Why Repair What You Can Throw Away?

I recently took my 14-year-old son, William, to buy new clothing.  He has suddenly shot up like a bean pole, as so many teenagers do, and none of the clothes I bought him only a few months ago still fit.  He has a school band concert coming up and the required attire for boys is black dress pants, a white long-sleeved shirt, black socks, black dress shoes and a tie in a color of his choice.  Naturally, no one notified me of this important dress code until only a couple of days before the concert.

William and I made a mad dash to the mall.  I had forgotten that it was the weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday - let's just call it Hellish Shopper Weekend.  I figured Macy's Department Store was a good starting place.  The problem was that William was suddenly betwixt and between Boy's and Men's Departments.  He was too tall and had suddenly outgrown the familiar Boy's Department.  I was completely unfamiliar with the Men's Department.  We wandered aimlessly in the Men's Department for a while.  We picked up folded shirt packages with strange inscriptions inside like neck measurements and trousers with alien waist and inseam measurements.  Nothing was simple any more.  Gone were the days of Small, Medium and Large. Worse still, in the lingering days of our lengthy economic recession, department stores are now like large empty wastelands of clothing.  Sales attendants no longer stand around eagerly waiting to assist.  You are lucky if you manage to see a live human being managing a cash register.  Quite literally, you are on your own.

I began to snap under the pressure.  I told William that it was his responsibility to locate his proper clothing.  He gave me blank, but irritated, stares in response.  Clearly, he was more clueless than I was.  We wandered aimlessly for a long time.  Occasionally flipping over shirts or pants, failing to understand their import, and putting them back on the shelves.

I looked helplessly at the cashier who was busy with a long line of Christmas holiday customers.  Clearly, she couldn't give me the least bit of advice.  I then saw a young man walk down an aisle wearing an official-looking badge. I stopped him and asked if he could help us.  He must have taken pity on me, since I looked hot, flustered and annoyed with everything. 

His badge said his name was Jordan.  Jordan chit-chatted with William for a while about high school band concerts.  Then, after a an extended period of time rummaging through all the different sizes of shirts and pants, we managed to find a white shirt with a neck size about a half an inch too large and their smallest pair of pants in terms of waist size.  It wasn't perfect but then nothing was going to be perfect.  William then selected several purple and fuchsia colored neckties, a pair of classic pink suspenders, and black cotton socks.  All that remained were black dress shoes.

"I thought we weren't going to buy any shoes, Mom," said William.  "You said we could repair the old ones." 

"True," I admitted, "but you could use another pair."

"Wow!  Really?" said Jordan.  "I never heard of that before!"

"Heard of what?"

"That you could repair shoes," he said with amazement.

I must have looked at him like he was an alien. Are you kidding me?  (I didn't say that).  "Of course you can repair shoes!" I replied.  "You didn't know that?"

"No, I never heard of that before," said Jordan.  "I always just buy a new pair."

"You can repair the sole, the heels, get them polished, and they look like new," I said in shock that the words were coming out of my own mouth.  I felt like someone from a different century.  And then I couldn't resist adding, "You know, that's what's wrong with your generation.  You don't understand the concept of repair."

And the more I thought about it, the more I began to think Jordan's ignorance about shoe repair is symptomatic of a much larger problem on our planet.  For the last century, we have made an art out of manufacturing items - anything from nylon stockings to washing machines to cars - with planned obsolescence which forces the consumer to go back and buy new products after a short period of time. 

When nylon stockings were first invented in 1939, DuPont made the terrible mistake (in retrospect) of making such strong nylon material that their stockings never got runs or snags.  The company soon discovered this meant consumers didn't need to buy a lot of stockings.  So they began manufacturing purposely defective nylon stockings.  So, as every woman knows,  it is not unusual to only be able to wear a pair of stockings once before you have to throw them away because they are ruined by tiny snags in the nylon.  As humans, operating on the principal of maximum profit, we have taught each other to discard, throw away, abandon perfectly good objects simply because we did not know how to repair them.  The old "Home Economics" high school class, which taught skills like sewing and cooking, was mocked by my generation and replaced with much loftier sounding classes like "Website Design" or "The History of Fashion."

At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I believe that with natural resources in a state of depletion and our planet choking in its own pollution, we need to learn the lost art of repair.  Children of the earth - I urge you to learn the simple tasks of repairing and mending, instead of tossing things in a garbage heap.

Jess Weiss - The Spiritual Warrior

Jess E. Weiss

Last June, I had the pleasure and the honor of meeting well-decorated World War II veteran Jess E. Weiss.  He was the keynote speaker at an event given by ACREFEU an organization of French reserve officers in New York City.  Although he was frail, required a walker and a hearing aid, at the age of 97 years old, Jess was amazingly able to deliver a riveting, coherent 45 minute speech at the podium.  He was truly remarkable. 

Jess was a combat veteran who fought in many of the most active and terrifying war arenas during World War II in Normandy, France, Belgium, North Africa, Sicily and Germany.  On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Jess was corporal squad leader with the Second Battalion, Sixteenth Infantry, First Division - better known as "The Big Red One" - this was one of the very first army infantries to launch the devastating and bloody assault on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France.  Many of you might actually recognize Jess.  He was invited by NBC-TV to return to Omaha Beach in 1994, on the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, and interviewed by Tom Brokaw, author of "The Greatest Generation," as the oldest survivor of this event.

Prior to his presentation, my husband played some scenes from Spielberg's 1998 movie "Saving Private Ryan" as the young American soldiers landed in the water off the coast of Normandy and were immediately killed like sitting ducks by Germany strongholds above the beach.  I was given the honor of sitting next to Jess at the dinner table.  I could barely watch the movie because the scenes of blood, gore and terror were all too real.  I turned several times to look at Jess to see how he was reacting to this fictionalized version of what had happened to him in real life.  He seemed to be slowly shutting down.  His feeble body crumpled a bit and he closed his eyes.  As the movie got louder and more frightening, I jumped out of my seat and begged my husband to stop the movie.  I was afraid it was going to kill my frail neighbor at the dinner table.

My husband obligingly stopped the movie.  Jess opened his eyes and returned to the room.  I asked him if he was okay, and he smiled and said he would be fine.  He and I spoke for a while about death and dying, and his lifelong battle with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which was not a diagnosed condition in his soldier days.  In fact, absent a physical injury, he and other young soldiers who survived D-Day were quickly sent back into battle.  He had spent a lifetime trying to deal with sudden panic attacks (even the sound of raindrops made him hide under tables) and wondering why he had survived when none of his buddies had lived.  What I hadn't expected was that our conversation would take a turn into the spiritual realm, and we talked about near death experiences, out of bodies experiences, and clairvoyance.  He and I immediately, and strangely, felt like two peas in a pod. 

What I did not know at the time was that he was the author of several books.  He had written two in particular, "Warrior to Spiritual Warrior" and "The Vestibule," that I found particularly fascinating.  It turned out that he had written about near death experiences before Dr. Raymond Moody coined the term and became famous as the pioneer in the field.  In fact, Jess had compiled first hand accounts of several people who had died briefly and returned to tell a tale of continuing as a spirit in a spirit world beyond death.  Jess worked extensively with Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross, a pioneer in the field of exploring death.  Jess did not fear death.  He seemed to welcome it on some level because he understood the spiritual continuation.

When I read certain passages in his book, I could not imagine what he had endured in real life and then for decades thereafter in his mind.

"But many on our LCT were new recruits who had not yet experienced combat.  I knew this because of the way they talked, how they carried their gear, and by the fact that they did not have the Big Red One shoulder-patch insignia.  To these recruits, the shelling [as they neared Omaha Beach] sounded like the Fourth of July.  Several of them even stood up to get a better view of what was happening.  Without a thought, I screamed to them "Hit the deck!"  But it was too late.  German artillery decapitated two of them and several others were severely wounded.  A buddy named Braddock and I gave the wounded what first aid we could.

The amphibious tanks were designed to splash into the water and chug ashore.  But under  the intense fire, many LTC's dropped their ramps hundreds of yards from the shore, and their tanks sank like lead caskets, their crews drowning before they could swim free.  When our ramp came down, we were aground on a sandbar a few hundred yards from shore.  A hail of bullets hit the surf right in front of the lowered ramp.  There already were hundreds of GIs struggling to keep from drowning in the rough waters, and some were attempting to dive underwater to escape the deadly machine-gun fire.  Weighted down with full field gear, we were temporary floating targets."  ("The Vestibule," p. xxvii)

This is a man who knew a thing or two about the horror of death. 

Jess and I exchanged several emails after that evening.  I asked him if he would be interested in being a guest on my CBS radio show "Hot Leads Cold Cases." (I had already interviewed Dr. Raymond Moody and many near-death experiencers).  He agreed to do the interview and wrote:

Dear Nancy:
I know last evening was an honorable occasion reminding us of the greatest
war in history, WW II's Normandy's Omaha Beach, and know it was an honor and
a pleasure to be a part of it.
It was not a subject I wish too or preferred to talk about, but your husband
Patrick's realization of what Omaha Beach meant to France and the USA
touched my dutiful sense of justice.
Sitting next to you was a sense of togetherness that transcended the subject
of finite life was truly comforting, uplifting and a sense of Oneness.
God bless you and your delightful family,
Sincerely,
Jess

He stopped responding to emails shortly thereafter.  I learned that on October 27, 2013, Jess had passed away.  I kicked myself for not acting faster to set up my interview and failing to recognize that at age 97 every day counts.  This gentle man, with a profound knowledge of life and death, has joined the spirit world and knows the answers to his questions. 

James Vigilante

Postscript:  The day I wrote this blog, I learned a new friend of mine (who I met the exact same month I met Jess Weiss), a  U.S. Air Force Reserves Master Sgt., Morris County Republican Committee member and former Parsippany Town Councilman, died that same morning of a sudden heart attack.  I had just seen and spoken with him one week earlier.  I sensed something was "off" but didn't know what at the time.  In retrospect, I recognize it was because he had a gray aura.  Jim Vigilante was a tall, good-looking guy apparently in the prime of his life and good health - he was only 49 years old. 

So, the lesson is that every day counts ... no matter whether you are 97 or 49 years old.  Life is short.  There, but for the grace of God, go all of us....  Tell the people you love, that you love them because today could be the last opportunity.



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Dreamscapes in Nevada

 

The best show I've ever seen in my life!  Cirque de Soleil's "Le Reve" - meaning "The Dream" -  began my dreamscape experience in Las Vegas last week. 

 

I visited a reputedly haunted saloon built on the outskirts of Las Vegas in 1913.  Supposedly a gambler was shot in this room after he was caught cheating on a hand of poker.  As I starting taking photos, I could see with my naked eye, orbs of blue light flying directly in front of my camera from all directions.  None of them registered in any of my photos except this one (see above).

 Artificial dreams of glitz, glamour and gambling - courtesy of Steve Wynn.

I can always dream can't I?  Sitting in one of the latest private corporate jets on display at the aerospace industry show at Henderson Airport.

I look fairly hardy for a person who has only ever hiked twice and had never seen a desert in her life!

 



 

 A real-life oasis in the desert!

 

 

Thirty degrees colder during this hike in snow-capped mountains outside the desert.  Different stones, mountains and dreamscape altogether.

 

 

 

This caught my fancy in the Las Vegas airport.  It is the image of an airplane made of paper butterflies.

As seen from the air, coming and going, entering this land of fire and water.

I took this photo in the desert while daydreaming about the inspiration of shamans.  Unlike any other photo I took (and I took approximately 200 in the desert), this one reveals not only rainbow-like rays of sunshine but also a peculiar clear dome shape.  It might be the lens reflecting on my iphone.  But this photo struck me as very strange - made me think of UFOs some of which are clear and/or cloaked.  Further, when I downloaded all my photos and adjusted them for contrast and brightness, this was the only photo that my computer refused to permit any adjustments.  It says it is "read-only" and yet I never did anything to this photo.  Perhaps this photo represents the perfection of the beauty of the desert!

It was difficult for me to imagine ever having such an extraordinary view from my hotel window.  This photo doesn't begin to do justice to the beauty of the ring of mountains, the panoramic cityscapes (neon at night) and the huge skies.

Okay, sometimes dreams can be induced - with alcohol or even politics!

The desert, as I have learned, is beautiful for its geology, which has always been an interest of mine since I was a child.  I collect rocks.  I examine the bedrock along highways.  Here it is abstract art.  The desert is the beauty of colored stones, mountains, outcroppings, boulders, and dry vistas.

In the Nevada desert, I began to understand why anyone would go on a spiritual journey in this place.  It is enormous, silent, untouched by humans, wild, and the rocks begin to acquire a life of their own.  The desert is almost hallucinogenic.  I could see faces, animals, hieroglyphics, cities, oceans - anything - in the shapes of these strange rocks.  They spoke to me.  Above I see a speaking mouth!

Out of Body Conversations

Last week, I found myself in a quiet moment thinking about Deputy Dog and his sidekick Droopy (see above).  Strange - very strange - I thought to myself, because I have not thought about either of them - not once - for about 40 years.  As a kid, before the days of the Cartoon Network or Cable TV, I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons.  One of the coolest things my dad ever did was to come down and sit with me and my brother on the sofa starting at 6AM all the way until nearly noon every Saturday morning and watch the cartoon lineup.  Our favorites were Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Dudley Do-right was okay.  I was never that crazy about Yogi Bear and his sidekick Boo Boo.  These were all part of the same cartoon series that were obviously created by the same studio - Terrytoons.  My father only really enjoyed Rocky and Bullwinkle because of the overlay of adult humor and references to the Cold War and the American relationship with the shady and evil Boris Badenov (get it? Bad Enough?) and his wife Natasha Fatale.  Further, as we grew up, my parents decided to refer to my brother and I as the Hanna-Barbera private detective cartoon characters, Snoop and Blab (I was dubbed "Snoop" because I had to know everything and my brother Peter was "Blab" because he couldn't stop talking).

At any rate, let's be really clear.  I haven't thought about any of these cartoon characters, and especially not the lesser ones like Deputy Dog and Droopy, for over 40 years.  So it was extremely odd when I found myself in a kind of thinking daydream about them last week.

I happened to get on the phone with a dear friend of mine last night.  She has told me that in the past I have actually visited her, in spirit, in her home.  The first time occurred when we hardly knew each other's names and had only been introduced once.  I apparently visited her home while under anesthesia during surgery.  I had not told her about the surgery or anything else current about my life.  She called me as soon as I walked in the door from surgery and asked if I was okay.  She told me later that I had appeared and told her about certain frustrations I was having with something to do with publishing.  She did not know that I had been forced to sign my publishing contract, with a deadline, the day before I went into surgery. 

Since that time, I have apparently floated across the country to her home in Utah on several occasions.  I do not remember any of them.  Each time, she has called me and confirmed accurate information which she says I told her during my Out-of-Body visit.

When we spoke last night she mentioned Deputy Dog. 

I said, "Wow.  What a coincidence!  I was literally thinking about Deputy Dog last week for absolutely no reason at all." 

She said, "That's because you came to visit me again and I was the one who brought it up!  I was talking about Deputy Dog and his sidekick who used to fly up in the air and then you chimed in and described the way he would float down in the air after he had eaten a tasty bone!" 

She added: "Don't you remember?" 

Frankly, no I don't.  Despite my excellent ability for dream and trance recall, I have zero recollection of ever leaving my body. The fact that she was the one who raised the issue of Deputy Dog would certainly explain why that thought entered my conscious awareness even though I hadn't thought of the cartoon for so many years.

As far as I am consciously aware, I have never had an Out-of-Body experience in my life.  It is certainly very peculiar to be told that I am busy floating around the United States at night and having verifiable conversations with my friend who lives clear across the country!  I was perfectly willing to accept that I wasn't really traveling in spirit at all, and that it was simply my friend's extraordinary ability to tune into aspects of ESP and telepathy.  Prior to this, I was sure it had nothing to do with me.  But this last conversation was so bizarrely accurate it has left me truly wondering if indeed I am flying around at night and simply don't remember! 

The Age of Mental Graffiti

 

We are living in the Age of Mental Graffiti.  Whether you realize it or not, vandals are continuing, every moment of every day of your life, to scrawl their personal messages and vision of the world on the pristine wall of your brain.

People who put graffiti on trains, buildings, sidewalks and walls are souls screaming to be "heard" by someone - anyone at all.  I remember Paris, not that long ago, when it had no graffiti like New York City.  Today, the most beautiful historic buildings are covered with the scrawl of a thousand souls who feel comfortable defacing someone else's property with their own message.

I believe there is a reason for the rise in graffiti and it isn't just because it's considered "cool" or "artistic" now.  I believe it is because we live in such a materialistic society dominated by corporate interests that have so abused our gentle brains that we have become enraged.  We fight back by disrespecting private property and by yelling in spray-painted words.

I am old enough to remember the days when there was just one 60-second commercial on the hour!  Slowly, this morphed into two ads, then a couple of ads on the half hour, then every 15 minutes.  Now, all you have to do is turn on the television - at any time during the day or night - and surf 50 channels without finding a station that isn't airing an advertisement.  Television has turned into one giant cesspool brain-washing machine.  Slowly, I am losing my appetite to be mentally abused. 

Television is not the only place where strangers are scribbling on the walls of your consciousness.  All you have to do is try to read a newspaper online and you must fight your way through a maze of pop-up commercials and video-ads next to the text jumping up and down with ridiculous imagery like a young child fighting to compete with  your attention.  It is annoying.  Look on the floor of your supermarket while you are trying to focus among the shelves of screaming labels, colors, products, and packaging, and you will see large, flat advertisements.  The situation has become so bad you cannot even avert your eyes to a restful place.  They have stolen the quiet moments of peace from your brain! Your telephone has become a new way for these vandals to intrude into your brain.  Park benches, barn walls, inserts in your mail and billing statements, airplane banners at the beach, candy wrappers - everywhere you look, the ad merchants have scribbled their messages.  Going to the movies is no longer a place to watch the movie you came to watch.  You must first be subjected to 10-15 minutes of advertisements for products and other movies.  You are, as usual, a captive audience.

If you are wondering why our politics have become so polarized in this country, just look at "opinionated" or "editorialized" news programs.  They are screaming their opinions.  There is no more polite conversation because of the chronic failure, and now inability, to listen.  Sound-bytes beget violent opinions.  Quiet tolerance is simply not newsworthy. This is another form of Mental Graffiti.

Of course, there is also visual Mental Graffiti.  Architects of the "loudest," most efficient, cheapest types of buildings, such as hideous yellow or red gas stations, fast-food restaurants with giant arches, cartoonish plastic icons, discount box stores, and so on.  These attack my peaceful countryside or town.  They are a strategic assault on my senses.  I do not want to look, but I am compelled.

Here's the problem with this as I see it. 

1. This kind of mental abuse prevents us from connecting with our feelings, thoughts, and environment. 
2. It kills our peace of mind and any ability to meditate.  Without meditation and peace, we are no longer spiritual beings. 
3. It implants the idea that we have needs and desires that do not belong to us.  This, ultimately, inspires unhealthy greed and human greed will bring about Armageddon - or, if you don't like that terminology, let's just call it the End of a Sustainable Earth. 
4. Your thoughts become muddled and confused.  Your brain chatter becomes someone else's chatter.

So, what can you do?  Buy those things which are without graffiti.  Don't be suckered by fancy product packaging with lots of printed, plastic images; seek out the little restaurants without giant blinking signs; turn off the television; explore the mental quiet countryside of your own mind so you begin to understand the spiritual life that is your birthright!  As a psychic medium, I am very conscious of my soul's need - indeed, requirement - to escape the thoughts of others.  As a spiritual being, it is my karmic obligation to explore myself and my lessons in this lifetime.  I suggest you start your own revolution against the vandals of our minds.  If people would do this, the mental vandals would lose their power over us.

The Perfect Medium

I believe if you balance your life correctly you will be both teacher and student, and these will occur in regular cycles.  For several years I have taught psychic development and mediumship in the New York tri-state area, but have not had the opportunity to practice these skills as a student.  I began to feel out of balance.

So I attended an all-day seminar on mediumship given at a local Spiritualist Church in New Jersey led by an exceptionally skilled American medium.  I liked his style, his presentation, his openness and willingness to discuss the human aspects of mediumship, namely, self-doubt and destructive self-criticism for failure to deliver accurate information.  We all suffer when mediums stand up and make grandiose proclamations about their perfect accuracy rates, and then intimidated by our secret self-doubts about our abilities.

I was (to my great relief) not called upon to go to the stage and deliver a message from Spirit to the entire group of about 30 professional mediums.  I felt rusty and out-of-practice for doing "platform mediumship" although I have been teaching it to my own students for many years.  Platform mediumship is a special kind of mediumship.  It is a kind of a stage performance with certain strict protocols.  First, you contact Spirit.  Then you begin to identify the Spirit by gender, age, familial relationship, cause of death, physical description, and then, finally, several bits of very, very specific information that act as "evidence" of a particular Spirit.  You ask if anyone in the audience can "understand this."  Usually, a few people will raise their hands.  You keep delivering more information until you have narrowed down your possible recipients to a single person.  Then you give this person a message from their Spirit.  It is a frightening process since it is so public.  The likelihood of delivering bad or false information in such a public forum is ever-present.  I was glad I was not called on to be the platform medium.  I was happy to sit in the back row and keep my impressions quietly to myself.

At one point, we did an exercise where three students stood on the stage and one by one performed platform mediumship for a woman sitting in the audience.  They established that the Spirit they were contacting was this woman's deceased grandmother - height, hair color, wore flowered dresses, psychic ability, bad ankles, good relationship, etc.  As they were talking, I seemed to tune into the spirit of this woman's grandmother.  She showed me a full-color mental image that was clear, well-defined and totally unexpected.  She showed me a rather large fetus lying inside the uterus.  I was immediately disturbed when I was this baby was not moving and lying very flat.  It was clear the baby was dead. 

When the three mediums finished their work, we all applauded and they left the stage.  Our teacher wrapped up the workshop and people began to go home.  I was left with a familiar feeling - a sense that Spirit was almost pushing my back and forcing me to go to this woman and deliver some message.  This time I ignored my fear.  I approached her and timidly asked her if I could ask her a very personal question about herself which related to her grandmother.  She agreed without hesitation.  I told her she didn't have to answer.

I asked her, " Did you ever lose a fetus?"  (I purposely did not say "baby").

She responded, carefully, "Actually yes.  I haven't thought about it in a very long time.  It was a miscarriage."

"Yes, that's what I saw."

She said, "The baby was very far along and I was nearing the end of my pregnancy."

"That explains why the fetus I saw was so well-developed and looked like a baby."

"Another way this relates to my grandmother," she added, "is that she died on the same day my baby was delivered."

As usual when this works correctly, I was more stunned than she was.

I delivered my message, "Well, she wants you to know she has the baby with her."

I didn't need to say anything more.  Mission accomplished.  Message delivered.  The woman gave me an enormous hug and thanked me for delivering this very important message from her grandmother.  I was ecstatic.  Spirit delivered a double gift - one for her and one for me.  Spirit confirmed that I am indeed a medium despite all my doubts!!!

The Praying Mantis Alien

I have a CBS radio show called "Hot Leads Cold Cases" that airs every Friday from 8-9 PM ET.  I have been hosting this show for several years.  The purpose of the show is to investigate mysteries and the style of the people who investigate mysteries.  Topics have ranged from issues in the paranormal, ufology, science, medicine, law enforcement, archeology, and so on.  Recently, my focus seems to have been drawn, inadvertently or not, to issues of alien abduction.  Alien abduction, as I have begun to learn, is like the little pesky stepchild of ufology.  Because it involves a wide variety of issues that involve dreams, hypnosis, psychology, and subjective impressions (as opposed to spacecraft photos, terrain samples, radar videos, etc.), many ufologists have attempted to distance themselves from the abduction investigators. 

However, among those ufologists who are interested in alien contact and not just objective evidence of alien spacecraft, there has been a split.  There are those who refer to contact with aliens as "abductions" and those who refer to such events, more benevolently, as mere "contact" or "experience."  Having spoken with a number of "abductees" who remain terrified by their bizarre and inexplicable experiences, I have a hard time imagining that all contact with aliens is pleasant.  I have heard reports of excruciating pain, humiliation, neglect, resultant permanent scarring, disease, weird implants, mental reorientation, and even death.  So I am not sure all such alien intentions are pure.  I am also friendly with a growing group of grassroots ufologists who are eager for, and actively seek out, alien contact.  They operate on the assumption that alien intentions are benevolent - not malicious as the abductionists would have you believe!  Is it possible they are both correct? 

Skipping over, for a moment, all the problems of sorting out the difference between subjective terror and the ability of aliens to erase or falsify our memories at will, it seems to me the only way to understand these discrepancies of alien intentions is to fit them into a familiar human model of interaction.  Imagine you are a dog.  If you live in America, chances are you will be a spoiled pet in someone's home eating better than half the humans on earth.  If you live in China, there is a good chance you may end up as someone's dinner.  So, this would be very confusing if you were a dog.  Should you beware of humans or not?  Are humans good or evil?  Same goes for aliens.  To me, this explanation is more satisfying, and a bit more sophisticated, than the idea that there are different species of aliens, some good, some evil.  I believe there can be many different motivations within the same species.

It has taken a lot of my own personal mind stretching to even entertain the idea of different alien species.  While I was minimally able to appreciate the 3-4' tall traditional "grays" (such as those made famous by Hollywood), I figured that "reptilians" and "insectoid" aliens were just the products of juvenile overactive sci-fi minds.  Having read and spoken with a number of abductees who swear by these recollections, I am now more confused.  And it is getting worse.  Given the ability of aliens to apparently create deliberate amnesia, partial recollection or false memories of traumatic encounters with aliens, ANYTHING is now possible.  So where do you draw the line?

Someone asked me recently, "Do you think you have ever been abducted?"  "Absolutely not!" I almost snorted with contempt.  I have no such memories.  But I have had many other experiences which quality as "contact."  (As I write this, two helicopters have flown by and I don't live in an area where that is common - should I interpret that as a "sign" or mere "coincidence"?)  And so, at what point should one assume that "contact" may have been based on some initial abduction that one does not remember?  Am I even qualified to make that judgment?  Are any of us qualified?

I was reminded just two nights ago that when I was five years ago and living in Cambridge, MA, I found a praying mantis in my backyard and decided to make it my "pet."  My entire family was allergic to animals with fur so we were not allowed to have pets growing up.  She was a beautiful insect - with a highly intelligent face, penetrating eyes that could swivel on her triangular head.  I have since learned that these insects have two enormous compound eyes and three simple eyes and they are the only insect that can move its head 180 degrees for an amazing view.  They are capable of seeing up to 60 feet away!  Their front legs are lifted off the ground and folded together in a "prayer" position.  So they have a weird quasi-spiritual aspect to them.  Despite this gentle demeanor, they are fearsome predators.  The females are famous for eating their sexual partners after having sex.  I put my praying mantis, who sat on a small weed stalk, under a jar.  I fed her crickets from the nearby window well.  However, after a day or two, I realized she was going to die without oxygen under the jar, so I reluctantly removed it.  To my surprise, she stayed there for about a week.  Every day I would find cricket legs in a pile of leftover food debris under her stalk.  To this day, I love praying mantis'.  In retrospect, could she have been a "screen memory" of a praying mantis alien?  That patently ridiculous possibility is as good as anything else.  That's my problem!

Shops Lost in Wonderland

As a child, my favorite book was "Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass."  I quoted the book in my high school yearbook.  Chapter 5 of "Through the Looking Glass," entitled "Wool and Water," contains a particularly haunting scene.  In a dreamlike sequence, Alice suddenly finds herself in a small, dark curiosity shop facing a sheep who is seated and knitting.  Every time Alice tries to look at the items on the shelves of the shop, the shelves appear to be empty and yet the shelves next to them are loaded with lots of fascinating and colorful items.  The sheep is as annoyingly literal and nonsensical as many of Lewis Carroll's other literary characters who also speak in riddles and puzzles.  Eventually, the shop turns into a row boat and Alice finds herself fishing for crabs. I have had the experience of being in three shops in my lifetime that reminded me of Alice's curiosity shop with the strangely metamorphosing sheep shop owner.  As it turned out, these shops, tucked away in tiny corners easily missed by most pedestrians, strangely all had store names suggestive of their time warp realities...

1.  TOMORROW'S HEIRLOOMS (Princeton, NJ)



 (The thigh bone of a T-Rex dinosaur at "Tomorrow's Heirlooms")

 "Tomorrow's Heirlooms" is a very small gemstone shop located in Princeton, NJ.  The entire store is loaded with odd shelves, floor to ceiling, filled with handcrafted jewelry, sumptuous precious and semi-precious stones, colorful split geodes, crystal wands, strings of stones, boxes of unusual-looking crystals.  I had seen a pendant in the old-fashioned curved countertop, made of two dazzling white dreuzy opalescent quartz crystals.  It had become the subject of my dreams, so I decided to make the hour and half drive to Princeton to buy it. 



The shop owner, John Miller, showed me other dreuzy quartz pendants and gave me a quick education in the geologic background and relative values of these stones.  Seeing my enthusiasm, he beckoned me to a large, messy cabinet behind the desk.  He told me it was filled to the brim with 400,000 cut stones, most of which he had located and cut himself.  He pulled out tray after tray with the most extraordinary sampling of gorgeous stones - black stones covered in gold filigree ressembling floral patterns, rutilated quartz, landscape and sunset agates, tiny fossilized plants, aquamarine, tourmaline, polished volcanic ash and obsidian, and so on.  I told him I imagined heaven probably contains a similar degree of color, beauty and diversity.  He said he didn't believe in heaven, but agreed with me that it seemed logical enough if heaven does in fact exist.  He handed me a loupe and gave me a $50,000 black opal with extraordinary "fire" the size of a grapefruit seed to examine.  The stone blazed with red, yellow and green fire.  He told me stories, along the lines of Indiana Jones, of waiting to meet  Russian bootleggers of rare (and illegal) Russian rainbow pyrite in a Las Vegas desert, after pre-paying many thousands of dollars.  He showed me what looked like a giant dinosaur egg, cracked open to reveal a furnace of sparkling multi-colored crysals.  Up at the top of a shelf near the ceiling, he showed me antler-like extinct blue coral that he had purchased by putting a second mortgage on his home to his wife's dismay, and eventually cutting into tiny gray-blue beaded necklaces. 

He handed me a raw green stone, the size of a small apricot, and asked me to guess what it was.  Clearly not jade, apatite, tourmaline - ever so slightly translucent.  In fact, it was a Colombian emerald with a single flaw in the center.  He had found this emerald with his toes dipped in a river in the jungles of Colombia.  Then he pointed me to the back of the room, on the floor was what appeared to be a giant piece of petrified wood with red freckles on the ends.  He told me to pull it out.  He had found this at the age of 14 out west, and it was the thigh bone of a T-Rex dinosaur!  I touched the polished bone of this unbelievable creature and felt like the luckiest person in the world.  The red freckles were actually the blood vessels.  I finally purchased my pendant, which in retrospect resembles a spiritual entity or ET.  The owner refused to take my card, saying he would only lose it, and so I left, after an hour and a half, half expecting the shop to disappear behind me!

2.  L'AUTRE JOUR (Nancy, France)

(Interior of "L'Autre Jour" restaurant/antique store in Nancy, France)





While traveling in France, I encountered another of these magical shops.  My husband and I decided to stop in the town of Nancy in eastern France on our way back from Germany to Paris.  I had always wanted to see the town that bore my name.  As I was very hungry, I jumped out of the car once inside the old part of the city, and walked toward the first restaurant I saw.  It was called "L'Autre Jour" which translates into "The Other Day" referring to the past.  That should have been a clue for me. 

We entered this very ecclectic, old-fashioned  restaurant and were seated at a wooden table in a tiny room at the rear of the restaurant.  We were the only customers.  As we sat waiting for our meal, I noticed that the walls were entirely covered with vintage prints, paintings, fabrics, old candle sconces, vases, plates, and other antique oddities.  There were lots of little tables and cabinets crammed with silver items, teapots, jewelry, ceramic figurines, bronze statues, and so on.  It felt as though we had walked into a time warp.  I decided to go look for the ladies room.  I explored the downstairs a bit.  The glass cabinets were strangely filled with labeled items such as Josephine Baker's original stage costume jewelry and feathers.  A tiny wooden spiral staircase led upstairs which was equally filled with antiques.  I discovered heavily decorated painted hidden paneled doors leading to tiny hidden rooms upstairs.  Near the front door downstairs, I discovered a pile of books written about horses next to a collection of rare old red wines.

As I stood there, trying to imagine where I was, a man entered the restaurant.  He had a tall, dark silhouette, was wearing a long black overcoat and riding boots.  He dramaticalljy held the leashes of two elegant extremely thin whippet purebred dogs wearing a brilliant jeweled collars.  This man was clearly not of the same century.  He looked like Jane Eye's Victorian lover, Edward Rochester, stepping in from the English countryside.  I forget why or how, but we began speaking (in French of course).  His name was Alain Saintot and he was the owner of the restaurant/antique store.  As it turned out, the book about the horses was his own work.  He revealed that he had nearly died in a car crash in 2004, had suffered brain trauma and chronic pain, nearly lost his eye sight and balance, a many other severe delilitating effects.  He had begun working with horses and became convinced that they had somehow sensed his injuries and had intentionally healed him.  He now works with horses as a healing modality and lives in a small town known as Plombières-les-Bains, known for its volcanic hot springs since the time of the Romans and visits from European nobility.  He and I instantly seemed connected.  As unlikely as it was, he understood my psychic background and career.  We exchanged our books, and promised to stay in touch, which we did.

3.  PARACELSO (New York, NY)



 (Paracelsus, the Swiss-German alchemist)

The third shop which reminded me of Alice in Wonderland's strange curiosity shop was located in Manhattan.  I had been wandering around the Soho area of New York one day with some girlfriends doing some completely frivolous girl-shopping.  The others had found a clothing store with the standard trendy items.  I wondered on, somewhere on Broadway, and came upon a very odd clothing store.  In the same manner as the gem stone shop and the French antique restaurant, this store was crammed from floor to ceiling with the most fascinating, strange and beautiful articles of clothing strewn about and displayed in a seemingly haphazard fashion - flung over tables, on top of lamps, on hangers over mirrors and so on.  It seemed to be a kind of heavenly experience of gorgious textures, colors and concepts.  I tried on a lavender/plum sheer organza jacket and orange embroidered silk scarf.  One of my friends, Andrea, found me in the store and came inside. 

As we marveled at all the exquisite garments, I almost bumped into a strange, small, gypsy-complexioned woman seated cross-legged on a chair, with the appearance of a yogi levitating, almost completely surrounded by mountains of merchandise.  She was wearing a flowing, full-length skirt, had a large skarf wrapped dramatically around her neck, and her entire face was painted with giant streaks of blue and green paint across her cheeks, forehead and nose. 
My friend Andrea took one look and walked away in total confusion.  I, on the other hand, decided to strike up a conversation with this woman.  It turned out, according to her, that she was a very famous Italian clothing designer and her clients included the likes of rock stars like Lenny Kravitz.  The paint on her face - which resembled either Native American war paint smeared rather badly or a partial clown face painting - was entirely intentional.  It was difficult to look at her without staring.  She said it was her own statement regarding cosmetics.  She made no apologies for her weird appearance.  We talked for a very long time and Andrea kept tapping her watch and sending me glowering glances.  I learned the name of the shop was "Paracelso" and the owner's name was Luxor Tavella.  Luxor is the name of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes across the Nile from the Valley of the Kings and Queens.  I asked what Paracelso meant.  It turned out Parcelsus was a Swiss-German Hermetic alchemist!  He was known as the father of toxology, famous for saying: "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."  He believed three elements, mercury, sulphur and salt, were spiritual elements in medicine. Luxor clearly understand the weird nature of her store, naming it in honor of the great alchemist! 

I purchased the jacket and Andrea and I left the store.  That would not have been so strange, except that I looked for that store for several years and couldn't find it.  I always searched along the same avenue in the same location in Lower Manhattan.  But I couldn't find it.  Neither could Andrea.  We thought this was very odd.  It was as if the store had manifested and then disappeared.  It wasn't until several years later, that Andrea and I happened to find the store again rather by accident.  It was in exactly the same place and had never moved - which was very odd indeed.  Apparently, the store has been there for 30 years.  We went inside and found Luxor as if nothing had ever changed.  We tried on clothes and giggled about the strange time warp sensation of this store.  Both of us noticed, to our total shock, that an extremely tall man, maybe 7 feet tall, seemed to have literally floated through the wall from the back room into the main store area.  There was no door.  His appearance was a strange as Luxor's.  He was tall and gaunt, with a strikingly pallid white complextion, like a giant President Lincoln, and dressed entirely in black clothing.  Luxor introduced him as her husband.  Andrea (a devout skeptic of all things paranormal) and I looked at each other in disbelief.  This person was clearly not of this earth.  We hurried to finish trying on our outfits, made our purchases, thanked Luxor and left this place that felt like a time vortex or galatic wormhole. 

 

Easter Island Statues Have Bodies!

I figured it was befitting of the Easter holiday to talk about Easter Island, the most remote location on earth populated by human beings, 2,500 miles to the west of the coast of Chili in South America.  The gigantic stone heads dotting the landscape of the island are as famously mysterious as the pyramids of Egypt or Peru, or Stonehenge in England.  There are 887 such stone heads (or heads and shoulder) statues located all around the perimeter of the rugged landscape of the island.  These "Easter Island heads" are known as "moai."  They were created between the years of 1250 to 1500, a period which coincided with the last trees that lived on the island.  It is believed that most of these large heads were deification of the ancesters of the various clan members, Polynesian colonizers, who inhabited the island.  The heaviest moai weighs 86 tons and the tallest is nearly 33 feet tall.  The average size of the moai is about 14 feet tall and weighs nearly 13 tons. They are carved from tuff, a kind of compressed volcanic ash, basalt, and red scoria.  By 1868, all of the standing moai had been toppled.  The oral histories differ - some say the clans toppled the statues and others say it was the result of earthquakes.

Of course, there are the usual theories about how the primitive clansmen were able to move these massive statues.  Just as it is said of the Egyptians moving the multi-ton stone blocks to form the pyramids and the Central and South American natives who also managed to move massive stone structures, it has been suggested that the Easter Island inhabitants used a similar system of ropes, pulleys, wooden sleds or logs, and lots of human muscle to move these enormous statues and erect them at locations all around the island.  However, in recent years many researchers have attempted to create mock recreations of these efforts using stone replicas and, to date, no one has been successful. 

What comes to mind immediately are all of the recent ancient alien theories which have suggested that primitive peoples were able to perform these extraordinary tasks because they were being helped by technologies given to them by extraterrestrial alien species.  The strongest arguments in favor of this theory, in my opinion, are the extraordinary stone structures and temple ruins at Puma Punka in the Bolivian highlands.  There are archeological ruins of structures made of enormous finely cut stones, fitted together without the use of mortar, with perfectly matched hole corings and in some places so perfectly fitted that one cannot push a sheet of paper or a razer blade between the stone blocks.  Moreover, the stones were made of granite and diorite - only diamond is harder - and these rocks could therefore only have been cut with diamond!  And how were they transported?  One of these rocks weighed 800 tons! 

Were the inhabitants of Easter Island, Bolivia, and Egypt privy to some kind of alien technology?  It has been suggested, since the traditional notions of ropes and pulleys seems so completely ridiculous, that perhaps these enormous blocks of stone and statues were somehow floated into place using high-tech concepts of sound waves or electromagnetic manipulations?  As crazy as that sounds, it really doesn't sound that much crazier than suggesting ropes and pulleys!

What struck me about the Easter Island heads was that I had always been under the (mistaken) impression that they were just statues of heads without bodies.  The recent excavasions have shown, as in the photo above, that many of what were previously thought to be just heads or head and shoulders, were actually connected to bodies which were buried deep underground.  So what does that suggest?  Were these statues intentionally buried?  Maybe like the famous "Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses" buried with the First Chinese emperor in 210–209 BC and whose purpose was to protect the emperor in his afterlife? 

 

Was it some kind of natural erosion?  Or, perhaps more likely, were these statues literally built from the rocks in the ground like the twin temples of Abu-Simbel in Southern Egypt?

Certainly that would solve some of the transportation questions.  But why bury the bodies and leave the heads exposed?  The location of these statues around the perimeter of the island clearly suggests a ring of "protection" - perhaps, like the dead, these "bodies" were buried and yet the spiritual heads were left to "watch" and "guard" the inhabitants.  The one noted peculiarity of the heads is that they are oversized in relation to the size of their bodies.  The head had powers. 

The Invisible Dead Spot in New York City

Every once in a while I have a dream that I am pretty sure wasn't a dream.  I had one of those a few days ago.  The dream made reference to a dream I had apparently had earlier in the night about some famed "Dead Spot" in the center of New York City.  This was an actual location inside Manhattan which was somehow supernaturally shielded from vision and yet existed, like a time warp inside a bubble, right in the heart of New York.  Within this famed "Dead Spot," there was reputed to be an old museum with a ghost of a famous New Yorker. 

But before I continue, let me give you some real life background about me.

I lived in New York for nearly 25 years in real life.  Last month, on February 2, 2013, I was sad to learn that former three-term New York Mayor Ed Koch had passed away.  It was the end of an era.  His time as mayor dominated the time I lived in New York.  He was mayor from 1978-1989, always highly controversial, rode the subways like a normal New Yorker, and was quick to make a typical New Yorker type of comment (e.g. "If you agree with me on nine out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist.").  I had the opportunity to interview him once at City Hall as a young reporter and owner of a small newspaper specialized in the health care industry.  He was alot tougher and more arrogant in person than his happy-go-lucky public persona.  Still, I scored a major coup.  I managed to get him to answer a question that all of the heavy-hitter newspaper and television journalists had been desperately trying to get him to answer for months - namely, whether he intended to shut down four hospitals serving the poorest population in New York to save the City from bankruptcy.  It was a political hot potato.  He admitted to me, on tape, that was indeed his intention.  His aide apparently realized the Mayor's error and, as soon as the interview was over, tried to get me to hand over the tape.  Of course I refused.  Interestingly,  the next morning, the tape (which I had carefully put at the back of my desk drawer in my office) was missing and never found again.

In my dream, I was led by Mayor Koch to a place in somewhere in Manhattan.  He said he was going to show me the "Dead Spot" I had heard so much about (in my earlier dream that night).  We got to a block where the sidewalk bordered a very tall brick wall or side of a building.  At the very base of this wall there was a 4 inch tall crack.  Koch said, "Follow me inside" and he promptly flattened his body like a piece of paper and slid under the crack.  He was followed by my ex-husband, also a political person and who died in 2003, who flattened himself and zoomed under the crack.  I stood there, exasperated, and said, "Well, I can't do that!  I'm carrying all these shopping bags! How am I supposed to get in?"  It was as if I had to become two-dimensional in order to enter the "Dead Spot" hidden behind this wall where normal New Yorkers would pass by it every day and never notice its existence. 

My husband, who was standing next to me, said, "Don't worry, I will get us inside.  He made special arrangements and a security guard opened an invisible door in the brick wall and let us pass through a subway-like turnstyle, in our fully three-dimensional bodies, and then closed the door behind us.  Now we found ourselves in some kind of a marble lobby or subway area surrounded by crowds of people.  We walked out the back door and found ourselves out in the streets of New York again, except that it felt as though we had walked into a strange time warp.  It was completely silent.  There were no people.  The buildings were smaller, and it looked like New York City from the 1930's.  The roads were cobblestone.  I said to my husband, "This must be the Dead Spot!  We're in it!  Look, we are surrounded by Manhattan but you can't enter this space from any of the streets!"  It was as if we were located in an invisible bubble, in another dimension, inside New York City itself. 

We walked through the streets, the sounds of our footsteps reverberating in the total silence, and approached a building that looked like a town hall or library.  I said, "This must be the museum that has the ghost in it!  Let's go inside and see if we can find the ghost."  So we entered in the back of the building (Isn't it interesting that every time we entered a space it was through the back of a building...) and went inside.  I lost sight of my husband, and began walking alone through a series of endless hallways, staircases and corridors that began to take on a slightly carnival-like appearance with big broad stripes and halls of mirrors.  The dream degenerated, and eventually I met up with him at the front of the building, not having found the ghost. The dream ends.

My interpretation:  I believe I was met by the spirits of former Mayor Koch and my ex-husband who offered to take me to the realm of the dead.  I could not enter this world as they did, since I am not dead, and was given special permission, as a psychic medium, to enter through an invisible door.  I was still carrying the "baggage" of a living human being.  Everything on the "Other Side" was backwards to this world, like a mirror image, I was able to visit a real space that exists concurrent with and inside New York City which is literally invisible to most folks.  The sensation of the time-warped space and the distinct silence were very strong.  I looked for a specific ghost but could not find him, and became increasingly disoriented and confused the longer I stayed in this Dead Spot, probably because, as a living person, I was not meant to spend much time there.  Interestingly, a good friend of mine from the Western U.S. who is very psychic, as soon as I told her this dream, said, "Yes, the place you call the Dead Spot actually exists!  I have seen it and felt it.  It is somewhere on Ninth Avenue!"  If anyone else has had any experience with a Dead Spot in New York, please tell me about it!

POSTSCRIPT (April 1, 2013) - I was watching TV this morning when a movie came on called "Incredibly Loud & Extremely Close" which, as I recalled from movie previews a long time ago, was a movie about an autistic boy whose father died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Having been living Manhattan at the time and traumatized by the event, I had absolutely no desire to ever see that movie.  However, before I could turn off the TV, I listened to the boy's father's words to him before he died (roughly paraphrased): "Son, one day there existed a 6th borough of New York which was located in Central Park in midtown Manhattan.  One day it mysteriously floated away and disappeared.  You must find it."  Those words stopped me dead in my tracks.  Was this the "Dead Spot" in my dream?  I forced myself to watch the entire movie (much against my will since I cannot watch anything to do with 9/11).  It was a haunting movie about people searching for dead people and ultimately ending their searches with tiny clues left behind for the living.  I cried as I recalled my own experiences of that day.  The photos I tried so hard not to see of people jumping out of the burning World Trade Center.  At the end of the movie, the boy finds the last clue left by his father, as he sits in Central Park, and the father's note refers to the lost 6th Borough of Manhattan where he has gone now.  Obviously, the lost 6th Borough is the land of the dead.  My "Dead Spot" in the "heart" of Manhattan.  Strange to watch your dreams play out months later in real life...  Very strange.

My Mentor Ingo Swann In Memorium

On February 1, 2013, I learned that my friend and mentor Ingo Swann passed away.  Even though he was 80 years old and in terrible health, I somehow did not imagine that he would actually pass away.  Ingo was one of the most famous psychics in the world and co-created the CIA's psychic spy program, better known as remote viewing. 

The last time I saw him was a year ago in November, 2011.  Strangely, I did not post the above photo of us on my website, out of respect for his privacy, until last month.  No particular logic.  Just felt right.  A year ago, I met him at his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and we sat, as we usually did, on two small, filfthy square mats on the cement steps of the stoop of his building while he smoked endless cheap cigars.  Ingo spent hours out there during good weather, watching the traffic, looking at the auras of the passerbys, saying hello to the local residents, artists, postmen, restauranteurs...  I had wanted to talk to him about UFOs.  We did, and, as if on cue, the postman walked upt to us and delivered a package addressed to Ingo from his colleague and famous ufologist Jacques Vallee.  He confided in me that a movie was about to be made about his life.

Whenever we ate out, Ingo never finished his meal.  He didn't have much of an appetite - which he attributed to his digestive issues and old age.  But he would always carefully take everything home in a doggy bag.

I hadn't seen or talked to him for many months, and so he told me that getting old was a "bitch" and that no one should underestimate how awful it was.  His problems with his hip had deteriorated over the years I knew him.  He was having more and more problems getting around with a kind of labored shuffle.  And yet, despite living mostly in the basement of his building in his studio which was one flight down of very deep stairs, he didn't complain.  When I used to call him on exceptionally hot summer days when the temperatures hit higher than 103 degrees in New York City, and offered to take him to an air conditioned location, he always refused.  He said he was just fine in his stuffy, airless apartment without air conditioning. 

Ingo understood the meaning of living lightly upon this earth.  We would walk around together in his neighborhood.  Occasionally, he would stop to examine piles of garbage put out on the curb and, in true New Yorker style, would select usable items.  One day I carried a bunch of old dishes for him which he took back to his apartment.  Nothing went to waste.  He had no use for what others might see as trendy, new, valuable, glitzy.  He lived lightly and took up very little material space.  He didn't see what others saw.  When we would walk down the street together, he would make comments about the ghosts who passed us on the sidewalk.  The first time I saw his apartment I was amazed (and yet not surprised) to see a stuffed and mounted front half of the body of a giant cat above his tiny kitchen table. 

"Oh!" I said, "A snow leopard!"

"Yes," he said almost suspiciously.  "How did you know it was a snow leopard?"  (Apparently no one else had ever accurately guessed the species of cat).

His living and dining quarters were not a place of living, the way we normally think of living in an apartment.  Everything was covered with volumes of books.  It was almost too much to take in at once.  The walls were covered from top to bottom with ecclectic bits of art.  It was visually overwhelming.

Ingo told me that in fact he had been deathly ill for the last few months with some respiratory illness.  He had called upon a psychic medical intuitive friend of his in the midwest who, over the phone, had correctly diagnosed the problem (Ingo had been shoveling dog shit out of his building's outdoor basement entrance left by careless dog owners and apparently had acquired some nasty airborne fungus or bacteria) and also correctly told Ingo how to cure the problem using a homeopathic remedy.  Ingo had followed the psychic's advice and was amazed that the entire respiratory issue disappeared within two days when none of the traditional medicines had worked. 

Ingo looked at me and said, "You know, I was really very, very sick.  I was on a respirator and I didn't think I was going to make it."

I said, "Yes, I know.  I was worried about  you."

He looked at me funny and said, "What do you mean you knew?" 

"I saw you on a respirator with my third eye," I said, tapping the spot between my eyebrows.  I don't know how I knew this, but I did.  I had visualized him in his studio apartment, lying in bed, with a respirator.

He seemed surprised.  A funny response from a man so accepting and understanding of psychic powers. 

I am really at a loss of words to explain how much Ingo meant to me.  He was so incredibly aggravating and combative, as well as condescending when he wanted to be, and yet he had one of the kindest hearts and gentlest voices of anyone I ever met.  He told me when I first met him, in no uncertain terms (after I complimented him for saying something nice) that he was definitely not a "nice" person.  And he wasn't "nice" - in any traditional sense of the word.  He didn't want to be my mentor.  He kept refusing to cooperate.  And yet, he kept giving me advice, he sent me important articles, gave me tips about how to investigate the paranormal, and gave me books from his personal library.  He argued with everything I ever said, and yet gave me - to my great shock - a wonderful (and very rare) endorsement for my book "Psychic Intuition: Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask But Were Afraid to Know." 

Ingo was highly secretive.  He thrived on his secrets.  He kept his psychic abilities secret.  He refused to tell me how many porno books he had authored in his pre-psychic past.  He told me he knew he had been previously reincarnated as someone incredibly important in history but refused to tell me who.  I wondered if he thought he had been Jesus Christ.  Or maybe Hitler.  At a speaking engagement in recent years, in his opening remarks, he announced that, contrary to the opinion of many people, he was not in fact dead!  He giggled (he was often amused by himself) that he had come back as a reincarnation of himself! 

And I believe if anyone could actually accomplish this, I am sure Ingo could.  I miss him.  Alot.

.