly, that night was only the beginning. It kicked off an entire year’s worth of sightings – and this time he captured it, thankfully, on a higher-quality camera.

On the second night of sightings, he had set up a camera with a wide-angle lens on a tripod, aimed it to the sky directly above him, sat down on a chair, and just let the camera roll. After awhile, he didn’t notice anything, and so decided to go inside and grab something to eat. Just after he had come back outside, right as he was sitting back down in his chair, however, he saw a row of three lights coming out of the clouds directly above him, traveling from east to west, and so grabbed the camera to follow it. It’s faint, but with effort, you can see it on the video.

He found that he was less anxious on this second occasion, Curiosity, it would seem, had overcome his fear. So he made the decision to move away from his Bigfoot efforts and turn his focus toward the UFO phenomena he was experiencing instead. It should be noted, though – unless I’m mistaken – that he never once referred to these lights as UFOs, at least in the context of the documentary. He also repeatedly made it clear he didn’t pretend to know what was behind the phenomena, though many of the speculations he provided confirmed to me that an extraterrestrial origin was certaintly among the top candidates in his mind.

At any rate, as time went on, he found he could go out at night on his porch with reasonable confidence that he would end the night having captured something strange on film. This struck him as strange, for as previously mentioned, he didn’t live in some rural area, but rather in the capital city of Alberta, where these UFOs may be subject to a mass amount of onlookers. Even more confounding, as he also pointed out, was the fact that they typically appeared or flew directly above him. And often enough, he also emphasizes, a lot of what he captured on video he didn’t realize he’d captured until afterward, while reviewing the footage on his computer.

He ultimately described a few distinct categories his UFO sightings fell into. The first mentioned were these low-altitude, dead quiet, bright and Blue Lights. Sometimes there would be another, fainter blue orb at a greater distance, moving in parallel and at the same speed. Another category were these low-altitude White Lights that appeared in pairs or triangle formations, sometimes distant formations and on other occasions very close together. The most bizarre category he mentioned, however, involved what he called Creatures.

Until this point, at about the twenty minute mark in the documentary, I had found myself being almost involuntarily absorbed by his videos and general account. Now I found myself pulling back a little. This was approaching my boggle threshold, though he swiftly confirmed I was by no means alone. “This is where I start to lose most people,” he said, providing, at the very least, a degree of self-awareness I can respect.

He calls them Creatures because like birds, he says, you can see wings flapping. Watching the provided videos detailing these alleged Creatures, I caught only hints of what could perhaps be interpreted as flapping, but perhaps my laptop and flatscreen TV aren’t sufficient for me to notice this element of the provided videos in their full glory. I’ll suspend judgement for the time being and give him the benefit of the doubt. At least at the beginning there could be anywhere between one to five of them, he said, though typically four, and when there was more than one they would be flying in a rigid formation, sometimes a V-formation. As time went on, however, they would appear in larger groups and their formations became less rigid. As they collectively moved, they would begin to move individually in what I personally considered a strange and breathtaking way – a way that could certainly be described as more organic, but nonetheless nothing like any birds I’ve observed. He actually provides a good example as to why I feel this way at about twenty-four minutes in, too. He was out on his porch one evening and upon looking up noticed a group of them hovering directly above him, kind of flying in a swarm, after which he pointed the camera in their direction. Then another one flies in their direction, joins the group, and then, assembling themselves in a V-formation, they collectively take off in a joint direction.

He later says that he considers their movements and appearence to constitute “disguises,” which helped desolve my resistence a bit. The distinction between these creatures and birds, he said, is that they are both silent and emit light. He has deduced that they aren’t reflecting the lights from the city, as the helicopters and airplanes that have began flying low over his apartment during this period didn’t reflect light at their intensity, which are almost brighter than the backdrop of the stars. Some of these so-called creatures would be, as he put it, “zipping around” alone in the sky, executing insane areal maneuvers, abruptly moving into the frame and then shooting up into the heavens. Other solo creatures would do so while seemingly “glitching” in and out – maybe flashing, strobing their lights – in weird patterns as they swiftly moved about. You couldn’t help but lean in towards the screen, furl your brow, and try your damnest to focus on it and subject it to the most intensive, critical, visual analysis you could.

Whatever they are, some of the maneuvers these objects pull in his videos literally had my eyes bugging out and my jaw dropping, it’s reactionary descent only temporarily suspended for me to involuntarily exclaim aloud, in the one-bedroom apartment I live in alone, “WOW!”

As alluded to before, he also described and caught on film a lot of low-altitude, seemingly manmade aerial activity over his apartment as well. An airplane akin to a Cessna would fly over his apartment again and again. One night he thinks he filmed it flying over a dozen times. What seemed to be a police helicopter flew over on multiple occasions as well, and sometimes the helicopter would fly over and he could hear it but never see it. He even managed to catch it on video, flying without it’s lights on.

While a lot of what he’s described has been described and even captured on video before, at least in singular doses, his initial experience is a rather rare one. I’ve certainly never heard of it before, and I’m fairly well acquainted with the UFO phenomenon. I’ve never heard of a line of lights swinging like a helicopter rotor crossing the sky. Despite this, he reports having randomly met a girl online – also from Alberta, though roughly two hours away from his location – and though it didn’t originally come up in conversation, and she wasn’t aware of the full scope of his experiences, she eventually confessed to having had an experience that he immediately recognied as being remarkably similar to his own, origional experience. While his had been at the end of May 2002, hers had been in October of 2002, however, and while she didn’t report having seen as many lights – only four in her experience – they were nonetheless arranged in a line, and they spun like a helicopter blade across the sky. And she saw it again that December, only this time it was spinning faster. Assuming his account is true, and I am of the strong opinion that it is, as he asked: really, what are the fucking odds?

There are two peices of video he provides in the documentary that sparked my interest specifically. Apparently I wasn’t alone, either, for as I would learn in the days after I watched the documentary, he actually had separate videos dealing with each of these videos.

The first one was a clip that was provided at about fifteen minutes into the documentary and then detailed in a separate video, “Alien Visitors Caught on Camera.” Here he explains – and shows the footage of – how he was tracking a singular light in the sky with his camera. That was all that he noticed, too, until he later reviewed that footage on his computer, at which point he discovered that he had filmed what he described as his most amazing peice of footage to date. And I agree. “This light comes from the top left corner of the screen,” he explains, and then “zips down, and then zips back up to this object I was tracking, and pulls these maneuvers that I’ve never seen anything pull before in the sky.”

This was my first truly jaw-dropping moment watching this documentary. It reminded me a lot of a video I had seen years ago when looking on YouTube for videos of UFO sightings. It depicted this strange light, about as faint as the stars, which would fly erratically across the star-speckled sky as the camera struggled to keep up with it, but in this case it seemed to be playing cat and mouse with the focus of the camera – or the person behind it.

The next video that sparked my interest is, so far as he has made us aware, his most recent one, and it came after a bit of an experiential commercial break. As Winter had approached, the weather became agonizingly cold, so he had an understandable increasing reluctance to go outside and skywatch. Consequently, his sightings and the videos of them trickled to a standstill. When the weather warmed, however, he went back outside, but to his dismay, he didn’t see anything. He feared that they might have gone away, and that he might have to start over from square one, striving to summon their presence – if that brought them to him in the first place – or that he might have to face that this enlightening chapter in his life was simply over. Still, he persisted.

Then he had what he considers – despite the poorer quality of the camera – the most spectacular sighting he’s captured to date. This was at the very end of the documentary and was also detailed in a separate video, “Alien Mothership Caught on Camera,” which, yes, might be a misleading if not dowright click-bait kind of title. Still, it aroused my curiosity.

It was around 11:45 in the evening on May 26, 2023, and there was heavy cloud cover. He was outside on his top-floor patio and suddenly noticed a spot in the clouds that looked slightly brighter than it should be. As he focused his attention on it, the glow seemingly behind the cloud abruptly disappeared – and then reappeared. It did this a few times and then began going through all the colors in the light spectrum – at first slowly, and then again, at higher speed. The light would then veer away at high speed across the sky. Sometimes it would shoot across the sky in a straight line, or it would do a circle or a triangle, sometimes reversing course. He emphasized he could see it from beyond the angle he caught on film when it zipped across the sky, which reinforces his hypothesis that this couldn’t have been a spotlight. It would always return to the same general area where the camera was fixed, however, and it would stop on a dime. When the light stopped, sometimes it was dimmer, sometimes more brilliant. When the light would occasionally blink off, sometimes you could see a faint ring of six or seven lights around where it had been, and the ring seemed to be rotating – and as soon as the central light came back on, they would disappear. He said it went on like this for at least three hours. Sometimes he would get tired, go back inside, and when he’d come back out it would still be there, zipping around. It went on until at least three in the morning, he said, when we finally went inside and submitted to sleep. Shortly thereafter, he moved that location. This was the last video of the lights that he filmed and, so far as I’m aware, the last he’s seen of them so far.

A lot of people in the comments, even those who considered his other videos as containing truly anomalous lights, dismissed this particular one as an effect caused by a spotlight, a strong flashlight, or a laser projected on the clouds. If it was a hoax, I don’t think he perpetrated it, but that it was likely someone who had seen his previous videos, found out where he lived, and decided to pull a prank in hopes of making a fool out of him. After all, he said he always went out there at about 11 o’clock or half passed, so they’d know when to do it. Even so, you’d think the buildings would get in the way, particularly when the light went zipping out of the frame and across the sky, where he could see it. Even so, I considered this possibility rather seriously after my dream and watched some videos of such effects I could find on the net. While I entirely accept I could be wrong, it simply didn’t seem like the same thing to me. I’ve also watched the “mothership” video a few times, and even analyzed some parts of it frame by frame, and not only can I not see a beam but there are parts where you can see it in breaks in the cloud cover. I’m no professional analyst, of course, not in the least, but It really seems to be behind the clouds to me.

If you poo-poo this particular video, however, there are his other videos, most specifically (in my opinion) the aforementioned video clip in the documentary which was focused on in “Alien Visitors Caught on Camera,” and they are far more difficult to dismiss, as the potential explanations just explored wouldn’t be applicable. Despite that, there may be resistance. I get it. Hell, I feel it. Even among those of us who realize that the UFO phenomenon is a legitimate mystery, at least among those of us not among the Gatekeepers buried in our world governments, we might find ourselves rather suspicious of Chernipeki, inclined to impulsively dismiss him on the basis of his countless videos and the associated anecdotal evidence he provides alone. After all, this is too far outside the the norm, even in the context of the utterly bizarre UFO phenomenon, to take seriously, we might tell ourselves. And again, I get it.

It should be understood that Chernipeski is by no means alone, however. There are others.

Other Exclusive Members of the UFO Paparazzi.

Aside from Chernipeski, there are, so far as I’ve been able to discern, at least three other individuals in relatively recent history that not only appear to constitute UFO magnets, but are permitted frequent photo ops by the nonhuman intelligences behind them: Ed Walters, Ellen Crystall, and Dorothy Wilkinson-Izatt.

Ed Walters articulated his experiences alongside Francis, his wife at the time, in their 1990 book The Gulf Breeze Sightings: The Most Astounding Multiple Sightings of Ufos in U.S. History. Ed was a builder-developer by profession and at the time lived in Gulf Breeze, Florida, with his aforementioned wife and two children for five years. It was on November 11, 1987 when the cascade of weirdness began relentlessly pouring into his life and it would extend until at least May 1, 1988. In short, he not only began seeing UFOs regularly, but phographing and videotaping them. He claimed to have been immobilized by a blue beam from a UFO on at least two occasions, lifted by it once, and on another occasion – February 7, 1988 – even photographed his wife attempting to outrun it. The family had seen aliens as well, and they had telepathically engaged with Walters, who also had experiences of missing time and recalled a series of typical abduction scenarios when he finally unwent hypnosis. Early on, he began submitting his UFO photographs to the Gulf Breeze Sentinel, though fearing the ridicule him and his family would be predictably subject to, he used at least three aliases, though ultimately confessed his identity in 1989.

Unsurprisingly, Walters was subject to a buttload of scrutiny. He took a polygraph test and passed it, with the examiner concluding that he was being truthful, at least in the respect that he believed he was being truthful, which is all those tests can truly determine. Aside from that, examinations of the photos and assessments of his character and allegations were entirely dependent on what one considered a reputable source. Discreditors obviously dismissed and ridiculed his allegations and Believers clearly invested in it. The perceptions of what I would regard as the true Skeptics varied. Military officials, specifically the nearby Eglin Air Force Base, denied there was any anomalous acitivity at the time of the reported sightings. In essence, everything you would expect from an intense UFO flap.

Until the last year or two, I hadn’t read the first, aforementioned book of his, but only his second, 1994 book, UFO Abductions in Gulf Breeze, of which I can remember very little, given I read it back in the mid-1990s, when I was still in high school. Upon reading The Gulf Breeze Sightings, however, I felt instantly transported back into my high school period, when The X-Files first made it’s appearance. I particularly felt vibes between this book and the first season of the television series, not only because the sightings were mentioned at least twice that season but because there are a wealth of incidents in the book that seemed to serve as inspiration for the show. Many have cast doubt on the authenticity of Walters’s photos (including Carter himself in that first season, through the words of Mulder), but I’m inclined to think (at least based on the first book) that they’re authentic, at least on most days.

Again, I’m willing to accept I’m wrong, but in Walter’s defense, him and his family were by no means the only ones to witness and report a UFO in Gulf Breeze during that period. After his photos were published, many came forward with their own reports, and some recognized the specific craft they saw as corresponding to what Walters caught on film. Many would and certainly have dismissed this as a form of mass hysteria, blind to the alternative possibility that others embraced: that Walters might have had a tightly-knit series of intense encounters that compelled him to share his photographic evidence publicly in hopes that others had seen the same thing and that, once he had broken the ice, others might feel more comfortable coming forward with their own stories and nurture his hopes that he wasn’t just going batshit fucking insane.

Maybe you think he’s full of shit anyway. Fine. There is also the case of writer, musician, and photographer Ellen Crystall, however. In her 1991 book, Silent Invasion: The Shocking Discoveries of a Ufo Researcher, which I also read in high school, she describes how she first witnessed UFOs as nocturnal lights doing aerobatics in the distance from the balcony of her Hollywood, California, apartment complex amongst a crowd of neighboring tenants in May of 1971. Before long, her curiosity was piqued.

“After a few weeks of observing the craft from our apartment complex, I decided I wanted a closer look. About a mile from our apartment was a small hill with an excellent view of the area, so my friend and I decided to go there,” she wrote. “It was only a few minutes before a set of lights descended towards us, turning off as they came closer. Soon we could clearly see the saucer shape of an unlit craft. Totally silent, it began to circle us, staying about two hundred feet or so from us.”

After two nights on the hill, during which craft at different distances would revolve around the two of them, she retreated to the former distance of the balcony, though they then seemed to be moving closer to her. Her next close encounter was even closer than the former, however, and occurred in August, 1971, some four months after her sightings began. She was walking home from work at roughly nine in the evening on an otherwise unpopulated street when she looked up. What she was was a delta-shaped craft descending from above a house, its headlight shining down upon her. Through four large windows on the craft she saw lights flashing on the walls inside and, most unnervingly, a Gray sitting in one of the two seats that were visible to her, working what appeared to be a joystick. She ran, the craft following just behind her until she entered her apartment, where she promptly began packing. She flew back home to her parents in New Jersey the following day — where she continued having close encounters among other witnesses.

Nine years later she was hunting for UFOs with colleagues and snapping photographs of them in Pine Bush, New York. These encounters got even more intimate with her personal encounter on the roadside. On August 7th, 1980, she decided to go hunting for UFOs in Pine Bush alone, which she had never done before. As she was driving along a dark road at 1 AM, shining her flashlight into the woods in hopes of catching hints of a hiding craft, she caught sight of an alien roughly 25 feet away. Shortly thereafter, she stepped on the gas.

In general, whether you believe in what she recounts as having experienced or believe in her interpretations, it is an intriguing, fun, and interesting read. Again, like Walters, I found myself drawn into her narrative. Was it fiction, as some attest, or at least an attempt to document her actual experiences? It’s difficult to know for certain, obviously, but like Walters, she was by no means alone in her sightings and encounters – many others reported similar experiences in the same location during the same period of time.

Even aside from all I’ve provided above, Chernipeski, Walters, and Crystall weren’t the only alleged members of this exclusive UFO paparazzi. No, there was another.

Last, by no means least, though perhaps most curious, is the case of Dorothy Wilkinson-Izatt. She was born on September 24, 1922, in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where she later married Duncan Izatt and went on to have four children. When the strange experiences in her life began, she lived with her husband and family in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, on Pacific coast of Canada. Her story was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, Season 3, Episode 13, which aired on December 12, 1990. There was also a 2003 book written regarding her experiences by Peter Guttilla, entitled Contact With Beings Of Light: The Amazing true Story of Dorothy Wilkinson-Izatt. To say the least, it’s an interesting read. Subsequently there was a 2008 documentary, Capturing the Light, which is where she first came to my attention.

Her first UFO sighting came to pass on November 9, 1974, when she was 52 years old. While in her kitchen around four in the evening, making herself a cup of tea, she had the sudden and strong sense that she was being watched. Going over to the window, she saw a large, diamond-shaped object in the sky, spinning and flashing. She felt elated, privileged to be able to see it, and felt no fear whatsoever. After the experience, she tried to share it with her husband, who sort of laughed it off dismissively. Later that same evening, she saw a bright light shining through one of her heavy-curtained windows. She again told her husband, who seemed utterly disinterested. After proceeding to the guest room, she now saw lights in the sky through that window, wondering to herself, “Is this real?” Telepathically, she received the response: “Don’t be afraid. We are real.”

I’ve often read or heard about those who blindly deny their own strange experiences or those of a loved one of this type (as an example of this last instance, her husband), or with equivalent blindness, lay uncritical faith in it, but this was demonstrably not the instinctive nature of Izatt. This is one reason why I found myself respecting the woman so much. Instead of blind faith, she sought confirmation. In response to this telepathic communication, she picked up a flashlight and asked the intelligence apparently communicating with her if it would imitate whatever it was she did with the flashlight. She then flashed it three times to the left. The object went three times to the left. She then flashed it three times to the right. It went three times to the right. Three times upwards, three times downwards, zigzagging – each time the object mimicked her, as requested, in the style known as “crossover mirroring.” Then they were gone.

Later that same evening, as she was meditating prior to sleep, a light suddenly appeared in her room. She then saw three men, who apparently collectively communicated to her that what they were going to show her was for the purpose of preparing her for what they were going to give her. After subsequent communications, they left.

She continued seeing these lights in the sky. Her husband and children took her sightings “lightly, almost as a joke,” but she took it seriously – but not on faith. She called the airport, the police, and so on, but no one seemed to take her seriously, so she finally had enough.

Borrowing her husband’s Super 8 Milimeter video recorder, she waited, ready to capture them – and she did not await in vain. At first, she heard a high-pitched buzzing. As time went on, she noted that dogs seemed to hear it, but the people around her usually couldn’t. In any case, in this particular instance, she started filming, and upon watching it later, was very happy she’d actually captured these lights in the sky. She showed it to her husband, who continued to say nothing in response. Even so, she would go on to see them everyday. When she finally asked the natural and obvious question – namely, why her? – they said that they’d known her for a very long time.

What she saw in the sky were just orbs of light, which she also caught on film, but a few frames later the video she took captured something invisible to her naked eye: an incredible blast of light, almost like a lightning flash (later it was noted that these flashes lasted 1/18 of a second). Watching her videos later, she rewound and fast-forwarded until she isolated the single frames containing the blast of light. Rather than just a flash of light, the frame revealed an elaborate display of colored, streaking lights. The frame was self-contained, too, and no evidence was found in the surrounding frames.

“I noticed that while I’m filming these objects, they’ll suddenly stop,” she said. “And then I’ll notice one object, like, shooting out a little beam at the other object, and then that object would be shooting out another beam back at it. And so I guess it must be messages or something that they’re passing back and forth on these beams of light. And then when I get it developed, I’ll find all these strange, one-frame shots on it.”

She blew up these frames. Also those that just depicted the balls of light, and here the photos began to show more details. Sometimes they would beam a light down on her. She would ask them to come closer and closer so she could get better shots. They complied. She used three different cameras, all of them producing similar results. By the time she died on January 29, 2021, in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, she had amassed over 30 thousand feet of film depicting UFOs and other anomalies.

There are similarities in these three cases that ultimately bind them all and I feel it’s important to consider them. The experiences of both Walters and Izatt are similar in that they heard a buzzing sound prior to the appearance of the UFOs that usually only they could hear, for instance, and they also reportedly had telepathic communication with the occupants of the craft as well. Both Crystall and Izatt are similar in that their photos (in the case of Crystall) and video stills (in the case of Izatt) reveal strange, perhaps subliminal light phenomena not consciously visible to the naked eye but captured on film. All three are similar in that their UFO experiences are supported by other eyewitnesses, some of whom had association with them, and some that simply happened to live in the same area.

Chernipeski, on the other hand, only shares likeness with them in that he was capable of capturing them on film. Even so, many of his videos seem astounding to me, and I certainly don’t think he’s a liar.

Telepathy & the Photogenic Status of UFOs.

At the time that I first watched Chernipeski’s documentary, I was still reading D.W. Pasulka’s 2019 book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology for the first time. Her perspective takes the subject of UFOs from a different angle than those I’ve been formerly aquainted with, and having previously watched various interviews with her on podcasts, I knew it was inevitable that I would read her two books on the subject. This one was the first, and in this book she references more than once something Carl Jung said in his 1979 book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, which is another book I own yet have yet to read cover to cover. In full, he wrote:

“Considering the notorious camera-mindedness of Americans, it is surprising how few ‘authentic’ photographs of UFOs seem to exist, especially as many of them are said to have been observed for several hours at relatively close quarters. I myself happen to know someone who saw a Ufo with hundreds of other people in Guatemala. He had his camera with him, but in the excitement he completely forgot to take a photo, although it was daytime and the Ufo remained visible for an hour. I have no reason to doubt the honesty of his report. He has merely strengthened my impression that Ufos are somehow not photogenic.”

In Jung’s defense, there are many cases from the very beginning of the modern UFO phenomenon up until modern day where witnesses who were clearly capable of capturing the incident through a photo or video fail to do so, and the fact that they didn’t often serves to utterly mystify and even embarrass them in the aftermath. Even before the rise of cell phones, this counted as a boldfaced, underlined, italicized, neon-blazing highlighted strike against witnesses in the eyes of the Discreditors. Today, when we live in an era when most of us typically have a phone on us 24/7/365 and our collective propensity for not merely snapping a photo but recording a video is damn near obsessive-compulsive, however, that lack of photographic or video evidence serves as a major red flag.

For whatever reason, in the recurring UFO dreams I’ve had since I was in my early teens (a recent example of which I provided in the opening of this post) has also consistently reflected this. Even when I struggle against the trance induced by what I’m witnessing and try to snap a photo or record a video the UFO either disappears or my phone “mysteriously” fucks up. I’m not sure I’ve ever successfully accomplished the task, even in the alleged privacy of my mind’s own vivid, involuntary, nocturnal simulations, and the frustration I feel upon awakening often stings. I can’t even hope to imagine how those who had the opportunity to capture such photographic evidence in the context of witnessing a UFO in the real world must have felt – and yet I can also understand the skepticism of those who weren’t there.

After all, it’s difficult to deny that this is suspicious. I mean, how could you witness such a truly awesome display and not consider recording it, given your capacity to do so was well within reach? Unsurprisingly, this has led some, on that basis alone, to doubt the legitimacy of the phenomenon as a whole. As an example, in relatively recent years I even remember hearing about how Stephen Spielberg’s attitude towards the phenomenon has shifted since the days of ET: The Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where he had a sincere interest and even belief in the reality of the phenomenon. He remarked that he simply found it impossible that such events could happen and that we wouldn’t also have a wealth of photographic and video evidence for it.

That pulling out their camera somehow slipped the mind of UFO witnesses has never seemed that amazing to me, however, and if it does to anyone else, it only suggests to me that they have failed to explore the subject at sufficient depth – and specifically, the reports of the witnesses themselves.

This brings to mind a quote from Messengers of Deception, a 1979 book by Jacques Vallee. While I have yet to read the book, I’ve found myself coming back to this quote so bloody often it certainly serves as a sign that I most certainly should. In any case, Vallee explains that he has come to believe that to truly understand the UFO phenomenon as a whole one must not only engage in scientific analysis.

“Scientific analysis will undoubtedly provide part of the truth about UFOs; however,” he writes, “I no longer believe it will lead to the whole truth. I owe this realization to a man I shall call ‘Major Murphy,’ although his actual rank is much higher than that of Major.”

Over drinks after their meeting during a gathering of UFO contactees, this “retired” member of the US intelligence service suggested that, despite what Vallee believed at the time, the proper place for the study of UFOs was not in science, but rather in intelligence, which is to say counterespisonage, which was his forte, and in this context, the rules were entirely different:

“He drew a simple diagram in my notebook. ‘You are a scientist. In science there is no concept of the ‘price’ of information. Suppose I gave you 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You’re happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in Intelligence. If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know this is the ‘cheap’ part of the information. I still need the other 5 per cent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it. You see, Hitler had 95 per cent of the information about the landing in Normandy. But he had the wrong 95 per cent!’”

The manner in which the intelligences behind the UFO phenomenon operate is disturbingly similar, he suggested, specifically when he suggested that “[t]hey will keep feeding you the information they want you to process. What is the only source of data about the UFO phenomenon? It is the UFOs themselves!”

As I’ve illustrated above, albeit in summation, Major Murphey’s suggestion seems to hold a great deal of water.

Consider that there have been countless cases that have displayed how during distant UFO sightings, close encounters, as well as alleged abductions the witnesses involved have felt as if they were compelled by an external force to look in a certain direction of the sky, where their sighting or encounter began, or even to drive to an area where they subsequently witnessed or encountered an object, or even experienced an abduction. Not only has their attention been drawn to a UFO seemingly telepathically in such instances, as a matter of fact, but the UFO has often gone on to respond to their desires for it to move closer or further away from them. As much as I detest Stephen Greer and his ever-irritating bullshit, this even provides a basis for his CE-5 protocols. And this aspect of the phenomenon, reported so often – and which, be it a psi ability or a technological analogue, could really only be called telepathy – would also explain how they could make witnesses “forget” to reach for the camera.

More broadly, the telepathy explained above suggests that by and large UFOs are seen when and by whom they desire to be seen. Sometimes they attract the attention of someone and move closer if that person is comfortable with them doing so, and/or move away if they start freaking out. On other occasions, it’s quite obvious they couldn’t give so much as a shit regarding how the witness feels or what the witness wants: they’ll chase a car down the road, after all, or an aircraft right back to base.

Clearly we don’t know why they select specific individuals to witness them to varying degrees, or why they behave towards such individuals in the varying ways that they do. Despite our ignorance regarding that matter, we should accept that given the telepathic component in UFO experiences they have clearly demonstrated that they can indeed control by whom they are seen, what those witnesses see, and given the episodes of missing time reported by some witnesses, how much they can remember. That they could ensure this targeted, staged experience for the witness or witness in question stays with them and is not disseminated to a wider community by means of making them forget to document the experience through photos or videos by use of the same sort of telepathy would, relatively-speaking, be a walk in the fucking park.

While most walk away from a sighting or encounter without any photographic or video evidence at all, some occasionally come away with perhaps a few photos, maybe a video or two. Strange enough.

Then there are apparently others, like Ellen Crystall, Ed Walters, Dorothy Wilkinson-Izatt, and even Justin Chernipeski, that are evidently given the clear by the intelligences behind UFOs in an absurdly broad sense. Such witnesses are not only chronic witnesses, but are permitted to capture them on camera time after time. To greater or lesser degrees, the UFOs are clearly showing off, begging for attention – on the surface seemingly constituting the equivalent of what the cool kids call a “simp” or “pick-me girl” for the witness and, through them, the camera. The witness, instinctively enamored, becomes a shameless UFO paparazzo.

To take it from another, admittedly more religious angle, it’s as if these particular witnesses become the photographic or video emmisaries of the UFO phenomenon – specifically selected, for whatever reason, by the intelligences behind the phenomenon to provide second-hand visual evidence to the masses willing to view it all, and they at least initially embrace this opportunity, and provide it to others out of a sense of responsibility.

Then idiots like me, we study the photos. Subject the videos to insanely intense analysis.

And then we have dreams.

Alien Abductions & the Selective Time-Freeze.

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
― Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy.

My Journey into the Heart of the Alien Time-Freeze.

I am the eldest of my parent’s three children and the only male, and however much I adore my two sisters, a part of me also wanted a brother while I was growing up. When I met Jimmy, the son of my mother’s friend and coworker at the Daycare facility, he quickly became the brother I never had.

Early on, I wanted nothing more than to spend all the time with him that I could, though this desire certainly diminished over time. It had little to do with him as a person, understand. And however strange it came to be, after I last saw him shortly after my family moved in 1988, when I was about nine or ten, and just before his family also moved, though in his case out of state, I’d somehow managed to forget about his existence entirely.

It was seven years before memories of him came flooding back, and this was after most of my UFO and alien memories did — and before my past life memories and the subsequent “astral projections,” for the record — and the bulk of it involved the absolute hell that was his home life. After a good amount of time, during which I recalled other down-to-earth memories regarding my time with him at his house, I found that, through our friendship, he had not only shared his hell with me.

No, I’d apparently shared my hell with him as well.

At least so far as I’ve recalled, we only shared three sleepovers. One was at my house, two were at his. When he had stayed over at my house, we were both excited, and I even let him borrow my beloved pajamas with the little “choo-choo trains” on them. Given I’m rather imaginative by nature, at one point in the evening I began play-acting one of my favorite scenes from my favorite movie as a kid, the 1953 film, The War of the Worlds, which starred Gene Barry and Ann Robinson. And I did it without an announcement.

I crouched behind the open door of my sister’s dark bedroom, pointing at this ugly, yellow lamp we had for the longest time. It had a yellow, saucer-like base, from the center of which extended a yellow pole, out from which a ribbed, golden, adjustable neck sprouted, at the end of which was a light bulb without a lampshade. To me it looked like the iconic alien craft from the movie, and in character, this is what I expressed to Jimmy. The eldest of my two younger sisters, who was nearby, knew how my imagination operated, so she fell right into character along with me, reinforcing the play. Jimmy, however, freaked the fuck out. He was terrified, bursting into tears, and no matter what my parents or I did, we simply couldn’t calm him down, and his parents eventually had to pick him up that night and take him home, after which my mother scolded me.

Never got those pajamas back, either.

In retrospect, when I remembered this at sixteen, the memory struck me as odd. It actually kind of pissed me off. After all, I’d hidden behind doors and beneath beds in cowardice, terrified as his insanely religious and relentlessly abusive father beat the everliving fuck out of Jimmy and his three siblings with a belt right in front of me.

“Spare the rod,” the violent cunt liked to say, “and spare the child.”

Sure, halfway through the night I spent at his house, at least on one occasion, I’d grown terrified, presumably about his father, and climbed out of his bottom bunk, where I was sleeping beside him in the room all of the kids slept and was only able to fall asleep peacefully under the bed, but I had never demanded they call my parents to come pick me up and take me home, to my domestic-abuse-free household. I endured all that and he couldn’t handle a small dose of my imagination? Really? Brother-from-another-mother or not, I couldn’t help but think to myself: what a little bitch.

Then, at the end of all my other memories of him, came the memory regarding another night I had spent at his house, however. I’m sure this was the last. After that, I connected the dots. Maybe that would help explain his reaction, despite his horrific home life.

During that sleepover, we didn’t sleep in the singular bedroom the four kids typically slept in, but in what they called the toy room. This was, incidentally, the room in which I’d first met Jimmy. It was just Jimmy’s older brother, Junior, Jimmy and I, sleeping in sleeping bags on the floor of that dark room, with the door open, and the green nightlight illuminating the hallway. We had finally gotten to sleep when I suddenly found myself wide awake, in a heightened state of consciousness, enduring what I can only describe as the most eerie, penetrating silence imaginable. While I didn’t make the connection at the time, or even when I initially remembered it, this experience was somehow familiar to me and sent off alarm bells in my mind.

I remember looking to the left, toward the bodies of my best friend and his eldest brother, who so worshiped his father and so hated me at such a deep level. I reached out my hand and shook Jimmy, who was the one right beside me, begging him to wake up. He didn’t move. Wouldn’t budge, as a matter of fact. He wasn’t snoring, and I wasn’t even confident he was breathing, and my anxiety rose to insane levels. Was he dead? Were they both dead?

Then my attention was drawn beyond them, towards the far right corner of the room. A figure slowly stepped through the wall, and despite no obvious external cues, I knew he was male. My immediate thought was that he looked like an Eskimo, though this sense came strictly through his garb. He wore this black cape or robe underlined in white that covered his entire body and seemed, at first, to wrap around his huge, bulbous head – hence the Eskimo association. Eventually, I realized that this wasn’t a hood over his head after all, but a very high collar also underlined in white that exceeded the height of his head, at least from the angle I was viewing from the ground. In any case, his black, guitar-pick head was dominated by large, slanted, glowing red eyes, also lined in white. As he slowly stepped through the wall, dozens of other beings, shorter in stature, ran out of the same area of the wall he had walked through, though they seemed to run along the walls, or at least the wall to my left and his right. At least at this point, none of the others looked at me or paid me any mind, but this guy, who I somehow knew as The Leader, was staring directly at me. As a matter of fact, our eyes were almost immediately locked.

While I could never manage to recall exactly what we spoke about, I know that I was aggressive in my communications, as I feared they intended to take my friend and his brother this time, and that we engaged in this heated conversation strictly mind-to-mind. After that heated, vaguely recalled chat, there is time missing. Things happened, I feel certain, but they’ve never surfaced in memory.

The very next thing I recall is looking in the other direction, unable to move anything but my eyes, my perspective fixed on the open doorway to the toy room and the hallway beyond, eerily lit by that nightlight with the green-colored bulb. For a seeming eternity I desperately tried to call out their mother’s name, but however much insane effort I put into it, I was utterly unable to force my stupid, ineffectual mouth to produce so much as a low-volume grunt.

There was another childhood incident that came back to me in that flood of memory when I was sixteen that’s relevant here, too, and it occurred in the field behind the first house we ever lived in, which I explained in detail elsewhere, so I’ll spare you and won’t rehash it all here. In summary, I had gone into the field behind my house one day to play in the sandbox and watched as people slowly left. Once alone, I felt as if a shadow had fallen over me, and being observed like one might observe a bug they caught and trapped in a jar. While I don’t recall having looked up, I do recall the paradoxical experience of ascending while at once remaining in the sandbox while data was being “downloaded” into my brain. I was thrust into what I’ve since determined either constituted a sort of high-speed virtual reality program, insanely vivid, telepathically-induced dream scenario, or a higher-dimensional space. I rushed through everything from the wormseyeview to the birdseyeview, soaring across infinite fractals, higher dimensions, parallel universes, alternate realities, geometric patterns, and spirals, journeying from microcosm to macrocosm, above and below, painfully yet blissfully overwhelmed, graciously yet regretfully on overload. In the end, I found myself back in that sandbox, alone in the field behind my house, noting it was clearly later than it should be and knowing I’d be in deep fucking shit once I got home.

Most relevant here, however, was something I experienced and formerly articulated in an earlier post, namely UFOs: Sightings, Encounters, & Recurring Dreams, Part II, regarding the dawn of this experience.

“Immediately, the world around me suddenly took on a rather ominous edge, an almost sinister quality,” I wrote. “It was as if someone had pressed the cosmic pause button, leaving an intense still and a penetrating silence.”

While there were no others around me, no apparently immobilized bodies to poke and prod and beg to awaken, that same ominously still, suspended sort of atmosphere permeated the experience – and there is one more childhood memory that I relived in my flashbacks at sixteen that seemed to place emphasis on this element of the experience which I feel compelled to express and explore here.

My family took many vacations when we were young, and often we’d go camping in our pop-up trailer, with one relatively frequent location being a particular campground located in Geneva, Ohio. My parents always brought our bicycles along and we’d ride around the campgrounds, along the roads and the trails, and then return to the camper to have food, sit around the campfire, and go to bed. There are a host of memories of these (and other) vacations that stick out as strange, but I’ll focus here on a particularly bizarre incident.

One summer, as I was riding by bike along the roads, I encountered this short, younger kid with curly hair, who was also riding around on his bike. Without so much as a word, he rode up to me and slammed his fist into the top of my head with considerable aggression. I’m not sure which was more intense, either – the physical pain or the confusion inspired by the unprovoked violence. I asked him what his problem was, and he only returned with a threat to kick my ass as his cold eyes drilled into my own. I vaguley recall him telling me about his father and what a badass he was. Taken aback and rather pissed off, I told him to leave me alone as I peddaled away, and he followed behind me, threatening to find me later. Eventually he seemed to get bored, turn away, and once he was out of view I returned to my campsite. I don’t recall if I told my parents about it, though I assume I didn’t, but in any case, my naturally-paranoid mind obsessed over the potentiality that this psychopathic little asshole might find our campsite and make good on his threats.

At some point early the next morning, I awoke to the distinct sound of deliberate knocking on the camper door. Judging from the light bleeding through the windows, it was early morning. The sun seemed to just be rising. No one else in the camper made so much as a peep. My sisters were in the bunk above, the parents just across from us, yet no one budged an inch. Ambient sounds were suspiciously absent. Judging from my position within the camper, and the general vibe, the entire universe had been made still — again, as if someone had pressed the pause button on the cosmic VCR.

However alone I felt, I knew I wasn’t. Not exactly. Then I heard that distinct knocking again.

Looking now to the doorway to the camper, which was made out of a bubbled sort of glass, I saw the blurred, dark silhouette of someone standing right outside on the steps. This person was short, incredibly skinny and had a big head that appeared to be entirely bald. Desperately grasping for some semblance of an explanation, I quickly concluded, in total fucking terror, that it must be the kid I had seen the previous day, here to fulfill his promise.

Despite this suspicion, it didn’t really make sense to me. Still, the figure remained, and I next recall what I can only describe as inaudible whispers, as contradictory as that sounds, after which I blacked out.

To be clear, I can’t even speculate as to the sequence of these memories, or all those other memories that came along with them when I was sixteen, only that they all came back to me between 1994 and 1995, and that these three occurred before when my family moved in 1988, when I was nearly ten. All I can assure you of is that in all these experiences – and more, though in these three memories, it was most prominent – the general “atmosphere,” so to speak, was identical, and that fact has always bothered me, always made me curious.

Even early on, in the research that was inspired by my flashbacks, I was aware that there was some sort of acknowledgment of this phenomenon, to at least some degree among UFOlogists, specifically abduction researchers, who recognized – thanks to Budd Hopkins, who I’m fairly certain was the first to identify it – what was known as the “switched off” state. This was intended to designate the immobilized state of the abductee, or others in the vicinity of the abductee who might otherwise be able to confirm their abduction. It was taken, at least early on, as suggestng that they had been placed in a state of technologically-imposed suspended animation or perhaps telepathically-induced paralysis. To some degree, particularly given I was striving to grapple with far more seemingly insane notions at the time, this seemed at least a rational take on, for instance, the apparent lack of alertness to the deliberate knocking on the camper during the Geneva experience or the disturbing lack of reponse of Jimmy during the incredibly fucked up toyroom incident. Once things calmed down, years passed, and I had time to reflect and subject those childhood experiences – and many subsequent experiences, I should add – to scrutiny and detailed analysis, however, it didn’t escape me that the “switched off” state didn’t quite cover my experiences, nor the others that I’d read by that time.

To the contrary, while I considered British paranormal researcher and UFOlogist Jenny Randles the kind of fringe researcher that I best not take seriously if I truly wished to come to a better understanding of what was happening to me and others, and furthermore what the UFO phenomena meant as a whole, I eventually found myself unable to ignore the fact that my aforementioned experiences were best described by what she referred to as the “Oz Factor.” As I’ve been able to discern thus far, she first coined this term in her 1983 book UFO Reality, then elaborated upon it in later books and articles. While I suspect I may have read a book of hers back during high school, I have not done so since, so all that I’ve managed to access so far regarding her has been through second-hand sources, though such sources have provided alleged quotations of her works, and a single article I found on the net which proved to be quite illuminating.

In this article, “Essay on the Oz Factor and the Strange Sensations of Altered Reality Reported by UFO Witnesses,” she describes having noticed certain themes when she began her UFO investigations, particularly with respect to close encounters. The first mentioned was what she referred to as a

“… zone of influence surrounding these close encounters. If you were inside of it, then you experienced the episode in all its glory and as a total reality. If you were outside of it, then the UFO sighting might as well have not happened. Even if the witness said that little aliens got out, formed a brass band, and gave a full concert before taking off again, nobody outside the zone of influence seemed to be capable of knowing a thing.”

This reminded me of a case in Budd Hopkins and Carol Rainey’s book, Sight Unseen, where both explore the experiences of those whom Hopkins calls Sam and Jenny Washburn and their two sons, John and Andy – specifically the family’s apparent 1978 abduction from a playground in Wynnum, a residential area in Greater Brisbane. Of particular interest here is the fact that the four of them were allegedly “switched off” and abducted while others were present in the playground, yet no one seemed to have noticed this occurring. Rainey, focusing on the aspect of apparent invisibility here, cites cases in which energy or light was projected from beneath a hovering UFO onto the area below, either in a beam, a cone, or a curtain, and goes on to posit (p 88) that in the Washburn case:

“… the descending UFO was radiating – outward around itself and downward – an ionized plasma of excited molecules in the infrared or near-infrared range. As we know, that is in the spectrum just outside the human visual range. Everything on the ground enveloped in this ‘umbrella’ of infrared light would have been affected. It would have been as if the craft hovering overhead had dropped an enormous drape over the scene below. Any person or object within that radiated infrared cloak would have to be unseen by other people – even those less than twenty feet away. The Washburns ‘ otherworldly drama – mother and children levitating up, father paralyzed below in a photographer’s pose – would have gone unnoticed by anyone else on the playground.”

This could perhaps help explain Randles’ “zone of influence,” and the aforementioned notion of technological or telepathically-induced suspended animation could perhaps explain their “switched off” state, true, but it would not explain other strange elements of close encounters that I’ve not only experienced myself, but have heard about elsewhere, and which Randles, in her article, went on to explain.

Later she discovered other “symptoms,” as she put it, which were again far more typical in close encounters than mere sightings. While all were interesting and relevant to understanding the phenomenon as a whole, they don’t all seem to have relevance to the matter at hand, though I feel confident that two such “symptoms” she mentioned most certainly do. For one thing, she mentioned that she “would be told that during the experience, time seemed to disappear and lose all meaning. It was as if the encounter were happening in a timeless, magical void.” For another, she took note of “claims that at the onset of the episode all ambient sounds faded away – bird song, the wind in the trees, distant train noises, et cetera. All of these clues pointed towards an isolation factor at work, as if the witness were being singled out and put into a cocoon whereby he or she could experience the UFO, whereas anyone outside of it could not.”

While I’ve often considered it, I dismissed it as too much of a leap. This notion I refer to is something like what Rainy described, but that rather than the aliens hovering their craft above an area and beaming down an umbrella or curtain that merely rendered both their craft and a selected geographical locale or “zone of influence” invisible, they were in effect somehow “freezing time” within that geographical location. After all, this would explain not only the so-called “switched off” state but the sudden absence of ambient sounds, the sense of isolation, as well as the apparent invisibility explained by Randles, Hopkins, Jacobs, and other researchers and witnesses.

I always considered it too much of a leap because it required accepting not only that the craft could generate energy that could be focused to freeze time within a selected geographical area, much as could have been the case in the aforementioned Washburn case – weird, but apparently within the limits my mind could entertain – but also that selected objects and individuals in that area could be rendered somehow immune from these effects, which somehow pushed things more than a bit too far and exceeded my boggle threshold.

Then, in my leisure time, as I’m watching a sci-fi show that somewhat relates to my intellectual interests but I simultaneously regard as a lighthearted avenue of liberation from those intellectual interests, I come across a scene in Resident Alien, Season 2, Episode 13, in which Harry suddenly experiences a “time-freeze” and encounters a Gray alien bearing the voice of fucking Sulu from the original Star Trek. I just barely saved myself from shitting my pants, and it had nothing to do with Sulu. Despite this time-freeze, Harry and the Gray Sulu alien could move about freely.

I thought to myself, “What the fuck – others have contemplated this?”

As I continued watching the show, this time-freezing ability of the Grays cropped up again and again, as well as other elements that fueled my suspicion that they had someone doing research on the general subject of UFOs and aliens, and if so, whoever he was, he was doing a damn good job. In a behind the scenes video I came across on YouTube, the guy was even called out as the one who researched this shit, and he should be commended.

In any case, the time-freeze scenes brought me back to that old suspicion, to those former flashbacks, and one day, on my drive home from work, my mind leaned heavily on the subject, which I couldn’t help but feel demanded a deeper look.

And so I looked deeper.

Reddit Anecdotes of Localized Time-Freezes.

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut.

Once I finally decided to put my mind to it on March 22, 2023 and began some internet searching, it was amazing how many examples I came across in which time, in localized areas of varying sizes, seemed to have stopped. Most of these experiences I came across on Reddit, I should also mention, most specifically in the subreddit Glitch_in_the_Matrix. In the course of reading these accounts as well as the comments, which often provided similar accounts from others, I also came across some proposed prosaic explanations that I subsequently explored, and some of them made sense with respect to a small number of cases.

There was a case or two where a witness would see a singular bird seemingly frozen, hovering in mid-air, for instance, but this, it turned out, could be sufficiently explained in a perfectly mundane way. Hummingbirds can hover, after all, and are in fact the only kind of birds that can sustain such hovering – though honestly, this wouldn’t fit the descriptions in the accounts I’ve read. Other birds can seemingly hover, at least for short periods, however, utilizing what is known as intermittent flight. Here such birds fly in the conventional flapping style for a time and then glide on the headwind, seemingly hovering, as it saves energy. This could clearly explain the cases I’ve read.

In other cases, lone individual humans were seen to be frozen, however, either by a single witness or multiple ones, but it turns out that this can also be explained by well-understood phenomena – in this case not atmospheric, however, but neurological. As one response to a post I came across early on pointed out, there is a type of generalized seizure often referred to as petit mal seizures, though more often and accurately described as “absence seizures,” which typically last no longer than 30 seconds. Typically they occur in children between 4 and 12 years of age, and rarely over 20, and can be triggered by hyperventilating or strobing lights. You might observe the kid moving or talking when they abruptly stop, as if they were put on pause, only to continue what they were doing or saying shortly thereafter without any awareness of their “missing time.”

Absence seizures may also occur in conjunction with other types of seizures, and if these absence seizures occur more than once, this may suggest that one has epilepsy – a condition that usually begins between the ages of 5 and 20, but one can apparently develop this at any age. Among the potential causes, mini-strokes are mentioned, and this struck home with me, as it immediately reminded me of what my parents once told me they observed in my maternal grandfather just before he died in the mid-1980s. He would be in the middle of saying something and it would be as if he were suddenly put on “pause,” and a short while later he would resume speaking and moving as if there had been no time loss at all. They said he was later diagnosed as having had a series of mini-strokes.

Illuminating as this all is, the fact of the matter is that absence seizures become rather ridiculous as an explanation when the observed individual is frozen in such a manner that one would expect them to fall over due to the force of gravity, as in the case of being amid running – and yet such anecdotes exist, and by seemingly sincere witnesses. Other factors, such as the length of the freeze, might also make such an explanation absurd. One example, provided by a Reddit user by the name of Princessa22 in a comment, provides one suitable example, and in addition my paranoid mind suggests it may have a potential association with the broader topic at hand here:

“I was driving home one night after work (it was winter so it was already dark around 7PM). I live in a smallish suburban neighborhood, nothing out of the ordinary, mostly families. I don’t know all of my neighbors, but I know several of them and most I at least recognize from seeing them walk dogs, work in the yard, etc. Anyway, as I pulled onto my street, I look to the right a few houses down, and I noticed a streetlight blink. And underneath the streetlight is this woman (who I recognized as one of my neighbors, but have never spoken to her) completely frozen looking up towards the sky with this horrific look on her face. She looked mid-stride, like she was running.”

Unfortunately, there are few other details, as the user has subsequently deleted her comment. In any case, even accepting that one can sufficiently explain instances such as hers as a neurological or psychological issue with the observed, it would certainly be far more challenging to explain those instances when a witness reports more than one individual seemingly caught in a state of suspended animation. Take, for instance, an experience submitted by Couch-for-Sale:

“This was about a month ago and I keep thinking back on it, I hope I can find some kind of explanation for this as I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since. I (21 f) go for runs with my dog most nights when I get home from work. I’ve been at my parents house since March because campus housing kicked us out due to the virus. Its a safe and chill area, so I’ve never had anything weird or concerning happen when we run at night.

Until like a month ago in early June, we went for a run at 11:00pm. After a while we both started back at a walking pace to get a cool down, and I noticed a man walking a German Shepard dog parallel to us on the opposite side of the street.

After a moment of us walking parallel to [each other] I looked again and they had both stopped. I first thought okay, the dog probably stopped to pee. I kept walking, and my dog stopped to smell something so I looked back at them again. I don’t know how else to describe it other than they were frozen. Both the dog and the man were in the middle of taking a step, but they were completely still. As if the universe just hit pause as they were walking.

It was late at night but it was all pretty well lit with the street lights, I’m very certain that this wasn’t the darkness playing tricks on my eyes. It was well lit enough for me to easily see that the guy was wearing a blue Nike brand hoodie, jeans, and sunglasses (all weird attire for a gross 90 degree night in South Texas) and that the dog had a colorful bedazzled leash. The decently strong breeze didn’t move the [guy’s] baggy hoodie or the [dog’s] thick fur. I couldn’t see his eyes because he was wearing sunglasses (at night?) But the dogs eyes were forward and weren’t blinking. It was an extremely unsettling stillness that I’ve never seen before, the closest thing I can compare it to is character animation failing in a video game so it just ends up stuck in place. I had stood there for at least 2-3 minutes because I was able to start and finish a song in my Playlist I had going when I first paused to look back at them. Neither of them budged an inch. Eventually I was too afraid to stay and see what happens, so we started walking again. I had such an unsettled and anxious feeling and I kept looking back over my shoulder to see them still firmly in place. They didn’t move for as long as I was able to see them when I looked back. I have never experienced something like this before or since then.”

It’s safe to say that an aneurysm, mini-stroke, or stress response wouldn’t fit the bill in this case, and the notion that both the dude and his pooch could have been suffering from “absence seizures” simultaneously seems statistically unlikely, and not just due to the duration – though to be sure I’m no psychologist, neurologist, or even a statistician for that matter. Another important detail, which is an element we will explore more in-depth shortly, is that the wind didn’t move the guy’s hoodie or the hair of the dog. So all things considered, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here when I declare that, well, this anecdote was a fucking weird one.

Other proposed prosaic explanations for some experiences focus not the observed, however, but the observer – more specifically, the observer’s time perception. When a single individual witnesses a “time-freeze,” in other words, it could potentially be explained as a stress reaction related to the experience one might have in a car accident, when time seems to slow down. In the summer following my senior year, when I was attending summer school, I had a car accident and had this experience myself, and to be sure, it was interesting. In an evolutionary context, it also makes perfect fucking sense. After all, when you’re in a potentially life-threatening situation the triggered retardation of your time perception relative to your cognition would provide you more experiential time to take in more of the vital data provided to you by your senses so as to formulate more informed decisions on your next course of action, potentially saving your life. Granted, this is only the subjective experience of time slowing down, but it’s not difficult to extrapolate from this that the more extreme case of time perception putting itself on pause might provide additional benefits, at least supposing that it paused on a vital moment. Such an experience may not necessarily have such rationale behind it, however, or be triggered due to perceived near-death stress. It turns out that time slowing down, perhaps even being suspended in one’s perception, can also be the byproduct of an aneurysm.

However rare, these things have been known to happen.

What doesn’t happen, however, is two or more people having the same “time freeze” experience at the same time, even in an apparently non-stressful situation, at least unless you’re willing to accept a simultaneous aneurysm or stroke in both individuals which also produced the same rare, neurological effects with respect to their time perceptions. In other words, one would struggle to explain what a user by the name of Caydelay reported in conventional terms. As Caydelay explained:

“… this occurred to myself and a friend during August of this year. I remember we were driving down a very familiar stretch of road while coming back from a fishing trip. I just did a google maps search and the stretch of road is 633.3 ft exactly but anyways suddenly time seemed to freeze for us both and the drive lasted for what seemed like hours. I remember everything felt weird, calm and sort of warm. After the little glitch my friend and I both looked at each other and said “Did you feel that?” I have no idea how to explain it but it was weird as all hell.”

The aforementioned conventional explanations would also seem to suggest that while an individual in the midst of such an experience, regardless of their root cause, would experience their thoughts flowing at normal speed relative to their frozen sense perceptions, their bodies would nonetheless be bound to to the speed of their extremely retarded time perception. In other words, their bodies, too, would be frozen. Nearly all the cases I’ve come across report their experiences as having been otherwise, however, as we will explore below.

For the moment it should be pointed out that for most of the cases I’ve come across, which come from witnesses to the time-freeze and not participants in them, report a geographical area of suspended temporal progression whose population far exceeds that of an individual were seen to be seemingly frozen in the midst of running while staring in terror at the sky, or even a man and his dog suspended while on a casual walk. Instead, witnesses typically observe massive groups of people within a localized area that are simultaneously “frozen,” while the rest of the world seems to go on as usual.

There was, to provide an example, the tale shared by Freakshow-Wendy:

“This happened on a fourth grade field trip. Our class was passing by a museum with a campus-like entrance (and by that I mean everyone was sitting down, writing something, talking, it just looked like a college environment). We all walked on the sidewalk in pairs of two. I didn’t really look at the museum because I was busy talking with a friend, but when I did turn around to look, a strange scene greeted me.

Everyone was just completely still. They were like statues. No one was moving, some were looking at us, some were looking at each other and doing their own thing, but everyone looked frozen in time. Everything else moved but the people in front of the museum. I distinctly remember three guys sitting on the stairs: one of them looked like he was mid-conversation, the other one looked straight at us and the third had his head back like he was laughing, but he didn’t make any movements or noise.”

She nudged her friend and tried to bring it to her attention, but by the time they both looked, they were all the people were moving again. A similar experience was shared by Rosestrella:

“I was in the car with my dad this morning (he was driving) and we were traveling on a highway (which I won’t say for safety reasons). My eyes were wandering as we were talking and I looked up and ahead at a pedestrian bridge that stretches across the highway.

The bridge is some kind of metal, with a circular metal barrier/roof. There were a few people walking across, maybe 4 or 5, one person walking their bike, and a small girl (?) stretching her hand up onto the side of the barrier. I saw the people moving across the bridge (excepting the little girl) and then suddenly they all stopped at the exact same moment?? After we passed the bridge I craned my neck around to look at it – maybe I had imagined it – but every single figure was still.”

Just as the friend hadn’t seen the time-freeze in the first example, the father didn’t notice it in this one, but he did notice his daughter’s strange reaction. In these cases, I realize, only a single individual witnessed the “time freeze” zone, which still might lead people to wonder if this was somehow a faulty perception with respect to the singular witness rather than a truly objective phenomenon, so I now submit to you cases that involve more than one witness observing the time-freeze.

In another post, a deleted user provided an experience he had with the mother of his child as they were at the register in a Target located in Tampa, Florida. As they were checking out, as he explained, “the cashier started to seem off and things felt weird”. All of a sudden, “everything froze”, he said, “everyone in sight” and “even the air you could feel it” though he and his baby-mama were still able to move. Another moment passed and everything suddenly resumed as usual, but a customer from another register exclaimed, “What was that? Why did everyone freeze?” No one answered him, not even the deleted user, who confessed that while he “didn’t see the other customer move” it nonetheless “appeared that the three of us were the only ones that noticed it.”

They finished checking out and it wasn’t until they were exiting the building that both he and the mother of his child turned towards one another, confirmed that they had both experienced the same thing, and both expressed utter confusion regarding what had just happened. He added that they “still talk about it from time to time two years later.”

There was another interesting anecdote provided by an Aussie user known as Mcginlm72 that has relevance here. During the time this occurred, as she explained, summer was bleeding in and with it the hot weather. Consequently, the deafening calls of the cicadas during the daylight hours deafened the ears. It was midday as she was in her car with her two kids, aged 10 and 12, as she explained, and:

“… we were driving along a busyish road there was two lanes going in each direction. We pulled up to the traffic lights at a crossroads junction I was a bit back from the lights as it was busy and I could see other cars on each side of the junction.

Suddenly it went completely quiet and I mean deadly quiet there was no car engine noises, no birds, no cicadas, no wind blowing through the trees nothing!! I looked at the cars in front at either side of the junction and none of them were moving! Usually if one set of lights is red another is green but despite traffic being at all sets of lights no one was moving!!! I looked at my kids they seemed to have noticed it too as they looked confused but funnily none of us spoke!!

Then maybe a minute or more later everything started again cars, moved you could hear their engines and the cicadas started as well. My 12 year old daughter who was sitting in the passenger seat beside finally broke the silence in the car by saying “Well, that was weird!” When I looked at her and nodded she said it was like the world was paused and muted!!! I agreed we talked about it the whole way home and again this morning while driving them to school my daughter commented on how she didn’t understand what had happened. I am at a loss for any explanation. I cannot stress how quiet it was it was complete and utter silence and on a side note I have tinnitus 24/7 (damage from chemo) and I noticed that it was also gone during this event.

Has anyone else had anything like this ever happen to them or possible explanation to what it was?! if my kids hadn’t of been there with me and commented on it first I would have thought it was just me and my ears playing up but they both “heard” it too and yes they have no hearing problems.”

These cases don’t seem to merely constitute an individual in a “switched off” state or collective paralysis involving countless people, either, as strange as that would be, but are in fact far stranger. There are many cases which emphasize that it’s not merely people and animals that are frozen, but time itself.

There was an account provided by Mace6789, who said he was living on the second story of a two-flat at 107 Clinton in Joliet, Illinois at the time of the incident, which had occured some twenty years previously. “Right across the street from the building was a minor league baseball park,” he explained in the comments, which was known as “the Joliet Slammers baseball stadium” that had a white flagpole visible from his building. As he wrote in his original post:

“I smoked cigarettes, but the landlord asked that I not smoke inside, which was fine. So, I would go out onto the fire escape when I smoked.

It was a bright summer day – sunshine, breezy, nice weather. I went outside for a smoke. I finished up, but kind of just stood there, enjoying being outside, taking in the sights & sounds of living in a busy city. I happened to be looking at an American flag [on the aforementioned flagpole] flapping in the breeze, when everything just stopped. The flag was frozen stiff, all sound dropped out – it was like somebody hit the pause button. It seemed to last maybe 2-3 seconds, but I couldn’t really tell. Then, every[thing] snapped back in motion, sound immediately returned. I don’t know if I was frozen as well, by the time I realized something was off, everything started going again. Never had anything like that happen before or since.”

While he accepts that he, too, maybe have been frozen, not unlike the experience reported by Caydelay, another experience placing emphasis on the fact that time had seemingly frozen was posted by a deleted user:

“I was the passenger in a car, travelling home from a day out shopping in our nearest city. It was evening, probably 6-630pm in winter, so it was dark. We were stopped at road-works on a bridge with the lights of cars and of the road-works reflected off the sea below the bridge. But the sea wasn’t moving. I could see the texture of waves but they were completely still like the water was frozen in place. I’ve never seen anything like it! Weird doesn’t begin to describe it.”

In the comments he added that so far as he could tell, “the water was the only thing that was affected. The music on the radio and my wife chatting was exactly the same.”

While most cases that I’ve come across so far seem to involve one or more witnesses perceiving what seems to be a fixed, geographical zone in which time is temporarily suspended – which is admittedly weird, but something one can eventually wrap one’s mind around as a possibility – other cases involve witness who are actually in the midst of these “time-freeze” zones who are, for whatever reason, not similarly frozen. Instead, they retain full autonomy – even, apparently, the car they are driving. These are the cases, then, that become indistinguishable from the Oz Factor. Funkpag posted the following

“This happened a little over 2 years ago and I still think about it multiple times a week.

I was on my way to my shitty minimum wage job, driving down a shortcut that goes through a neighborhood. Regardless of the time of day the streets are always active (meth will make you antsy like that), especially in the summer where this took place.

I was about halfway down the road to the stoplight and to the left of me, a car has its blinker on to make a turn, there was a lady sitting on her porch steps smoking to my right and a person walking against traffic on the other side of the street.

I was trundling down the pothole filled road, when everything just…stopped. Porch lady was frozen with the cig to her lips way longer than is typical, street man stopped mid stride and the car’s blinker STAYED ON. That’s what really made me realize some fuckery was happening.

But…my car was still moving, and I could still move my body? Somehow I ended up the sole person on that street not frozen. People here talk often about a feeling of “wrongness” that’s very hard to describe and oh boy. I sure as hell know what y’all mean now. For me it had liminal space vibes but heavier, if that makes sense. It was also disturbingly quiet, sounds were kinda muffled like when you put a pillow over your head.

I drive maybe a couple yards to the bend in the street, and then everything is back to normal, like somebody flipped a switch. People moving, the turn signal blinking, no weird auditory distortion, just normal, everyday reality.”

Other such experiences are more enduring and the individual involved can also perceive time flowing normally outside of the time-freeze zone. Zjbarden actually posted about having such an experience right after he’d had it:

“I’ve got exams coming up and have had my own share of cabin fever, but I know for a fact that for around half an hour, my room was frozen in time. My alarm clock and computer clock was stuck at 1:16 PM, my water bottle would not produce any ripples when I tapped it; I also have one of those sand-timers and the sand in it stopped flowing (as in, there was still more left to flow into the bottom part); the light on my netbook quit blinking and just stayed there, my watch (not digital) stopped moving, and my chair would not move. I tried to at least talk to myself (thinking I was completely immune to this time freeze), but could not, and could only move around in the space my chair permitted me (which blocked me into my desk) and could only talk to myself in my head. Needless to say, I sat there, freaked out, just a bit.”

In the comments, Zjbarden added that during the experience he “could hear other people and look out my window and see people outside moving”, which officially makes this anecdote, more than any I’ve read so far, strongly suggest a geogrpahical zone with clear boundaries in which time is apparently suspended despite the fact that selected individuals (or objects) can nonetheless move freely, suggesting that time still passes normally for them. Most astounding is that this lasted so long that Zjbarden was able to note multiple suggestions of the temporal suspension in the roughly half an hour in which is was sustained: there were no ripples on the surface of the water in a cup when he tapped it with his finger, an analog clock that stopped ticking, the sand in an hourglass he had stopped flowing, and he couldn’t even move his chair, which is most curious. I’m also curious about how he stated “the light on my netbook quit blinking and just stayed there” – did the poster mean to imply that the power was knocked out, which would be at least implied if it stopped in the unlit position, or that it was locked in the lit state during the course of the experience?

While all the above anecdotes provide sound reason to suspect that the temporal flow within a specific geographical area can be temporarily suspended, they fail to provide the slightest suggestion of a potential source of the anomaly in question – though, as unexpected and as disturbing as they were, upon examination, some tales I came across did indeed seem to suggest such a source.

In some cases, the witness not only observes a time-freeze zone but also sees another individual clearly unaffected by it, both in a temporal an emotional sense. In the same old obvious Subreddit, for instance, a user by the name of Sl3ann3 posted a creeply fucking experience that has relevance here. A few years prior, she had been walking with her family through Universal CityWalk in Orlando, Florida, when she had been looking for a place to eat, so decided to look through Emeril’s restaurant. “I noticed it seemed a bit odd, so I went up the stairs to get a better look,” she explained. “Everyone in the store was frozen.” She subsequently told her boyfriend:

“… to come look at how realistic the fake restaurant was inside. He didn’t care but our son walked up and was also amazed. And at this point I noticed someone staring at us from the side (outside of the restaurant ). He looked creepy and gave off an odd vibe. One of those ‘you can feel them staring at you’ moments. He literally gave me the creepiest smile and then winked. It was awkward so I looked away.”

In the comments, she added details regarding the guy she saw. “The guy really seemed so out of place,” she wrote. “Everyone there is usually dressed for walking around and he was in a suit and hat. It was a hot summer day. I really felt like he did it. If it wasn’t him He had to have seen what I saw from where he was standing. And he didn’t seem freaked out. I just wonder why he would show me that.”

In the original post, she went on to say that it was then that she “realized that everyone in the restaurant was moving. The family I had been staring at for five minutes was now enjoying their meal. I watched them for another minute trying to figure out if they were very realistic robots until the dad flared over at me and made me feel like a weirdo. In that moment I knew that they were real . When I tried to explain to my bf he didn’t believe me.”

In the comments, she added that her son confirmed what she said about the guy to his dad and her boyfriend, yet confessed “he was also 7 or 8 at the time” and as a consequence she assumes “he would’ve agreed with anything I said. So I’m not sure if he really saw what I saw or if he just agreed with me to sound like we were cool and had both witnessed something crazy.” She also opened the original post by stating that the experience “really bothered me after it happened” and that she “obsessed over it for months and questioned everything to the point of having my first anxiety attacks.” She also added that she had “searched multiple times since then to see if there was some massive joke being played that day” but was unable to find any evidence.

“I certainly feel like the creepy man had somehow controlled the situation and was enjoying watching me watch them,” she said. “I keep telling myself that it was some magic hidden camera show or something” but she has, thus far, been unable to find any such evidence.

While I am well aware that her experience wouldn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, I certainly don’t believe she is lying, and especially in light of the other accounts we’ve explored. It also doesn’t escape my attention that the man she described, who could also perceive this apparent time-freeze zone but was clearly not only not shocked by it but was amused by the act that she saw it, and perhaps even her reaction, resonates quite closely to the more human-appearing beings described in abduction accounts and dressed in the garb typically described by UFO witnesses when encountering, subsequent to their encounters, the so-called “Men in Black.” Even the fact that his manner of dress seemed illogical given the “hot summer day” fits disturbingly nicely.

To add to the disturbing nature of this account, specifically the implication that a human or human-appearing entity either generated or was somehow involved in an apparent time freeze is another account, yet again posted in the aforementioned Subreddit, by a user going by the name of Fam5times. While this account is second hand, I nonetheless feel it is important to share:

“So this is a true experience that happened to my brother. A little background on him, he is a married man with 4 young girls and you average close knit family. He is a quite and honest person who keeps to his job and family.

This happened to him several years back. It was a Sunday morning and He was in church with his family. The time of year was December, within a week or so of Christmas. He was sitting thru the service just like any other Sunday when the experience happened. He was listening to the pastor read scriptures from the Bible when everything around him began to slow down. He describes the pastor voice, the movement of people, the ambient noise, everything starts to slow down until everything stops. He said everything had froze and he felt like he was in church with all manikins. He turns briefly to his family and they just look frozen in time. All this thought is processed in a second. He then says he turns to the pastor who was speaking and he is at the podium frozen just standing there. At this moment he sees a person walk out from the right side of the front stage. The person is behind the pastor and just slowly walking across from right to left. The person gets about halfway across the stage, when he turns his head and locks eyes with him. He never stopped just turned his head while in stride to make eye contact with my brother for a split second and turns his head back straight and continues to walk to left side until behind the curtain and out of sight. At this moment when the person walks out of sight, everything slowly comes back into reality. He turns to his wife and says did you see that man? She obviously is confused and he doesn’t have a clue what just happened! He said time literally stopped and everyone and everything froze in position while he was left to fully experience whatever just occurred.

Now about the person he seen. This is going to sound absolutely crazy and for some probably discredit this as bullshit. But the person that walked across the back the back of front stage was dressed just like Santa Claus. He tells me he had the beard as well as the red suit on??!! Idk if this is coincidence because it was nearly Christmas Day? He tells his wife about what happened and of course she laughs and he then decides this is something to keep to himself.

Does anyone, anywhere have even the tiniest clue of wtf happened and why on earth he would experience this all alone and no one else in the building? This is a 100% true account that happened to him believe it or not doesn’t matter. I am just sharing to see if anyone has ever had something similar happen to them?”

The Current Working Hypothesis.

“We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.”
— Paulo Coelho.

If the bulk of Redditors I’ve quoted above are to believed, it seems to be case that time can be stopped, paused, suspended, or frozen within a selected geographical area, a designated “time-freeze zone,” but despite this, for whatever reason, particular people can nonetheless move about normally within the zone. They can even see time flowing ordinarily outside it’s perimeter. Sometimes witnesses can even see another individual within the perimeter of this zone moving about freely, which naturally suggests to the witnesses that they are somehow involved in the time-freeze, perhaps even triggered it.

UFOs or beings that clearly constituted alien beings, however? None have been suggested in any of the Reddit posts I’ve come across, at least not as of yet.

Personally, at least at this point, I find it incredibly difficult to believe that all or even most of the above anecdotes were triggered by the aforementioned technology of the apparent ETI, specifically because absolute zero anecdotal evidence has been provided for it. Consequently, this would mean that there are either instances in which such time-freezes happen “spontaneously,” which so to say due to natural variables of which we are currently unaware in the context of modern science, or that they are somehow made to happen by individuals among the human population who have such psi abilities and either involuntarily demonstrate that ability or exploit that ability at will.

And at least with respect to the two anecdotes of this type that I’ve provided – the traditional Man in Black and, of all things, fucking Santa Claus – it would appear I thus far only have suggestions of individuals who can exploit it, or are in service of those who can, which is fucking disturbing, to say the least.

To ask whether such potential individuals are fully human or are alien, or are working on behalf of the aliens, and/or or at least in some part alien, would be remarkably weird in any other context for certain, but in the context of this particular writing project, perhaps considerably less so. After all, I myself have in the course of my real-time experiences, flashbacks, memories, or “dreams” encountered individuals that appeared to be human yet demonstrated psi abilities that, either in my own experiences or in the reports I’ve read from others, are otherwise associated with what are typically regarded as alien entities. Granted, in most such experiences of mine, regardless of the aforementioned category they fall into, they only demonstrated telepathy in some form and/or were seen in conjunction with the other aliens.

This is not always the case, however.

I had a disturbing, frustrating, and strangely vivid experience – call it a “dream” if you like; for all I know, that may very well be the case – that may have relevance here. It perhaps occurred in the late aughts or early 2010s; in any case, when I was living alone in my one and only efficiency apartment. I was standing before two mostly human-appearing individuals, save for perhaps their eyes, mind, and abilities, both of whom I sense I was quite familiar with. I associated them with two experiences, one a memory or “dream” I had as a teen in the midst of my flashbacks in which they – one blond-haired, the other black or brown-haired – guided a team of us down a dark hall, lit only by a blue glow emitting from one of it’s walls, which was lined with what reminded me of fish tanks, only my sense was that these tanks held fetuses of some type. Later, I felt they were the individuals present in the “astral projection” experience I referenced in a former post, Aliens, Auras, & the Indigo Children

“I did have an odd experience, perhaps merely a dream, on October 1st of 2009 that shed some light on the subject. I suddenly found myself in some rendition of the basement of my neighbor’s house across the street when I was young, just as I had in my initial “astral projection” in May of 1995, sitting on a couch in a rather drowsy state of consciousness. Two other individuals who I sensed to be male were standing nearby, though out of my line of sight, and they spoke to both me and with one another mind-to-mind. The conversation involved the physical body being nothing more than a sort of “post body” that served as a thin slice off the top of a body composed of a more subtle form of energy or matter. Furthermore, this body itself was just a part of a greater system of subtler bodies in which conscious beings coexist.”

In any case, in this far later encounter I was clearly angry out of my mind, trying with all my effort to swing fists at this duo, but my movements were all in slow-motion, and the two fuck-heads seemed incredibly amused at my efforts, which only fueled my rage, and so my efforts, all the more.

If humans might have, among it’s potential psi arsenal, this time-freezing ability, or if natural circumstances can, given the right conditions, produce it – and either one or the other, and more likely both, would appear to be the case, given the anecdotes I’ve collected – wouldn’t it be reasonable to assume that an advanced ETI might have also experienced such things themselves? And given they are more advanced than us, which seems certain if the intelligence behind the UFO phenomenon indeed constitute ETI, would it also not make sense that they may have incorporated this understanding into their science and subsequently exploited it in their technology, and might be utilizing this time-freezing tech in the context of the abduction phenomenon?

Could they be projecting a beam, umbrella, or curtain of energy from their craft that renders the temporal status of a selected geographical area effectively time-frozen while simultaneously allowing particular objects or individuals within that “zone of influence” with the typical freedom of autonomy they would otherwise experience until they deemed such liberty antagonistic to their own, personal objectives?

Could this help explain the disturbing sense of still, the ominous silence I have often heard, or rather failed to hear, prior to their apprehension? Could this explain the apparent lifelessness of those in the immediate area, who may have otherwise constituted witnesses? Could it explain my own sense of paralysis, either prior or subsequent to an encounter with them, that left me reeling with confusion, fear, and rage, utterly incapable of expressing a single thing until morning dawned and I could conveniently – nay, fucking desperately – slip it into the comfortable category of a dream?

I can’t say for sure. Sadly, I can never say for sure. Even so, I certainly think it could be the case.

And it certainly deserves investigation.

Mercury RX in the House of Binah.

The most frustrating thing about having unusual experiences, at least from the standpoint of someone who desires to capture these experiences in amber through the mediums of visual art and writing and seeks to understand these experiences as best as he is capable, is the lack of suitable terminology and useful symbols.

Some shit in the context of these experiences — telepathic experiences, astral projections — is a challenge to describe, and often its the case that if you don’t capture these things immediately after they occur, they’re lost, adrift in memory, at least until you have that specific experience again… where you run up against the same damn problem.

So there you find yourself, banging your spinning head against the wall again.

We need more words. Better words. We need to anchor experience to symbol in order to gain objectivity.

Articulating all this effectively is a necessary step towards understanding, and I’m eternally frustrated by my inability to do so.

UFOs: Sightings, Encounters, & Recurring Dreams (Part II).

II. Personal UFO Sightings and Encounters.

It was towards the end of 1994 when strange memories began spontaneously floating to the surface of my mind. Initially, they dealt with seeming alien encounters as well as UFO sightings and close encounters throughout my childhood. Given my curiosity regarding my recurring UFO dreams, I will focus here exclusively on my UFO-related flashbacks and real-time observations.

Though I do not distinctly recall seeing a UFO in the following memory, the presence of one, I feel, was strongly implied, especially given my other, far more blatant memories of such sightings and encounters. This occurred when I was young, and it was certainly before 1988, when I was ten, as we were still living in our first house, which was in a suburban area. Behind our local police department there was a large field that was also accessible by climbing over the chain link fence at the very end of our backyard. Sometimes we would climb the fence to play over there, though my mother preferred that we walk or bike the half a block around. There was a baseball diamond way in the back, a football field that began almost directly across from our backyard and a sandbox right by the tennis court, which was situated between the football field and the parking lot for the police station.

It was in that sandbox where I found myself one late afternoon, playing and nervously watching as the occupied tennis court was slowly but surely deserted until I was the sole inhabitant of the field. Once alone, a gigantic shadow fell over me, like something large and circular had positioned itself above me in the sky, though I never recall looking up. Immediately, the world around me suddenly took on a rather ominous edge, an almost sinister quality. It was as if someone had pressed the cosmic pause button, leaving an intense still and a penetrating silence. Creeping up on me was that distinct sense of being watched, too, like the way in which one might watch a bug in a jar or some tiny creature under a microscope, but there was something more predatory here as well, as if I was a field mouse feeling the doom inspired by a hawk circling above me, as if it were some sentient stormcloud above me and I could sense the static energy in the air, the foreboding feeling of an impending lightning strike.

And in a way, what ultimately happened left me feeling as though I had been struck by lightning.

What followed was incredibly confusing, at least in my memory. In an apparent flash, it felt as though data was being downloaded into my brain from above, yet at the same time I was literally, physically ascending. For all I know, both may have been the case. All I recall for certain is that my surroundings suddenly disappeared and I was thrust into another “space” that I can now easily compare to an immersive virtual reality. The experience itself remains stubbornly difficult to nail down in words, ever-resistant to satisfying articulation, though over the years I’ve constantly tried. I was zipping about at high speed around, before, behind and through endless geometric patterns, growing fractals, and nets stretching on towards infinity in all directions. I soared through endless cubes within cubes, grids that stretched out into every direction, sliding down endless spirals. Zooming out of the macroscopic until it was microscopic, zooming into the smallest until it was the most inconceivably large. In essence, I felt akin to a worm that had suddenly been thrust into a bird’s eye view. I felt as if I was on overload, pushed to the brink of my capacity — and then it all stopped as suddenly as it began. I was back in the sandbox.

I would later realize how deeply this experience seemed to resonate with the experience of the Square upon being peeled of his measly two-dimensional plane and being forced to visit Spaceland in Edwin Abbott’s 1884 book, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, and how my struggle to articulate the experience paralleled the allegory of the cave that Plato wrote about in his 6th century work, Republic.

It was an enlightening yet frightening, confusing yet satisfying journey I experienced within or above that sandbox, or perhaps both, and, as was a very common characteristic of these memories, I remain not the least bit certain how it ended. There are, however, some deep associations between this memory and other things I recalled from my childhood.

There was, for instance, an old homework assignment that I found in the attic during high school. It was inside this box both my sisters and I kept beneath our beds as kids, and which housed all our artwork and other memorabilia. Given the words I wrote across the top of the page, the theme of the assignment was supposed to be, “In Celebration: A Past to Remember, A Future to Mold.” I later looked it up on the net, and it is, not coincidentally, the “Reflection Theme” of the PTA for the 1986-1987 school year, when I was in second grade. It was supposed to be a poster that dealt with the 50th anniversary of the Flint, Michigan sitdown strike. My memories, vague as they are, is that I had forgotten to do it and drew it all before class began on the very day it was due and hadn’t a clue as to what the assignment was about.

In any case, I had decided to interpret the project in a most peculiar fashion. Drawing a line down the center of the paper, I had drawn a gray brontosaurus to the left and a rather elaborate flying saucer to the right. The saucer had curved lines to the sides, suggesting movement, and was tipped upward, revealing its detailed underside. Twenty-one portholes — ten black, eleven gray — encircled the bottom along rim, and from each porthole extended a curved line that ultimately embedded itself into an eye-like structure at the center of the disc.

I can’t for certain say why I associate this drawing with my experience in the field that one, late day, but it wasn’t alone. It also reminded me of a short story I had written perhaps a year before the memories began flooding my mind in 1994, the central image of which has hung with me over the years. In the story a man finds himself alone one evening in an expansive landscape — a huge clearing in a forest, a desert, maybe even a field. All was eerily silent and, after a period of feeling as though he was being watched, he looks up into the sky to find, to his utter terror, that a gigantic eye was peering down at him. Aside from perhaps being associated with my experience in the field as well as my drawing, it also served as a way of expressing a strange fear of vast, open skies that I had for some reason developed around the second or third grade. I remember describing it as a fear of falling upward or being swallowed by the sky.

There were other memories of encountering UFOs that were considerably more blatant, however, such as the two regarding blue orbs descending from above, the first of which must have occurred when I was very young, as it took place at my maternal grandparent’s house. It was nighttime and I was alone, standing at one end of the dark kitchen as I gazed out the bay window at the other end, which looked out into the backyard. I could see this shimmering blue orb slowly descend from the sky towards the lawn, and it made my young mind think of the children’s rhyme, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

My other memory of blue orbs felt far less innocuous. By this time I must have been in my early teens and we had already moved into the second house, which resides in a rural area. I was on the right side of the yard, near where the huge horse barn would eventually be built, and it was nighttime yet again. Others may have been with me, though I don’t recall for sure. What I do remember is looking up into the night sky and seeing two bright, blue stars that began moving erratically. When it became clear that they were both curving downward, unerringly aimed towards me, I bolted across the grass, up and over the small picnic table we used to have there, and then darted into the woods running alongside the house.

On that same side of the yard, in the area where the aforementioned barn would later be, we used to have a swingset. I remember swinging there one beautiful summer day, facing the forest, my eyes staring at my feet as the background followed the looping perspective. I would see the ground, then the mown grass, the tall grass, the tops of the trees, and finally, the bright, blue sky before I came swinging back down again to watch it all play in reverse. As I did this, I began to hear this faint noise that was increasing in volume. To me, it sounded like rain hitting the leaves of the trees; as if some stormcloud was quickly approaching from deep in the forest and headed my way despite the beautiful weather and clear skies. Ultimately, as I watched my feet touch the blue sky one last time, I saw the edge of a gigantic black circle flying out from the tree tops, on its way to being just over my head — and at that point, the memory cuts off abruptly.

It appeared that I was looking at the bottom of a saucer that had been gliding across the treetops, accounting for the sound I had heard and had mistaken for rainfall. I would see this particular memory play over and over occasionally on the bridge of sleeping and waking, and it left me with that fear and awe kind of feeling.

Another memory, though significantly hazier, involved an incident that had taken place one night in the guest room at my paternal grandparents’ house, where my sisters and I slept on our visits. Above the head of my bed was the window, and I have a vague recollection of suddenly awakening during the night to the sense of an ominous presence which gave rise to an intense anxiety in me. I saw red lights flashing behind the curtains above me and, peering out from between the curtains cautiously, I saw, resting in their backyard, a large, egg- or acorn-shaped object adorned with blinking lights, it’s more pointed end aimed toward the sky. My instinct was to pretend it wasn’t there. Quickly, I lay back down in bed, pulled the blankets over my head and tried to go to sleep, or at the very least do my very best to play dead.

Then there were my two memories of the red orb.

The first was a memory I was uncertain about for a long time (and in fact to some degree I still am, despite its ruthless persistence), though if true, it may explain quite a bit about that initial UFO dream I had in December of 1994.

When we moved out of our old house and into our new one in 1988, the old house had yet to be sold; coincidentally, at the very same time the family of my best friend, Jimmy, was moving to Oregon. The family was hyper-religious, and my parents were convinced they were joining a cult. The father, a carpenter and an abusive asshole, had moved down early to set things up in their new place and start his new job. Their house was sold, too, and since they had no place to stay, and our old house had yet to be sold, my mother let them stay there. For at least one night James slept over at our new house, and I was happy to spend some time with a friend I suspected I would never see again.

That night my family, him and I went to the mall for something, probably things for the new house, and the car began to overheat on the freeway on the way back. My mother, grandmother, two sisters, Jimmy and I all waited on the side of the road as dad tried to get a ride from someone so he could get to the nearest phone, where he would call for a tow truck and find us an alternative way back home. As we sat on that hill, watching the sky as it darkened and the stars reveal themselves, I remember seeing a red light in the forest ahead of us — which is precisely where my memory of the events end until we finally arrived home, with my mother half-joking to him that he shouldn’t tell his mother about our car issues.

I subsequently confirmed that the whole incident, aside from the red light, actually happened, as Eve, the elder of my two younger sisters, remembered it herself. She even added details from her perspective that I didn’t recall or perhaps never knew to begin with, such as the fact that as we were all lying back, looking at the stars, Jimmy had laid his head upon her shoulder.

The interesting thing about this event is that, if my memories above are correct, everyone who sat on the hill that night save for my uncle were present on the bench-swing in the dream — even Jimmy, though in this case it wasn’t the Jimmy I knew in high school. In both the dream and the incident on the hill we were all having a good time watching the sky, too, until I saw a dancing light in the distance — though in the dream, it wasn’t red, as it was here. It led me to wonder whether the dream was in part a sort of residual memory of this specific event and if more happened on that hill beside the highway than I consciously recall.

Another and seemingly related memory, however — and one that I am most confident actually happened — took place a short time thereafter. It know it was shortly after we had moved into the new house as I still had the floor-to-ceiling window in my bedroom with a locked, black grate over it and blue-colored shades. Within a year or two my father had made it a regular-sized window. At the time, my bed had been positioned against the wall opposite the window and my head was laying towards it. I woke up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason and, without moving, popped open my eyes and looked outside the window. Off in the distance, behind the forest of trees that lied to the right of the driveway, I saw what appeared to be a red light in the distance. At first I just thought it was one of those red lights they have on top of towers and I just hadn’t noticed it before. Once I convinced myself of that hypothesis, despite the ominous feeling that persisted, I found myself closing my eyes again.

What felt like only a short time later, my eyes popped open again, and though I told myself I was mistaken, I again saw the red light in the distance, but that distance seemed to have diminished considerably. It seemed closer, and my anxiety was rising. Despite this, my eyes closed again. They popped open again later, and the red light seemed even closer. This recurred several times, and each time, the red light seemed to be increasing its proximity to my window. I remember it shimmering right in front of the trees at the end of the driveway. I have vaguer recollections of it ultimately hovering outside my window. After that, though, the memory certainly ends.

Why I didn’t run, move, or do something throughout any of this, I haven’t the foggiest clue, though I later read of similar reactions in UFO encounters. It’s as though the notion simply didn’t occur to me or I was somehow incapable of carrying it out.

A common thread running through all the aforementioned memories is that they came back to me in flashbacks. In other words, I mysteriously forgot each and every one of them immediately after they occurred, or so it seemed, only to spontaneously recall most of them around the age of sixteen or seventeen. Hypnotic confabulation is not a possibility, as no hypnosis was involved, so debunkers that prefer to be seen as skeptics would no doubt cry “false memory” and feel they solved the mystery. Though I certainly feel otherwise, for all I know, they are right. In tandem with this, however, they would also have to cry out “hallucination,” as I subsequently had real time sightings or encounters with UFOs, which is to say that I’ve recalled many such instances from the very moment in which they occurred.

The first of these I have previously written about in my post, UFOs and OBEs:

After speaking with my mother on the early morning of September 29, 2001, I learned that she was taking one of our horses to the vet due to its peculiar swollen eye and later, in the evening, her and my two sisters were going to see Sylvia Brown. Just as she was about to leave around ten, I finally went up to my bedroom and crashed.

As I rested on my bed, the familiar paralysis crept up on me, the volume knob on my senses seemed to turn down to zero, and I felt my subtle body drifting from the confines of my skin and sinking down into the otherworldly black void. Struggling to reattach to my body, I focused on a “whirring” noise I could hear as if from underwater, using it as the auditory equivalent as a rope by means of which I could pull myself back together, quite literally as it seemed. Once I met with success, I lifted my head, looked around, listened and discovered that the whirring had been coming from my computer, which I had left on in the midst of writing an article. I then went to sleep.

Around quarter to eight that evening is when I next awoke. I found that my computer was reading an error on the screen and my keyboard wasn’t responding. I rebooted it but had to unplug the keyboard and plug it back in to get it working again.

Heading downstairs, the quiet house suggested my mother and sisters were still out. I found my father asleep on the sofa chair, out cold, a strange movie on television. When he woke up as I came down the steps, I asked him if for any reason him or my mother had come into my room and fiddled with my computer as I was sleeping. It was a dumb question, and it didn’t surprise me when he told me they had not. The electricity had clearly not gone off, either.

Pouring myself a mug of coffee, I then put on my shoes in the mud room to go outside for a cigarette. As I began to open the front door of the house, I saw the red globe of light shimmering as it hovered just slightly above the front lawn and began to silently rise. Shaking myself free of shock, I aggressively yelled for my father, urging him to book it the short distance to the door.

The globe rose, crossed the driveway onto the other side of the yard and then ascended above the power lines and trees to the far right side of the property close to the horse barn. As my father arrived at the door frame, it had dimmed and was ducking behind some trees before it seemed to shrink or move out into the distance, glow turning an opaque milky red that then dissipated until it was entirely gone. He seemed perplexed by it, at first wondering aloud if it had been a flare, then asking if I wanted to check it out.

We hopped in his truck and drove to a nearby dirt road where it seemed to have been headed, but I was not even looking towards the sky. I knew it was gone. Soon we turned back around, and on the way back he tells me how strange it was that I had stepped out the front door at just the right moment to see it. He adds that it reminded him of the fireball my mother had talked about seeing in the sky while she was on the highway a few years back.

My mind was elsewhere. The important part of the red light sighting for me was that it established a connection I had for long suspected but had never had any real reason to believe: that the alien stuff was somehow related to the OBE stuff.”

The second such encounter occurred on August 11, 2002. I had gotten off work and smoked Salvia Divinorum again while hanging out with some friends. It was just the leaves without any extract on them this time, however, and by the time I saw the UFO later that evening it should not have affected me in the least. In any case, in the spirit of full disclosure it’s worth noting.

Disappointed that it had had virtually no effect on me, I soon left and dropped off one of my friends at their place on my drive home. I was going to write a bit, so I made some coffee, went to the bathroom and then went outside for a smoke. I was thinking again on my disappointment on the whole Salvia thing as I gazed at the sky full of stars as I did every night. As I turned to look toward the sky above the yard in front of the house at about 3:45 AM, things in my life got extremely weird again.

It was a triangular object that had a multitude of white, circular lights all over it’s underside that appeared to be arranged in rows. I saw it from an angle, moving from the forest in front of the house, across the yard and towards the space above the house. It was absolutely silent and remained in my clear, direct field of vision for about ten seconds. It gradually slowed down, dimmed its lights, brightened them to a degree brighter than before, and then the lights turned off completely. I could still see a dark, triangular object move there for a few moments, but it soon faded in the dark sky above the yard and I lost sight of it. Shortly thereafter I heard noises in the woods behind the house, like twigs cracking and leaves moving. I had the paranoid notion that the thing might be ducking into the tops of the trees.

I finished my cigarette, lit another, and kept my senses acute. I looked all around the sky, but saw nothing that couldn’t be easily identified as a plane or star. I eventually figured the show was over and went inside.

In both the real time red light experience and the experience with the triangle of white lights other odd experiences followed rather immediately — “astral projections” in the case of the red light and a hard-to-classify encounter with respect to the triangle.

My most recent sighting was brief, and though it could have been a mere hallucination, I’ve simply been unable to convince myself that this was the case, particularly due to my strange, extreme reaction subsequent to the event.

On July 1st, 2015, I had been high on cannabis and writing on my laptop in the third-story, one-bedroom apartment that I still occupy at the time of this writing. At about 3:30 AM I got up from my chair and proceeded to go through the doorway leading from the living room to the bedroom on my way to the bathroom. As I was at the door frame, I turned and glanced towards the windows to my left for a moment. There I saw, through the green curtains my mother had made for me, two red lights positioned vertically, like a colon, at the far left side of the window. I kept walking a step through the door frame, as it didn’t hit me right away, but when I realized what I had just seen I stepped back and looked again.

They were gone.

I tried to put it out of my mind. After all, I was high. Even so, I felt certain that this was no hallucination. Nor were they fireworks, despite the approaching holiday. Maybe it was two red lights on some tower I had for some reason never noticed before, I thought to myself, so I went up to the windows and pulled the curtains aside. There was no tower. There was only the moon in the general direction I had seen the lights, and it was certainly not the fucking moon. It couldn’t have been taillights from a car or a reflection from anything within my apartment and there was nothing else outside the window. Just the quiet, still darkness of the night.

I’m not alone in my family with respect to UFO sightings, either.

My mother once told us how she was driving home from work one evening when she saw “a meteor,” as the news would later call it; specifically, it was a huge fireball that was traveling parallel to the road she was on. I remember my father speaking about seeing a “strange light” above the garage when I was young and we still lived in the first house, but neither of my parents seem to remember anything of this. Much later, I believe in the 2010s, my father said he had gone outside one early morning and saw two objects moving above the forest in front of the house. He was mystified and told me he would never forget it as long as he lived.

Both my parents recall seeing a strange object in the sky when I was just a kid and we were camping at a park in Geneva, Ohio, and another above the house when I was just a baby.

There was also an incident with my maternal grandmother, who had been watching over my uncle’s house when he was away. She said she saw a strange, lighted object go over the house, and as it did so the electricity went off. The VCR was left blinking 12:00, she said. Despite her interest in UFOs and how she always said she wanted to ride in one before she died, she dismissed it as a legitimate sighting, however.

On my paternal side, my grandmother — a severe, functional alcoholic I only met when I was a baby — told my father and, to his dismay, many people that she worked with, how she had seen flying saucers outside her window. He deduced that it must have been the reflection of lamps within her place as seen in her window pane.

Maybe the recurring UFO dreams were inspired by one, some or all of my remembered and real time experiences of sightings or encounters, much as my original UFO dream seemed to echo elements from the admittedly vague memory of being on the hill on the side of the road with Jimmy and my family that one evening in 1988. Or perhaps the dreams are residue from UFO encounters which I have yet to consciously recollect.

Maybe the creatures that pilot these UFOs follow family lines, as has been suggested by alien abduction researchers, or perhaps these dreams are just a different manifestation of the same underlying psychological issue that gives rise to the hallucinations and subsequent delusions of having had UFO encounters — and much more — throughout my life, and maybe whatever is wrong with me has a genetic component. One I evidently inherited through both of my parental lines.

Choose your own interpretation.

In any case, I cannot help but note the similarity between the dark mood elicited by my personal sightings and close encounters and those which my recurring UFO dreams elicit. After my most recent UFO dream, I wondered why, despite the fact that I’ve looked up an untold number of UFO sightings and encounters that others have had, I had never bothered to look up anyone who, like me, also had recurring dreams of such incidents. After some minimal research, I wondered why I hadn’t taken the time to do this before. Others apparently have recurring dreams of UFOs as well, and their dreams share some interesting characteristics with my own — as do the presumably real-life, waking UFO encounters others have reported.

Aliens, Auras, & The Indigo Children.

“For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Force around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock, everywhere, yes.”
Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

“I can remember when I was a little boy. My grandmother and I could hold conversations entirely without ever opening our mouths. She called it ‘shining.’ And for a long time, I thought it was just the two of us that had the shine to us. Just like you probably thought you was the only one. But there are other folks, though mostly they don’t know it, or don’t believe it.”
The Shining (the 1980 film).

NIMI’S BODY LIGHT.

Though I’ve had an absurd amount of childhood memories suggesting alien encounters, the bulk of these memories were horrifying. Not all of them, however. A certain set of these memories dealt with a tall, willowy, female entity donning a monk’s robe. She looked like the typical Gray alien with lighter skin and larger eyes. I’ve called Nimi ever since the flashbacks in high school, though she had only referred to herself by her title, which she told me was The Teacher. We always communicated telepathically, through internal-yet-interpersonal dialogue as well as mental imagery. Whenever I peer back on those memories I find myself filled with warmth, as I truly value the time we spent together and all the weird and wonderful things she told me. And though I will perhaps forever be plagued by the question as to whether my memories and real-time experiences reflect reality or are merely the fantasies of a diseased mind, I continue exploring them in the hopes that I’ll earn a greater understanding.

One of the first memories that came back to me regarding her dealt with her speaking to me through my bedroom window one night, which was right beside the head of my loft bed. That was where she explained to me, mind-to-mind, how there is an energy or light that surrounds all forms of life in the universe. The light around her was green, she said, and the light around me was a certain type or shade of blue. As she spoke to me regarding the significance of the colors of body-light in general, I have vague recollections of seeing a rainbow or some form of the visible light spectrum in my mind’s eye. We then had a discussion about my bluish color and what seemed to be some confusion with respect to its classification, though the specifics escape me.

Though I had no idea when I was a young child, I believe that by the time I remembered this childhood experience during high school I knew at least vaguely about the concept she was referring to. I was a fan of Star Wars as a kid, of course, but I didn’t grasp the whole concept of the Force and how it related to all this until much later. More recently, I’ve begun to explore the cross-cultural notions of this energy in greater depth.

Many religious and spiritual philosophies over the ages have believed in this energy and that it exists within and around all living things. In Indian or Vedic cultures, this energy is known as prana. In Chinese philosophy, it’s called chi or qi. In ancient Greece, it was known as pneuma. In Japanense medicine, it is known as ki. In Hawaiian and Tahitian culture, it is called mana. In ancient Egypt, it was known as ka. In medieval philosophy, it’s known as quintessence, the fifth element. Among the Māori of New Zealand, it is known as mauri. Among Algonquian groups of Native Americans, it was known as manitou. Among the Iroquois Native Americans, it’s known as orenda. In his 1907 book Creative Evolution, French philosopher Henri Bergson called it Élan vital, which has been translated to English as either “vital impetus” or “vital force.” Dr. Wilhelm Reich called it orgone. More generally, it has been referred to as subtle energy.

When used in religious artwork, it is often called the aureola or aureole when depicted as a radiant cloud cocooning the body; at other times it is limited to the head, where it is known as the halo or nimbus and represented as a luminous disc or crown of light rays encircling the cranium. While the distinction between the halo and its full-body counterpart is often vague, they are often collectively referred to as a glory or mandorla. They come in every color, even various colors, and typically are used to denote holy figures, mythical figures, rulers or heros.

In India, the halo is known as either prabhāmaṇḍala or śiraścakra, and the aura as a whole is known as prabhāvali. In his Hypothesis of Formative Causation, Rupert Sheldrake refers to morphic fields that exist within and around everything, living or not, maintaining and evolving the patterns that characterize all that is through what he calls morphic resonance. The concept has also been embraced in modern new age religions, where it is often referred to as an aura or the human energy field. Even modern science in the West is slowly coming to incorporate this energy into their overall understanding, as the generic term “biofield” was elected in 1994 by a panel of scientists at the National Institutes of Health to denote what they described as interactive fields of energy and information surrounding and interpenetrating all living systems. These fields are comprised of not only scientifically accepted and technologically measurable electromagnetic energy, they posit, but also the thus-far-only-hypothetical subtle energy.

Though I cannot say that I have ever seen an aura myself, it would appear to be an embarrassingly perfect visual analog to the atmosphere of vibrating energy that I feel residing within and around my own body and those of others. The manner in which I feel it can be best described as some hybridized form of the kinesthetic and tactile, some subtler form of touch and movement that can be sensed independent of physical contact. Personal experience suggests that there are at least three distinct aspects or levels to this energy field, the most immediate of which seems to either correspond to an individual’s present state of consciousness or actually constitute the mind itself. In other words, it bears a frequency, vibration or “vibe” that seems to change in accordance with an individual’s emotions, moods, thoughts, and the state of their body. Interactions between my own energy and that of others seem to play a role in my involuntary empathy and telepathic experiences. Sometimes I’m only conscious of the received emotions, with the energetic sensations serving as a sort of background unless I deliberately focus on them, though often enough the energetic interactions themselves are so intense they take the foreground.

In either case, this energetic interaction seems to intensify during eye contact, as if the eyes serve a dual purpose, not only allowing us to see but also serving as psychic amplifiers — “windows” or “gateways to the soul” that provide a more direct interface to the individual mind. During or quickly following eye contact with some of my fellow human beings I have received incredibly intense bursts of emotion, more rarely imagery or internal dialogue.

There is another aspect to our aura, however, that doesn’t seem to change, at least with such frequency, and seems to represent an identifiable energetic pattern specific to the individual. This came to my attention in my teens but for a long time, despite being aware of the aura as a concept in religious and spiritual philosophies around the world, I had never heard anyone else refer to this aspect of it — until I discovered Psionics. Psionics is a portmanteau of the word psi (which itself is an umbrella term for extrasensory perception and psychokinesis) and electronics, specifically radionics. It was a term that developed in the 1940s and 50s to denote disciplines involving the application of engineering principles to the study and exploitation of parapsychological or paranormal phenomena. It was appropriated in the nineties or early aughts by a network of individuals eager to educate, experiment, practice and hone these skills. Among these “psions,” which are those who practice the art of psionics, there is a belief in what they call “psionic signatures,” or psi sigs. This is essentially a psychic fingerprint that is specific to every living thing and, according to some, every existing object. It is a marker of identity that one can detect if one is sensitive enough and Psions use it when attempting to determine the geographical location of someone. They may also do this in an attempt to establish a psionic link with others at a distance, as when trying to engage in telepathy.

Among some psions, the act of utilizing the psi-sig has been called “sig snatching,” and they have attempted to articulate the process. First, they clear their mind, focusing on blackness, and then turn their focus to the individual in question. This may involve picturing the person in their mind, perhaps using a prop such as a photo or personal possession tied to them in order to guide the psychological process, and then trying to get a feel for them. Once it seems that the focus on the individual is established, that you are “locked” on the sig and so the individual in question, they let their mind slip somewhat. Then they either open up while focusing on the desired data to be extracted and received or fixate on the data to be sent or transmitted. Naturally, when one has a genetic or emotional bond with the individual in question or has already established some form of non-psionic link in the physical landscape — through the phone, the internet, or while in spatial proximity — establishing such a link via sig snatching becomes easier.

If such a psi-sig indeed exists, it might help explain my sense that everyone has a unique, energetic pattern. It might also help explain how many, including myself, feel as though they can resonate their energy or mind with another not just when they are in close proximity but when they are at a distance and experience various forms of telepathy (such as dream telepathy) as a consequence, even without conscious intent.

There is yet another aspect of this energy, however, that seems to suggest that there are different groups of people who share certain energetic qualities that distinguish them from other such groups. It is as if there are energetic types, groups or subspecies scattered throughout the human population. For instance, some people seem to consistently drain the life from me, almost as if they were psychic parasites or mosquitos of the soul. Others seem akin to psychic furnaces, their luminous, shimmering glow from within charging me up, even cleansing my energy. During high school and occasionally since, I’ve also felt a vibe from people that suggest to me that they share my unusual experiences. I have often suspected that these were the kind of characteristics and tendencies of particular types of body-light that Nimi was distinguishing by means of light spectra.

ANATOMY OF THE SUBTLE BODY.

Reports of those who have repeated out-of-body experiences and who are awake for the apparent separation from the physical form suggest that the subtle body they exist within during their “disembodied” state exists in and around the physical body, which seems to suggest that the aura is the portion of the subtle body that extends beyond the physical skin and can potentially be perceived by certain sensitives clairvoyantly. Similarly, many religious and spiritual philosophies hold that this aura stems from not merely one subtle form but rather a hierarchy of additional, ever-subtler bodies in which every living thing exists simultaneously, with each body serving as a “band” of the aura — perhaps accounting to the various levels of aspects of the aura previously explained. Each of these subtler bodies are believed to correspond to a plane of existence, just as the physical body corresponds to the physical plane.

This makes some sense to me. While I have not had an out of body experience with respect to floating around as a disembodied entity on the physical landscape during my present life, I have had experiences that seem synonymous with what others have referred to as “astral projections” onto the “astral plane.” I remain open to the possibility that they may in fact be little more than lucid dreams, though the experiences in that realm take on a hyperreal quality that remain difficult to dismiss. In any case, in the context of these experiences I find myself in a body that seems to be composed of energy and takes on one of three potential forms: a singular point of consciousness that, if I were to look on it from a third-person perspective, I feel would appear as an orb; an amorphous or fluid form that I imagine would look a blob of energy or cloud of smoke; and a body akin to my physical vessel in terms of form, but which is instead composed of energy — namely an intensified version of what I feel within and around my physical body during my mundane, waking, material life. During these experiences, especially during those periods where I am lucid during the period where my “subtle body” separates from my physical body, there are frequencies and vibrations I cannot only feel but hear. Whether this suggests I have three distinct subtle bodies or merely one that can take on three different forms, I cannot be certain, but the general notion of having a subtle body is certainly something I can relate to experientially.

As I have detailed elsewhere, Nimi did indeed explain the concept of other planes of existence to me during one incident, namely after I told her I felt I had a “foot in two worlds.” She also mentioned that some people were better at operating on one plane than they were on others. Given that this was the only occasion I can recall in which our telepathy was cranked up to the degree that we shared and occupied the same mental space, as if we were sharing a lucid dream while still awake, it has often felt to me that she was suggesting that imagination itself may constitute a parallel reality and that I may function better in that realm than on others.

While I have no memory of Nimi explaining how the aura related to subtle bodies, I did have an odd experience, perhaps merely a dream, on October 1st of 2009 that shed some light on the subject. I suddenly found myself in some rendition of the basement of my neighbor’s house across the street when I was young, just as I had in my initial “astral projection” in May of 1995, sitting on a couch in a rather drowsy state of consciousness. Two other individuals who I sensed to be male were standing nearby, though out of my line of sight, and they spoke to both me and with one another mind-to-mind. The conversation involved the physical body being nothing more than a sort of “post body” that served as a thin slice off the top of a body composed of a more subtle form of energy or matter. Furthermore, this body itself was just a part of a greater system of subtler bodies in which conscious beings coexist.

Interestingly, I later found that this description parallels the Eastern model of the subtle bodies remarkably well. The Jiva, which in Hinduism and Jainism is equivalent to what we often refer to as the individual soul or self, is said to be enveloped within five sheaths which are in turn organized into three separate bodies. These five sheaths are said to interpetrate one another and exist inside one another in the style of a Russian Doll. There is the annamaya kosha, which is the physical sheath; the pranamaya kosha, the sheath of the breath or life-force; manomaya kosha, the mental sheath; the vijnanamaya kosha, or wisdom sheath, and finally the anandamaya kosha, or bliss sheath.

The karana sharira, or causal body, is composed of the jiva and one sheath, the anandamaya kosha. The sukshma sharira (later called the linga sharira) or subtle body, on the other hand, is composed of three sheaths: the pranamaya, manomaya and vijnanamaya koshas. Last but not least, there is the physical body, known as the sthula sharira, which is composed of the annamaya and pranamaya koshas. Of possible significance here is the fact that while the subtle body consists of three sheaths, the physical is composed of only two, and one of the sheaths of the physical body — the pranamaya kosha — is also a component of the subtle body. In light of this, one could say that the physical body is just a small part, a “thin slice off the top” of a much greater body, just as the two entities in the aforementioned dream had stressed.

This subtle body, the sukshma or linga sharira, is also believed to have its own anatomy. Subtle energy, here called prana, is carried along through the nadis, or channels, which are the subtle body’s analog to veins — similar to the meridian system in Chinese medicine. I have but one personal experience that seems to reflect this supposed aspect of the subtle anatomy, and it happened in the early aughts. I had been using my Mindgear mind machine and, as I often do, had fallen asleep in the process. At some point I abruptly awoke and could not only feel but somehow also see this luminous, golden energy racing through elaborate, interwoven tubelike structures that took the form of my whole body.

These nadis are said to intersect at points on the subtle body known as chakras, which is Sanskrit for “wheels.” In terms of function, these chakras seem to have at least two. First, they are thought to “hook up” the physical and the subtler bodies to one another. They serve as not only the intersection of the nadis of the subtle body, then, but also as the intersection at which the physical and subtler bodies connect. Second, they are much like transformers in that each chakra changes the frequency of the prana brought to them by the nadis. While there are many chakras, attention is given to a minority, typically seven (at least in the Westernized versions), the functions of which seem to serve as an ancient rendition of Maslow’s Hierarchy.

Strangely, five out of these seven chakras also correlate with the location of the major endocrine glands of the physical body, which release hormones into the blood. The remaining two chakras — the highest and the lowest, both with positions that are often depicted as residing outside the structure of the physical body — correlate with the functions of respective endocrine glands, but not their positions.

Muladhara is the first, the “root chakra,” as it is often called. It is located in the area that corresponds to the base of the spine and is associated with the adrenal gland. It governs basic needs that serve personal survival, such as food, water, sleep and security. This chakra is also said to serve as the seat of the kundalini, a form of divine energy coiled like a serpent three and a half times around the sacrum. Various practices are said to awaken the kundalini, allowing it to rise along the spine, activating the higher chakras until achieving liberation upon activating the Sahasrara chakra at or above the crown of the head.

The following chakra is Svadhisthana, the sacral chakra, located in the area between the anus and genitals and corresponding to the ovaries or testicles. It governs our creativity, sexuality, and intimacy. The third, called Manipura, is located in the solar plexus and associated with the pancreas. It serves as our “personal power center” and “gut feeling,” governing our willpower, confidence and ambition. Anahata, located at the center of the chest, corresponds to the thymus. It serves to connect the bottom three chakras, which are concerned with biological needs, to the top three, concerned more with the spiritual. It governs our relationships, our capacity for compassion for ourselves and others, emotional healing and our ability to integrate opposites.

Vishudda, chakra five, is also known as the throat chakra and governs communication and self-expression. It also purifies energy from the lower chakras and corresponds to the thyroid.

While all of that seems rather consistent among those who provide commentary on the chakra-endocrine correlation, the associations designated to the top two chakras and glands evidently suffer from some confusion. The sixth chakra is Ajna, which translates to “command” or “authority.” It is also known as the brow chakra, the third eye, the inner eye, and the mind’s eye. Its located at the center of the brow or forehead. It governs intuition, imagination, perspective, self-awareness, and psi abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance. Sahasrara, also known as the crown chakra, is the seventh chakra, located just above the crown of the head. Its oriented towards enlightenment, understanding, knowledge, reality and truth.

Ajna is sometimes associated with the pituitary gland for some reason, and this despite the fact that it correlates exactly with the position of the pineal gland, which in this case is instead associated with Sahasrara. With a little research I must concede that this does make some sense, at least from a certain angle, as in some species there is a parietal eye that formed from the pineal gland that pokes out the crown of the head. Nonetheless, the pineal’s placement in human beings certainly corresponds to the Ajna chakra, and the fact that it is considered the third eye and the pineal is literally our third eye makes their association a rather solid one in my mind. The crown chakra, Sahasrara, is more appropriately associated with the pituitary gland despite the fact that, much like Muladhara and the adrenal, it does not correspond with its position.

Due to these correlations between the chakras and the endocrine system, some speculate that ancient practices such as yoga and meditation may serve as a means of stimulating both the subtle manifestations, the chakras, leading to altered states of consciousness, and stimulating the material manifestations, the endocrine glands, to effect the corresponding biology.

PINEAL & THE THIRD EYE.

Rather than merely a curiosity relating to the energy field I feel around myself and others, the notion of chakras makes some sense with respect to my personal experience as well. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt what I can best describe as an energetic pressure or concentration of my energy on at least three areas of my body, each of which correspond to the alleged location of particular chakras.

The lowest location on my body where I feel this corresponds to is Svadhishthana, or the sacral chakra. Considering what is associated with this chakra, this should perhaps not surprise me at all. While I have nurtured the creative impulse through various mediums throughout my life, in the areas of intimacy and sexuality I have progressed very slowly and I could best be explained as rather stagnant at present in this respect. As of the time of this writing, it’s been well over a decade since my last relationship, for instance, and nearly nine years since I’ve gotten laid or had any sort of intimate contact with a female of the species.

Another point of concentration is the chest area, corresponding to the Anahata chakra, which always feels tender, vulnerable or exposed to me. It’s one of the reasons I nearly always sleep on my belly or on my side, hugging a pillow or blanket. Indeed, ever since childhood, I’ve avoided sleeping supine for just that reason — and for the fact that it often gave me nightmares as a child. Though I cannot remember a single example of those childhood nightmares, it has been the case that sleeping this way since the age of sixteen or so has led to some frightening experiences. On March 14, 1995, I had a classic “old hag attack” when sleeping on my back. I felt an entity crawl on my bed, straddle me, and attempt to suffocate me — first by pushing its hands on my chest, and ultimately by placing its knees there and applying agonizing pressure. During at least two astral projection experiences — one on July 1st of 2003 — I also had the feeling that my subtle body and physical body were bound at the chest area by something akin to elastic.

In addition, I certainly have issues associated with the functions this chakra allegedly governs. Though I have higher aspirations, for instance, I certainly haven’t “mastered the mundane,” so to speak. I’m also rather distant when it comes to relationships, be the nature of the bond one of family, friends, or the rare significant other in my life. I have an impulse toward intimacy yet need to be free and independent, and with these seemingly contradictory drives I continue to struggle. I also have a good deal of internal conflict about damn near everything and have had many difficulties in my attempts to reconcile the opposing forces within me.

The most curious area of concentration is the center-of-the-brain and corresponding forehead area, however, just above the area between the eyes, which corresponds to the location of Ajna, the “third eye” chakra.

An opened third eye is said to result in mental clarity, emotional stability, empathy, an ability to communicate with the dead, and an affinity for nature and animals. Characteristics of a partially opened third eye encompass the above, but also psychic imbalances such as anxiety, depression, resentment, aggression, addictions, sleep issues, hypersensitivity, an overly active imagination, issues with or total resistance to authority, bipolar emotions, and either lethargy or hyperactivity.

So all of that makes sense.

In multiple areas of my life, it seems, the third eye has played a rather consistent role. This first came to my attention through the theme running through the spontaneous artwork I began producing in 1995. While in art class at school or alone in my room at home, I would either place my black Bic pen to paper and let my hands guide me along, or tape a paper to the wall and essentially cooperate with the same process through the medium of chalk pastels. This “automatic artwork,” as I later learned it be called, gave rise to some elaborate pieces, many of which featured some rendition of the third eye — either between and above the eyes or at the crown of the head. This recurring theme only came to my attention slowly, and only later, after attempts to glimpse all my bizarre experiences as a whole, did it begin to make some sense. It came back to something that happened just prior to the spontaneous false awakenings and “astral projection” experiences that I began having just prior to the automatic artwork, in late April or early May of 1995.

At the time, I had called it “aura surfing.” I awoke to find my subtle form mostly detached from my physical body, hovering at an angle just above my physical back. Despite the efforts of some unseen entity that had grabbed my feet and was violently tugging me back and forth, however, I for some reason remained stubbornly attached at the head. This ultimately led to nested false awakenings, and no longer than a few days later, intense, hyperreal astral projections in which I wrestled with an entity that I feared was either trying to possess me, kill me at a level deeper than the flesh, or both — and this continued for some time. In addition, on at least three other occasions my experiences have also suggested that both my subtle and physical body are connected at the pineal/Ajna region (as well as at the Anahata region, as formerly described).

Later on during high school, I had been incredibly sleep deprived and writing on the computer that was in the hallway just outside my bedroom door. As I wrote, I felt myself nod off and felt my subtle form rapidly “fall” backwards, away from my body in the chair, and into this huge beehive-like structure that was dimly lit and gave off the sense of being very ancient, with various objects and things kept on the rows upon rows of shelves to the side. Suddenly I pulled back abruptly from that place and lurched violently forward into my physical body on the chair. At the very moment I regained sudden and full control of my physical body, I heard a loud “click” inside of my head which felt as if it had come from the center of my brain.. It stands as the most unearthly disembodied environment I have ever been in and the only occasion in which I slipped out and back in while still awake, with no breach in continuity of consciousness.

Yet it had company in its suggestion that the pineal serves as the locale of subtle hook-up. There was also that experience, in November of 2002 I believe, in which I felt “lightning bolts” coming from my temples and striking what would correspond to the area of the pineal in my brain when I abruptly reconnected with my physical body. An experience that came to serve as further reinforcement arrived on the very morning after which I slept for the first time my former apartment. I awoke feeling my subtle form still attached to my physical body at the head, just as in the “aura surfing” so many years before, but its form was bent in the direction opposite my physical body so that my subtle feet were against the wall beside the window just behind and above my physical head. It was like an involuntary, head-bound, subtle body yoga pose.

The Ajna chakra only became more intriguing to me when I learned it corresponds with the endocrine gland known as the pineal, also known as the conarium or epiphysis cerebri. It’s a small, pine cone shaped gland of the endocrine system that is often referred to as the third eye — and for good reason. It is seen as an “atrophied photoreceptor” because, like the two eyes with which we are familiar, it is sensitive to light and comes complete with a lens, cornea, and retina. It exists in most vertebrate species and in some reptiles and amphibians it is linked with the parietal eye, which actually pokes out the top of the skull, as formerly mentioned. As animals climbed the evolutionary ladder, however, the pineal began burrowing deeper into the brain. In human beings, at 49 days after conception, in tandem with the first indications of the sex of the fetus, the pineal gland emerges. It first develops in the tissues at the roof of the mouth and then ascends to the very center of the brain, between the two cerebral hemispheres. In its final resting place, the pineal is surrounded by the limbic system, which is the emotional brain center, and in close proximity to auditory and visual sensory relay stations. It also is in close proximity to the cerebrospinal fluid channels, allowing it to secrete its manufactured chemicals into deep areas of the brain.

One such chemical is melatonin, a serotonin-derived hormone that modulates sleep patterns and both circadian and seasonal cycles. It was found that the longer the hours of daylight, the less melatonin the pineal produces, and constant exposure to light has been shown to cause pineal shrinkage and increased reproductive functions. The longer the nighttime or exposure to darkness, the more melatonin it produces, and constant exposure to darkness will shrink reproductive organs and inhibit the reproductive functions. It also informs animal of the time of year, triggering seasonal instincts.

In his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule, Dr. Rick Strassman also speaks about the pineal security system, which, for instance, typically inhibits the production of melatonin during the day. He explained how nerve cells in close proximity to the pineal release neurotransmitters known as noradrenaline and adrenaline, which activate the pineal so that it begins producing melatonin. Yet while the adrenal glands release these same neurotransmitters in response to stress, the aforementioned pineal security system usually gets rid of them.

Studies he references have shown, however, that in instances of incredibly high stress the security system can be overridden — but only minimally. This results in melatonin levels that are relatively high with respect to waking, daylight hours but which are rather typical during sleep. Even so, it causes no apparent ill effects and exposure to daylight quickly counteracts this anyway. Due to this, he argues that the production of melatonin wouldn’t justify this security system — but that the production of DMT (N,N-dimethyltryptamine) most certainly would.

DMT has been called the most potent, naturally-occurring psychedelic known to man. Despite its illegal status in the US and other countries, DMT is naturally present in our bodies and in many other plants and animals. In his aforementioned book, Strassman posits that the pineal is at least one of the areas of the human body where it is manufactured. As Joe Rogan has grown fond of pointing out, the Cottonwood Research Foundation has since done tests with rats and discovered that their pineal glands do indeed produce DMT. Though its presence in the pineals of humans has not yet been confirmed, Strassman points out that the pineal not only has all the required ingredients to produce DMT, but is also known to manufacture compounds called beta-carbolines that inhibit it’s breakdown in the body, thereby enhancing and extending the duration of its psychedelic effects in a manner akin to ayahuasca. The same security system may typically inhibit stress-induced DMT release in normal individuals, however, much like the case with melatonin.

What role would the pineal production of DMT serve? Strassman finds significance between the sexual differentiation and pineal development in the fetus 49 days after conception and the fact that, according to The Tibetan Book of the Dead, there is an intermission of exactly 49 days between the death of a soul’s former body and its reincarnation into another. He fleshes out his hypothesis even further in his aforementioned book:

“The pineal gland produces psychedelic amounts of DMT at extraordinary times in our lives. Pineal DMT production is the physical representation of non-material, or energetic, processes. It provides us with the vehicle to consciously experience the movement of our life-force in its most extreme manifestations. When our individual life force enters our fetal body, the moment in which we become truly human, it passes through the pineal and triggers the first primordial flood of DMT. Later, at birth, the pineal releases more DMT … As we die, the life-force leaves the body through the pineal gland, releasing another flood of this psychedelic spirit molecule. (pages 68-69).”

Between birth and death, however, he believes the pineal may flood our brains for other purposes as well. Along with melatonin, for instance, the pineal may release DMT during dreamtime. Many, among them Terrance McKenna, have remarked on the similar issues of amnesia one experiences following both awakening from a dream and coming out of a DMT trip. It may also play a role in the altered states that can be triggered through meditation, prayer, and even natural childbirth.

Given that stress is known to exacerbate delusions and hallucinations, he posits that in psychotic individuals there may be a malfunctioning pineal — the aforementioned security system may be weakened, in other words, allowing sufficient stress to trigger an endogenous flood of DMT that accounts for the psychosis. This hypothesis of his, I must confess, instills a good deal of fear in me, as I have previously considered — only half-jokingly — that I have a malfunctioning pineal myself, and for several reasons.

For one thing, the pineal regulates circadian rhythms and I’ve suffered from consistent insomnia since I was a kid. I also have absolutely no sense of direction, which I later found many others term directional or geographic dyslexia, and remembered reading that at least in birds, the pineal serves as an internal compass. Seeing as how my own internal compass is perpetually spinning, I wondered if this, too, could be explained by a dysfunctional pineal. In the process of writing this I did a quick Google search and discovered that studies involving both pigeons and humans suggest that calcified pineal glands can indeed cause a defective sense of direction.

Though these issues of mine fall within the accepted role of the pineal, there are also elements of my life that could be explained by its more hypothetical role in DMT production. There is, for instance, the phenomenon that began on September 30, 2002, and which I originally called “the blurs” or “a trip without a drug.” Only later would I discover they seemed to be the scintillating scotoma brought on by what are known as silent or acephalgic migraines. These are migraines that generate the hallucinogenic “aura” minus the excruciating headache — all of which, I have noticed, are triggered in me during heights of anxiety or anger. In other words, the kind of stress that might trigger a flood of endogenous DMT in someone with a weakened pineal security system.

There are also my recurring instances of “false awakenings” and so-called “astral projections” — both of which may have occurred in my childhood, but certainly began occurring by early May of 1995. These, too, seemed to be triggered by stress, and so could also be explained by a glitchy third eye secreting endogenous DMT — and I say this due to the focus of Strassman’s book.

Between 1990 and 1995, he began the first psychedelic research in the US in roughly two decades at the University of New Mexico. He administered over 400 doses of DMT intravenously to 60 pre-screened volunteers with prior psychedelic experience and along with documenting the external, observable effects took extensive notes on the subjective experiences of the participants. He describes how a remarkably high number the volunteers in his DMT research trials reported encountering entities in the context of apparently “free-standing non-corporeal realms,” or what we might call other planes of existence or parallel universes. After finding that available models failed to suitably explain these experiences, he seems to have arrived at the hypothesis that DMT may function as a sort of chemical gateway for consciousness to enter into these parallel universes.

Many of the reports he claimed to have found to resonate deeply with what has been described in Near Death Experiences (NDEs). While they are not NDEs themselves, many of those elements are also found in my so-called astral projections, which suggests to me that these experiences of mine could also be related to pineal DMT release.

Most disturbing of all to me, though, is that he also claimed to have found that many of the reports paralleled alien abduction experiences. While I’ve read his book as well as many articles and trip reports, and watched countless videos on the subject, I’ve only found that people sometimes come across reptilian or mantis beings that parallel the beings described in abduction accounts. Indeed, this alone is interesting enough, but the allegation that these psychedelic experiences parallel abduction accounts as a whole seems unfounded given what I’ve come across thus far. I also find it difficult to ignore that my astral plane experiences seem incredibly distinct from my alien encounters with respect to both my flashbacks and real time experiences, and it has been this case from the beginning. The astral plane seemed hyperreal, but a different kind of real — not physical reality. I may be perplexed during the false awakening experiences, uncertain as to whether it’s the physical reality or not, but it’s clear as day immediately afterwards at the very least and often enough during the experiences as well, as that environment operates in accordance with a different set of laws. I’ve also tried to summon the aliens during those experiences and have always failed.

So far as I can tell, abduction reports have a basis in physical reality, just as UFO sightings and close encounters do. Even so, it may be the case that they also have access to these realms, and perhaps that is why so many others have encountered them there through the DMT gateway.

A CERTAIN SHADE OF BLUE.

All things considered, Nimi’s body-light concept and the historical context I later found it to be relevant to — not to mention the context of recurring, personal experience — made a lot of sense to me. Even so, I had a hard time understanding the concept as she proposed it to me on an intellectual level.

Given that I specifically remember her having given me the mental image of a rainbow with respect to the body-light, I can be reasonably certain this was the classification system she was referring to when discussing the confusion regarding my color. This makes little sense to me, however, for light is simply the name we’ve given to the relatively narrow portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can pick up on. We call this range of wavelengths the visual spectrum and experience different wavelengths within it as different colors, to which we then ascribe specific names. Assuming this body-light exists, it is clearly invisible to most human beings and would have to be a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum our science has yet to uncover. Why this life-glow would parallel the colors of the visible light spectrum is beyond me, though this is what Nimi appeared to be implying.

Regardless, how did my confusing blue color fit into all of this? Well, as the visible spectrum is truly continuous and division-free, our color labels are ultimately arbitrary. Different cultures ascribe differing wavelengths to the same color names, after all, and even a single system may change over time. If body-light somehow shares this spectrum, perhaps Nimi was suggesting that my designated color differed depending on what classification system was used. In any case, I would have to be a shade of blue on the cusp of one of my two spectral neighbors.

Given that her color, green, and my color, “kind of” blue, are spectral neighbors, perhaps Nimi meant to imply that my body-light was cyan. As Nimi’s light was green, perhaps our proximity on the spectrum made our energies compatible in some way that inspired her visits. In Western new age literature, at the very least, green auras are seen to represent growth, balance, and nature and they are allegedly found among those who are natural healers or teachers, which seems fitting enough for Nimi. Cyan auras are supposed to embody elements of their neighbors, and so are said to be independent, calm, organized and clear-thinking, which sounds like an ideal student for such a teacher. While I have always envied and continue to strive towards embodying those characteristics, however, they certainly don’t accurately describe me. I’m a hypersensitive, perpetually chaotic mess, to be honest.

So we come to the second possibility, which is that the classification issue with respect to my sort-of-blue aura dealt with the spectral neighbor on the other side, namely the color we call violet. This came to my attention when I learned that though once accepted as part of the color spectrum, indigo has since fallen out of favor among many modern color scientists, who have as a consequence dropped the “I” from the ROYGBIV mnemonic and now divide indigo between its neighbors, blue and violet. In essence, indigo is the Pluto of the visible spectrum, though to be fair Pluto didn’t get sliced in two over its ordeal.

In any case, this would square well with how a friend of mine explained what my aura looked like during high school. During our meditation sessions in our mutual friend’s dark bedroom, he would attempt to see auras in his mind’s eye. He placed no significance on the colors and insisted auras always change. Nonetheless, on the two occasions I asked him what my colors were at the moment he described my aura as dark blue with streaks of red in it, which is a fair description of indigo.

The alleged significance of Indigo as an aura color in New Age thought, however, didn’t come to my attention until 2002. The notion seems to have been born from a woman by the name of Nancy Ann Tappe, who has a neurological trait known as synesthesia in which two or more sensory (and perhaps extrasensory) wires get crossed, leading to bizarre, consistent and highly individualized means of (extra-)sensory experience. In the case of Tappe, it manifested itself as an alleged capacity to see an “electromagnetic energy field” or aura around all living things in the form of a spectral field of colors. For the most part, this field of colors is in a constant state of flux, changing in correspondence to an individual’s emotions, thoughts and physical health. To that degree, her explanation resonated quite strongly with my own experience of body-energy.

Tappe also spoke much about the exception, however. This she called one’s life color, and it was a single color in every individual aura that seemed to persist from womb to tomb. Aside from the stability of the life color were the shared traits she noticed among those sharing the same color, and from these synesthetic perceptions emerged a system that mapped them out. This ultimately culminated in her 1982 book, Understanding Your Life Through Color. To me, this sounded much like the energetic subspecies I felt existed and resonated even more strongly with the spectral classification Nimi appeared to be explaining to me as a child. To boot, though she originally distinguished only eleven life colors present in the population, in the 1960s Tappe noted the dawn of a new Indigo-colored aura in children.

At roughly the time she met Tappe in the 1970s, Jan Tober claims to have had recurring dreams in which strange children would approach her regarding their upcoming incarnations, and that upon awakening she would find herself drawn to particular infants or toddlers with peculiar eyes and “old souls.” Ultimately this led to Tober and her coauthor Lee Carroll fleshing out and further popularizing the concept of the Indigo with the publication of their 1998 book, The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived.

Their argument was that those who have worked with children have been noticing an increasing number of them displaying new and distinct psychological and behavioral patterns, and that these were the children that had Indigo auras. The traits that characterize those with indigo auras have been written about extensively, and in the midst of my research I’ve broken them down into the most limited list of traits possible: their full-spectrum sensitivity, nonconformity, and sense of alienation.

One of the most commonly-mentioned characteristics of Indigos seems to be their full-spectrum sensitivity — or perhaps more appropriately, their hypersensitivity — which is a trait I undoubtedly share with them. It was relatively recently that I learned about a trait, apparently genetic, that is found throughout the animal kingdom known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS). Humans bearing this trait are commonly referred to as Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) and make up roughly 15-20% of the population. This trait seems to cover not only many of the traits inherent in not only myself but those that are allegedly characteristic of the Indigo population.

As I learned via the rabbit hole offered by Dr. Google, the still-growing recognition of HSPs began with the publication of Elaine Aron’s 1996 book, The Highly Sensitive Person, where the term was coined. The following year Elaine, along with her husband, Arthur Aron, identified SPS as the characteristic trait distinguishing such HSPs and produced a questionnaire aimed at measuring SPS among the human population. Scientific papers exploring, experimenting, seemingly validating and elaborating upon this trait would follow in the years to come. Though it has certainly expanded beyond their own work, the Arons have to a large degree focused their efforts towards providing evidence which distinguishes SPS from traits and disorders with which they believe it could be confused, which range from shyness and sensation-seeking to autism and sensory processing disorder, perhaps in an enlightened attempt to cut off the negative consequences HSPs might experience in consulting Dr. Google in striving to understand their symptoms at the pass.

Rather than a disorder, SPS is a survival strategy developed through evolution that bears both advantages and disadvantages. In comparison to the masses, they have a hypersensitive central nervous system. In other words, they have a lower perceptual threshold that results in intensified sensory experiences, which is to say that they involuntarily pick up on sensory stimuli that others would consider novel, subtle or nuanced, given that the majority are capable of filtering these aspects out of perception out before they breach the threshold of consciousness. As a consequence, this lower threshold makes HSPs far more easily overstimulated, which in turn results in a deeper, more highly organized and thorough form of cognitive processing, an increased reaction time and an intensified emotional response towards such stimuli which others would be likely to interpret as an overreaction.

The overstimulation of HSPs makes them more easily overwhelmed and leads to higher stress levels, which at best inspires HSPs to engage in less risk-taking activities and proceed through life with more caution. More dismally, it also makes them more prone to depression, anxiety, and sleep issues, thereby increasing the risk that they will adopt unhealthy coping mechanisms and habits of avoidance.

Far less scientifically, however true it may be to experience, both Indigos and HSPs report elements of hypersensitivity that either straddle the fence between the mundane and spiritual or reside beyond the pale and rest solely in the realm of the fringe. Indigos, for instance, are frequently associated with Ajna, the third eye chakra, and are said to be born with their third eye already open — though either partially or completely. In any case, it is allegedly this that earns them an additional form of sensitivity, which is evidently psi or psychic sensitivity.

Another trait typically associated with Indigos is their nonconformist approach. This is said to be a consequence of their overwhelming sense of purpose, a drive that inspires them to take action and change the world. This leads to them having issues with authority and tradition, preferring to question everything and explore new ideas.

Aside from their sensitivity and nonconformity, and perhaps partially as a consequence of it, they often feel alienated. They feel misunderstood, different, like they don’t belong. The traditional terms “fish out of water” or “square peg in a world of round holes” describes their circumstances quite accurately. By others, they may be perceived as strange or weird. Even so, they passionately clutch onto their sense of independence, the third trait. They stubbornly refuse to change for others, determined to remain true to their odd souls, and so may become introverted and socially isolate themselves. They may have only a small, close circle of friends, and tend to get along with other Indigos best, being less shy around them, as they are far more likely to understand one another.

Indigos are also often lumped in with people of other spiritual “types” in the eyes of New Age philosophy — Wanderers, Starseeds, Star Children, Rainbow Children, Crystal Children, Children of the Blue Ray — though just as often they are all regarded as distinct. Even apart from this, some regard Indigos as old souls that have come here from other planets. In addition, I discovered a possible link in a book published two years before The Indigo Children, and it was the 1997 publication of David Jacobs’ The Threat: Revealing the Secret Alien Agenda. There he transcribes the 1994 hypnosis session of Allison Reed (pages 246-250.) Along with fellow abductees, she was brought into a room where they were made to watch a “media presentation” on a large screen. It is a colorful, sunny, springtime scene that takes place in a park where numerous families are having picnics and children are playing. Though the aliens told her to try and distinguish the true humans from the “creations” of the aliens within the scene as a whole and then in individual families, she finds it impossible. It was then explained to her that the only way in which their creations could be distinguished from normal human beings was by means of an “energy field” around their bodies, and that those that were capable of detecting it and elected to cause problems would be eliminated.

I would later learn that according to Tappe, there are also subdivisions of Indigos, which again brought me back to an exchange between Nimi and I. In the midst of what seemed to be a more casual conversation than those which we usually had, I remember revealing to Nimi how I had recently decided that I wanted to be either a scientist or a chef when I grew up. We were, at the time, both standing in my room in the area opposite the bed, with her beside me, far taller than me. Curious as to what she did for a living, I asked her what she was, and she said she was a Teacher. I pondered on whether I might one day be a teacher as well. In response, she said that I was an Artist, that it was “my work.” Curious, I asked her how she knew it would be my job. She said that she did not mean that kind of work, at least not necessarily. Instead, she explained, by “work” she meant that it was a talent I had developed over the course of many lifetimes and would most likely continue developing in this one.

I later learned that, according to the Upanishads, throughout the cycles of death and rebirth known as samsara, the linga sharira, our subtle body, retains latent habitual physical and mental patterns called samskaras. They were developed by and in turn retain one’s karma. It is not the reward or judgment of some god that sentences you but the amoral influence of past action on present action, and present action on future action, and in that sense karma comprises the whole of causality with its action-reaction, cause-effect associations. The subtle body is the carrier of our conditionings, sustaining our talents, phobias and fetishes, our use of voice and body language, how and what we think and feel. Karma is not fate or the result of judgment, then, it is only the process of building habit and reinforcing and evolving memories. Though karma is typically translated to mean action or deed, less often, though more accurately, it is taken to comprise both cause and effect, the whole of causality as instigated and perpetuated by the individual in question. The most all-encompassing word might be “work,” which Nimi had chosen to use.

This encounter, and learning about my work, also built on the Indigo theme in a way that did not at first come to my attention. Later I learned that Tappe had split Indigos into four subtypes.

There is The Conceptualist, who questions the commonly accepted and has a hunger for new ideas and fresh perspectives. They are introverted, observant, calm and logical problem-solvers, potentially inventors or engineers. Then there is The Catalyst, who is polite, philanthropic and enraged by injustice. They are also curious and philosophical, but prefer to learn on their own, which causes problems in school and the world at large, which likely feeds their deep sense of alienation. They tend to force us into new perspectives.

The Humanist is a hyperactive social butterfly that has the tendency to treat everyone equally. They are quick to learn, and so get bored easily, and are focused on seeking out new ways to connect and communicate, primarily via technology. Last but not least, there is The Artist — emotional, empathic and sensitive in general, they are naturally geared towards self-expression in the visual arts, music, dance or writing.

It is often said that the central, unifying purpose of Indigos is to break down the social systems and belief structures we’ve outgrown and pave our way to a better future. Tappe illustrated her own sense of what the Indigo agenda was as well. “Indigos accept individuals for who and what they are and work for the interconnectedness of all,” she writes of them on her website. “Their task is to integrate mankind to one world through a globalization that moves beyond political or economic boundaries and beyond personal biases and prejudices.” It’s not all light and fluffy, however, as Tappe also asserts in an interview transcribed and provided in Tober’s aforementioned book, echoing the description others have given of an Indigo with their third eye incompletely open. She explained that “these young children — every one of them I’ve seen this far who kill their schoolmates or parents — have been Indigos.”

This brings us to one of the central and most controversial aspects of the Indigo: they are often diagnosed as having ADD, ADHD, or OCD, which those supporting the Indigo label insist is a consequence of their resistance to strict, absolute authority systems and the traditional use of fear- and guilt-based manipulation and discipline techniques, which Indigos naturally find intolerable. This tends to cause issues with them in the realm of social adaptation in school, at work, and society at large, say the Indigo supporters, which makes sense given their system-busting purpose. Either out of an unconscious desire to maintain the status quo or a very deliberate attempt to subvert the next step in evolution, the authorities in question seek to marginalize, numb, quell, and control the Indigos, and this is what has resulted in such diagnoses.

Meanwhile, the mainstream regards the “indigo” label as an irresponsible and dangerous new age belief promoted in part by the Forer Effect — which is to say that the qualities allegedly characterizing the children are so vague that they could with little effort be used to describe nearly anyone. Further, they assert that the Indigo label only serves to exacerbate mental disorders by placing a quasi-religious value on them rather than having them properly diagnosed and treated with the prescription pharmaceuticals they require.

There are astounding correlations between my partial memories of what Nimi told me and what Tappe laid out regarding life colors, not to mention associations between the Indigo personality type and my own traits which are difficult for me to overlook. If we accept her alleged ability to perceive auras, it seems conceivable enough that Tappe was able to note associations between people of a certain life color and certain personality characteristics, and even potential subtypes. Despite that, there is doubtlessly a lot of bullshit mixed in with the truth, if indeed a morsel of it holds up to scrutiny. I only hope that eventually science finds a way to detect and study this energy and incorporate it into our overall understanding of ourselves and the cosmos. Until then, it remains an undeniable experiential reality and the available models provide, at the very least, a fascinating reality tunnel to peer through.

Porch Light & Invisibility.

I just don’t get it.

Some days, it’s like I’m a porch light on a cool, summer evening attracting every phototactic insect in my vicinity. It seems I can’t get a moment of peace. People don’t get the hint and they’ll keep talking to me, keep venting, keep spilling, sometimes following me around everywhere — even the fucking bathroom. I try to hide, but someone always finds me, like I’m sending out some psychic beacon.

Other days, it’s the polar opposite. As hard as I try, I can’t get anyone’s attention. It’s like I’m fucking invisible. It makes me want to scream in their faces.

Depression and frustration plague me on invisible days; anger and anxiety when I’m a porch light.

I prefer the middle road, and I suppose that happens often enough, but why is it Others seem to react to me as if they were a joint psychic entity?

Of Fish & Firstborn Sons.

“Maybe you’ll stand. Maybe you’ll give and break to find another way and make things better. Maybe you’ll find a life you can live and learn to love along the way.”
Isolation, Alter Bridge.

Though Moe and I had planned on it during my vacation the week before, there was a miscommunication, so we elected to go kayaking and fishing the following Friday. I had literally been talking about kayaking again for years, eager to feel that sort of energetic peace I get when around bodies of water in general and eager to kayak specifically, and finally I was going to follow through. Moe had offered that we fish, too, and despite not having fished for some time and my unexplained disgust and refusal to eat anything aquatic, that sounded appealing as well.

So that Friday I got up early, went through my often enduring waking up process, and headed his way. After shooting the breeze at his house as we (mostly him) prepared the fishing poles and lures and all that, we got some drinks, I got a fishing licence, we loaded up his two kayaks and then left for a nearby, private lake.

Being on the water was fucking spectacular, as expected — for some reason, staring at the reflections playing on the disturbed surface induces a calming, cleansing, almost psychedelic state in me. Being surrounded by trees enhanced the cleansing feeling, too. It didn’t bother me much that I probably wouldn’t catch anything, it just felt good to be out in nature. We weren’t even out there for long, either, when, in the midst of talking with Moe, I got a violent bite.

Was I snagged on something?

Pulling back, the pole bowed so much I thought it was going to snap, but the aggressive movement made it clear as day that I indeed had a catch. As I reeled it in, afraid I was going to lose it as it swam beneath the kayak, Moe started paddling towards me like crazy. He pulled it up, mind blown, mind blown even further that I didn’t seem as mind blown. In his estimation, it was a large-mouthed bass of roughly five pounds. We didn’t bring anything to take it home with, however, and both of us had left our phones in the car, so I couldn’t even get a photo.

My immediate thoughts? Dad will be proud.

Hours later, when we returned to solid Earth and prepared to leave around nine in the evening, I finally got a chance to check my phone. I thought about texting my father about the fish, but it turned out that he had already texted me.

His text read, simply: Check your texts.

This seemed silly, for to follow his instructions I would have to have first, well, followed his instructions. To make matters more perplexing, his text was the only text. Even so, I knew what it was about, no matter how much I might try to convince myself otherwise, and my heart kind of sank. It was about my mother’s older brother. My uncle Fred. The ever-lingering concern as of late.

Cue flashback sequence.

When they were growing up, my mother once told me, she would be amused to see him sit on the edge of his bed in the morning, half asleep, chin propped up by a fist like those statues called The Thinker. She also always joked that he looked like a monkey, so one year, I think it was for Christmas, I did a pastel work of a monkey in The Thinker pose as a gift for her. I liked the inherent contradiction in the image — not to mention the fact that it served as a pretty good metaphor for how she perceived her brother in general.

He was a fairly hairy guy, so I’m sure that had something to do with the monkey thing, but she also saw him as rather un-evolved in certain ways. He wasn’t too social, wasn’t great with girls, and he was rather inept at taking care of himself. She told me once that when he finally got a place of his own he had to call their mother, as he hadn’t the foggiest idea how to do laundry.

The fact that he was catered to in his youth by his parents, my mother has often said, did him no favors. Fred being catered to by his parents didn’t do me any favors, either, as it turned out.

It’s not too complicated. Fred was the first child. Clearly, he was also a son, and being the firstborn son made him the golden child in his parents’ eyes, which stuck my mother in his shadow, where she grew quite cold about it, and understandably so. Her revenge was sought in an indirect fashion called transference. In other words, when it came to be that her first child turned out to be a son she took out her vengeance on him — me — as a sort of involuntary stand-in for her brother. She inverted the value system that her parent’s cradled. Her parents treated Fred like the golden child; as I grew up, mom treated me, well, like shit. It was only when she retired and became a grandmother that our relationship changed, and I like to see all that bullshit as being behind us now.

Despite her critiques of her brother, however, mom also frequently remarked how Fred was remarkably intelligent. Though he never confirmed it, she was also convinced he had a photographic memory. And to me, he was always the super-smart guy around — at least that’s the way I saw him as a kid.

I remembered how he always visited on the holidays, though typically having forgotten to get everyone gifts in the style of an absent-minded professor. He’d spend most of his time drinking coffee and reading one of his sci-fi novels while simultaneously watching the Sci-Fi Channel. Sometimes he would go and play a game on the computer. If I had questions regarding science or technology, he was always the guy to ask.

For a short period he was married, though my mother always said marriage never suited him and suspected the cold bitch he’d ended up with was only in it for the money. After the divorce, he got a dog, a rambunctious dalmatian, and since the dog’s death in the late 80s or early 90s, Fred has lived alone in his house in Cincinnati, where my parents maintain he originally moved to escape his mother. He was diagnosed with COPD several years back, quit smoking and ultimately retired.

From as early on as I can recall he was always complaining about his job at the time. What the job was, how much he made, where it was located — none of that ever seemed to make a difference. And I’ve always understood that, understood it all too intimately, but I assumed that retirement would be his time to shine. That he’d live it up. Be happy. Without a job, he could live by his own rules. Read his books, watch sci movies, fish, shoot his guns, and so on. He lived serving other people’s interests his entire life, but now his life could be his own.

After he retired, though, things just seemed to get worse. As time went on, he turned into a hypochondriac, constantly thinking things were physically wrong with him when it became increasingly clear to others that, aside from his COPD, his issues were largely psychological and self-inflicted. He complained he couldn’t drive because he couldn’t catch his breath on the way to his truck, for instance, and despite the fact that he was clearly having an anxiety attack, he denied it. He finally went to a psychiatrist, but stopped shortly thereafter. Despite him constantly going to see doctors, he considered them all useless quacks who knew diddly dick.

He came down for the holidays increasingly infrequently. He often wouldn’t even answer my mother’s emails, texts or calls. He also refused to let my mother come down to visit him; she suspected it was because he was embarrassed what she’d think when she saw the house. Though I forget how it happened, mom made friends with his neighbor, who she described as a kind lady who also cared and worried about him. The neighbor visited him, though he never let her in the house, either, and they shared suspicions that Fred had become a hoarder. She sort of became Mom’s secret contact, her secret agent, someone with whom she had a covert alliance and through whom she could keep an eye on her declining sibling.

When the neighbor informed my mother that she would soon he moving to Florida, Mom became understandably worried that without her help she would just discover he had died one day, likely some time after it happened, and be left to sort through a house packed to the brim with junk.

Then something amazing happened. Out of the goddamned blue one day, Fred actually called Mom. Stranger still, he openly declared to her that he needed help, as he just couldn’t live like this anymore.

When I heard this from her, it was a relief. It brought a smile to my face. I was actually proud of him. After all, this couldn’t have been an easy thing for him to do. I mean, imagine it: you spend countless years making money, buying a house, building a life you’re in control of, loathing the mere thought of asking anyone for help as you’re convinced through this suffering life you have, if nothing else, gained some sort of independence and autonomy, some liberty, some true, goddamned personal freedom — and then, suddenly, you are forced to face the fact that you just can’t do it alone anymore. Your life has become a hopeless, unmanageable, dilapidating bag of festering shit and you have to summon up the courage to swallow your pride and ask a trusted loved one, someone who has been trying to nurture and sustain a bond with you for years to no avail, for help. Allowing degrees of vulnerability you’ve likely never expressed to flower as you show that person — mom, in this case — that you trust her more than anyone else.

Mom later told me she suspected that the real reason he called her was because someone had reported him to Health and Human Services and he needed her help so that he could make a more convincing case to them that he really didn’t need help. While this killed my buzz, it seemed to present a far more likely scenario.

Yet again, cynicism wins.

He was in the hospital when Mom first came down, and without telling him, she went into his house. Uninvited. And it was horrid. His nesting instinct had gone awry, gotten stuck in overdrive.

He was indeed a hoarder.

She’d brought their German Shepherd down with her. It was roughly a four-and-a-half hour drive and, particularly given the fact that she had never driven that far before alone, she needed the company and sense of security the aging pooch could provide. As they entered the house, the dog was afraid to move, refused to enter the place.

My parents are very clean and orderly, at least with respect to the majority of houses I’ve been to in my life, so the poor pooch was not acclimated to this kind of environment. Not in the fucking least. The same was true of my younger sister, Linda, and mom’s story about the dog immediately reminded me of it.

When my youngest sister was very young, my mother had brought her to our cousin’s house. I forget if mom was feeding their animals while they were away or what the exact circumstances were, but my sister felt so threatened by the cluttered surroundings that she clung to my mother’s leg the entire time. Unsurprisingly, my sister’s house, now that she has helped build a family of her own, is perhaps even cleaner than our parents’.

Once my mother cleared a path for the dog, she actually submitted to entering the mouth of that maddening house. Mom then cleaned a room and left, if I remember correctly. In any case, she returned home enlightened, now at least aware of her brother’s living conditions and capable of beginning the process of acclimation to the epic mess she was going to have to deal with when he finally shed his mortal coil. And, hell, she even got a head start on sorting through the garbage heap that she was doomed to inherit as well.

When he finally conceded to allowing her to see him at his house, which in his eyes was the first time she saw the place, mom was somewhat acclimated to her surroundings, psychologically prepared for what it looked like — and so was spared the inevitable double-whammy, for it immediately became apparent that she was not at all psychologically prepared for what he looked like.

He was deathly skinny and had long hair and beard. Her overall description made me imagine an unkempt, severed Jesus head atop the pike of a stick figure’s body clad in baggy clothes — though to be fair, I wasn’t there.

She continued to go down there once, twice a week, cleaning the house, doing all she could to help him get better. However much she persisted, he wouldn’t eat or drink, save when he tried to get her to stay, and couldn’t even make it the short distance to the bathroom before having an anxiety attack and calling it quits. No wonder he couldn’t make it to his truck to drive down to us for the holidays.

He was in and out of the hospital and she tried to get him into assisted living, but he resisted. He just kept getting worse. He started calling mom at three or four in the morning, usually over a disturbing, vivid, paranoid-fuelled dream he’d mistaken for reality. From the hospital, he was put in a nursing home, where he swiftly graduated to a hospice, which was thankfully also in the hospital.

Simultaneously, my parents continued going through the house, which is an ongoing chore for them. He hadn’t opened his mail in some time. There were bills from years ago, gift cards we’d sent him, even presents, all unopened. There were bags of new clothes and appliances he had bought, dropped, and left unopened on tables, on the floor. Packets of batteries were everywhere, some corroded despite being unopened. Bags of rotting, unopened food. Plastic bags that were disintegrating as soon as they were touched, they were so old. Since he had the aforementioned difficulty making it to the bathroom, he had also evidently taken up the habit of pissing in empty Evian bottles. There were guns and ammo buried in every room. At one point, Mom had gathered up some clothes for him to bring to the hospital. Once they got there, she discovered there were bullets in one of the pockets.

This old hoarder house was armed to the fucking teeth.

There were also the pills, some for various conditions he thought he had, others for anxiety and depression. Some he had taken for awhile before stopping, others he had never opened.

Then there was the locked room. What could be in there? I thought it, too, but my sister, Eve, the middle child, was the one who actually verbalized it to Mom one day when they were discussing the room:

“Whatever happened to his dog’s body when it died?”

My parents burst into laughter.

My two predictions were the dead dog (though mostly in jest) or that it was a porn room. When the door was ultimately opened: porn it was. Magazines, DVDs, even a box of VHS tapes. There was a dildo and other sex toys. Not to give the impression that the porn was limited to the porn room, mind you, as they found when they started bringing bags of stuff they’d excavated from the Cincinnati hell house back home to go through. Dad was reading something in their upstairs bathroom, a magazine of Fred’s, and found an interesting makeshift bookmark in the process. It was a signed photo of a stripper calling him by name and thanking him for “cumming.”

Still, it beats finding a dead dog. I mean, I guess.

A few weeks ago, upon visiting my parents, I was out by the fire pit in the backyard when my mom slowly approached me and told me she wanted to talk to me about something. She knew Fred had a lot of money, but she had no idea how much until she started dealing with his finances. She said that what she wanted to do was give us all a cut and that I should use mine to find a place nearer to home.

I tried not to get too excited, particularly given the guilty feeling it gave me considering how I might profit from the death of a loved one, but I couldn’t help but imagine the ease this would give me. I didn’t have to worry that I’d find a place near my parents place but not a nearby job, so I’d have to commute between there and where I work now, a good distance away — or find a job but not a place, which would be equally shitty.

What if my car broke down?

In any case, that would elicit unbearable anxiety, particularly in the winter months. That’s why, as much as I’ve wanted to move, I haven’t.

It would be a far easier transition knowing there was some significant cushion in my bank account. With the money, I might even be able to buy a trailer, and after paying it off I’d only have the lot and utilities to worry about. I’d never have to move again or worry about not having a place to live — and family would be nearby. And I could finally quit this job and find another.

Still, I knew all that was uncertain. I considered his outstanding bills. The nursing home would have cost a lot. Then the hospice.

Then I went kayaking and fishing with Moe and left my phone in the car. When I saw my father’s text, I was hemming and hawing, wondering if it would be rude to Moe to call him then and there, and Moe sensed it and urged me to call. I did. Dad answered. I told him I got his text but no others. Mom later said she tried to send out a group text but might have done it wrong. In the moment, though, Dad cut to the chase, his voice low energy.

“Fred died.”

He passed away on the morning of Friday, July 27, 2019. According to Mom, he had been getting worse. No longer merely confusing dream with reality, he was faithfully believing in false memories and having blatant hallucinations.

It was frightening to contemplate what it must have been like for him. I read Fred’s story, at least the last quarter, like a fucking horror novel. A cautionary tale. I interpret his life like I would a bad dream. A goddamn waking nightmare. It saddens and terrifies me, how he ended up. It was hard not to be bothered by this on an intimately personal level, too, considering mom had for so long treated me like his premature reincarnation.

If there was a message for me in his story, it was clear as fucking day:

This is what could happen. You cannot let this happen. You cannot leave your sisters the kind of stressful fucking mess that your uncle left your mother. Clean your apartment. Pay your bills. Delete your porn, or at least hide it better. Try to get your shit in order, not so as to be someone else but so as to be yourself, and get on the right path lest you deteriorate the way Fred ultimately did.

What the fuck is the right path, though? I mean, where exactly did it all go wrong with him? Where did his life narrative go off the fucking rails and end in delusion and death? Fred had freedom, intelligence and money — all shit that I’m rather shy on — and yet it didn’t make him happy. Didn’t put a dent in his machine of misery.

The following day, my father messaged me. Evidently, Fred had told Mom that he wanted to sell his two houses (in reality, he only has one) and buy a house near the water so he could go fishing. The last time my father had spoken with Fred he’d explained how he’d love to be by a river right now, fishing.

Then, on the very morning he passed away, I go kayaking on a lake, which I haven’t done in years, and fish, which I haven’t done in far longer, and I catch a five pound bass. He couldn’t help but wonder if Fred was channeling me.

Maybe Fred hitched a ride with Moe and I, finally living up his real retirement.

I truly hope so.

D.O.C.

When Claire asked me to go down to Iowa to see her, I was instantly terrified. I’d never flown in a plane before. Never taken a trip out of state alone. And how awkward would it be? I was awkward as fuck when she visited this last summer and I’d seen her two days that were days apart. How much more uncomfortable might a whole week of being around her in a place entirely unfamiliar to me be?

The anxiety was immobilizing. The automatic thoughts were putting in overtime. I kept telling myself, I have to. I have to do this.

So I planned on asking for the vacation time. Before I got to that point — and yes, I was putting it off — I see on Facebook that she’s now in a relationship with a guy she never once mentioned to me despite the frequent texting as of late. Stranger still, I wasn’t so much angry and jealous as I was embarrassed.

Though I’d been ignoring it, the realization had been creeping up on me that she doesn’t care about me the way I care about her. So often she has vented to me via text, and I never did. Until recently. Just once. And she texted back some time later and was polite about it. I’d apologized for the venting and she said I could vent to her whenever I needed to, which again, was a nice thing for her to say, but I could feel the deception. She really didn’t care. I stopped a moment to truly question the bond I always felt we shared. All this time, has it not been that she loves me, at least not in some romantic way, but that she loves the fact that I love her?

In any case, I’ve been blind to the fact that this is one-sided. Which sort of makes sense. She never seemed to get involved with a guy that actually knew her, and that never made sense to me — and I’ve come to accept it doesn’t have to. She never seemed too interested in probing my depths as I did hers, either, and perhaps it was selfish for me to be hurt by that. It is what it is and I’ve been neglecting to see it.

So I decided it was high time to just let go. Fuck it. Stick a fork in it. Her and I? It’s simply not going to happen and I’m tired of the fucked up fairy tale I keep telling myself that eventually it will. After all, wasn’t it I who used to critique her for chasing after a fairy tale that was simply incompatible with objective reality? And here I was. Here I had been for over two decades.

This was my epic hypocrisy.

Since I met her, thoughts of her, dreams of her have been my drug of choice. I was addicted to an illusion and it was time to bear the withdrawal and just get over it.

I was never going to be what she needed. She was never going to be what I needed. Fuck, I’m still not entirely certain I know what I need. It’s more akin to a process of elimination when it comes to me. And so another one bites the dust.

I still hope the best for her and still consider her a friend, of course, though I must admist I am perplexed a bit as to why she didn’t tell me, as she’s told me some incredibly private things over the years. Maybe she thought it would hurt me or maybe she just didn’t feel it needed to be said.

Whichever. Whatever. In any case, it’s none of my fucking business.

I am glad it happened, though; I prefer being aware as opposed to being in denial or being delusional, and I do believe that was where I had been before this realization.

For a short time afterward, it was as if I were riding a high. As a friend of mine put it, it was as if I had given away my power to her and had now gotten it back. I felt calmer, more controlled. I had this boost of mental energy. The anxiety went down, my depression lifted.

Or was it coincidence? After all, I’d been trying to lay off the booze again. I’d also started taking CBD in the hopes that it might alleviate the depression and anxiety, and it did seem to be helping. So all of that may have been a factor as well.

I don’t think I’ll ever get married, as I enjoy my isolation too much, and that never works out in a relationship, or so it has been my experience. Even getting into another relationship after — what has it been? A decade and a half? — seems inconceivable, and for precisely the same reasons.

If there was any girlfriend of mine that I should have stayed with, any relationship that actually held promise, it was Anne. That was something that struck me shortly thereafter. She was intense, intelligent, responsible, incredibly sexual, knew how to make her way in the world, and I do believe that she was the only one who honestly loved me. She just concluded, much as I now have with respect to Claire, that I didn’t care for her the same way she cared for me.

Was that true? I was so hung up on Kate, another ex-girlfriend, at the time that I couldn’t even say. And when Anne and I had had a chance years earlier, I was hung up on Claire. Both Claire and Kate were Virgos from California, had tattoos of the sun, moon and stars on their body — and both obscured any hope Anne had of really reaching me. It was like a ghost taking on alternate manifestations that always stood between her and I.

Shit happens. What goes around, comes around. So it goes, I suppose.

It’s been eight years, so as shallow as it sounds, I do hope I get laid again before I shed my mortal coil, but I’m not holding my breath. But my naive hopes for the perfect and longlasting intimate relationship is all but dead in me.

I feel like I’m at a point in my life where certain possibilities are falling away — and though it initially might seem otherwise, I’m quickly convinced that it’s not entirely a bad thing. Closing the book on particular potentialities, tying up loose ends, it’s like decluttering your life. And focusing on changing what you can, accepting what you can’t be and just letting go: it’s actually quite liberating.

Waves of Man-Hate and Fears of Intimacy.

During work, I’d gone out into the dining room and passed by a table where the wife of one of the managers sat solemnly, head down, lost in her phone. I knew a day or two before that the family had to put down their dog, who they’d had for under a year and who had been very sick for most of the time they’d had her. As I walked passed, I said that I’d heard, and that I was sorry, and as I did so I instinctively touched her arm with my fingers. It was meant as a comforting touch and for all I know that was also how she’d interpreted it, but for the remainder of the day that moment constantly came back to me, sort of haunting me as it played over and over in my head as I worried that I’d intruded on her personal space by touching her and left her feeling violated in some way, which could only have elevated or further aggravated the suffering she was already going through.

At the same time, I realized how absurd this worrying train of thought was. Even so, you can’t be too careful anymore, as things have gotten so bloody absurd that such worrying trains of thought just might be justified.

In today’s culture, the man-hate is strong. It’s surged again lately on Facebook due to the whole heartbeat bill here in Ohio. Men want to control the bodies of women, say the memes, and some begin there and run down the list. Men have held us back, raped us, and so on.

It finally hit the peak in my mind yesterday. To the point that I can’t help throwing my fucking hat into the ring.

Look, I happen to be passionately pro-choice. I also have a penis, and know of others bearing that same kind of appendage who are also pro-choice, so no, not all men feel they have the right to control the bodies of women. I also know women who are anti-abortion, so there are also some women that want to control the bodies of all women. So the man-hate? It isn’t justified. You’re framing it wrong. You’re manipulating facts so that they fit the man-hate narrative. Just fucking stop it. Don’t alienate men who are on your side and ignore the many women who are not.

By written word, spoken word, protests, you should certainly speak out against unjust mindsets, laws, policies, behaviors, and groups of people defined by the ideas and ideals they embrace, particularly when they impose upon your rights — not by groups of people defined by their skin color, genitals, sexual persuasion or country of birth.

It’s a war of ideas, as Sam Harris has explained another issue.

It was the same thing when the #metoo movement amped up, with some loud voices damning men as a whole for being prejudiced towards women as a whole, as if they were trying to cure sexism with — well, sexism. News flash: Two wrongs don’t make a right and you don’t defeat an enemy by becoming them.

Aside from that: you’re just plain wrong.

Not all men treat women like that. Stop being so absolutist. And while we’re on the subject, stop throwing everything into the category of sexual assault. Making someone feel uncomfortable because you verbally came onto them like a naive jackass is not at all equivalent to forcably inserting your part into her hole.

And stop pretending like we should accept accusation without investigation, too — that to doubt an accusation makes one “a part of the problem.” Blind faith is never a good idea.

And by the way: men? They get raped, too.

Again, this makes me glad I’m not in the dating scene. That I’ve given up hope of so much as getting laid ever again. I was anxiety prone before all of this, terrified of approaching a girl or making a move as I might make them feel uncomfortable or violated. Today’s climate has only delivered seeming justification to what many had formerly dismissed as ridiculous paranoia on my part.

Call for a Part-Time Experiential Exchange Program.

I’ve come to accept some limitations.

After a certain point, I just don’t feel it’s healthy to watch the news anymore. I mean, I want to be informed, but I can’t stop caring about what I’m learning about in the process, and said data never ceases to be distressing.

I have the same issue with individual people: after a certain point, it just becomes too fucking much. I need to isolate, process, find my center so I can assure myself that I’m not losing myself in this maddening mess of masks. I have a bottomless bucket of fucks and donate them far too liberally, in a fashion far too reactionary.

So involuntary empathy can be a very unhealthy thing, yes — but so can the other extreme, and it seems to me most people are more oriented towards that other extreme. Even with respect to people who are in a position in life they were formerly in, which one would think would provide conditions most fertile for empathy, people have amnesia to a mind-blowing degree. And with respect to those fundamentally different from them? It seems nearly impossible.

And I hope I’m just being pessimistic. Prejudgemental.

And it’s not as if I wish people were as insanely hypersensitive as I am; I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. Other people, their emotions are chaotic and seem largely focused on themselves. Too much of that, particularly in large groups, like at work, quickly becomes intolerable.

I remember encountering what I reckon to be my extreme opposite, which doesn’t represent the majority of the population, but the minority we call psychopaths. Or sociopaths. There is a distinction, or so I’ve heard, but I’m unclear what it us. In any case, around them I felt eerily calm. I felt little to nothing from them and it was a strange sort of relief.

I need some of what they’ve got. They need a dose of what I have. That’s all.

I guess what I’m saying is: we could use a part-time experiential exchange program.