The Case of the Disappearing Stone

I bought a tiny necklace about a year ago.  It was a small ugly greenish-black stone that was pitted and pocked like a dried prune and strung on a leather string.  I had heard this stone, called moldavite, had interesting properties, but knew nothing about it.  As someone who has always loved geology and studied rocks, this seemed mildly interesting.

In November, 2015,I traveled to Las Vegas to attend an aerospace convention and to do some interviews to promote my new book "How To Talk to an Alien."  On the third day, right before an hour-long radio interview which preceded another hour-long internet TV show formerly on PBS called "New Thinking Allowed" with Jeff Mishlove, I was suddenly struck with the most intense vertigo and nausea I've ever experienced in my life.  (Coincidentally or not, Jeff's YouTube channel was suddenly and inexplicably taken offline that evening as were all the email accounts of the Las Vegas another radio show host who I was supposed to meet that day).  Anyway, I thought I was literally dying.  I wasn't sure how I was going to complete my interviews let alone sound coherent.  Somehow, I steeled myself, with the room spinning violently around me, my heart palpitating, hands sweating, and I completed the final interview in the studio, before dragging myself off to bed, and then finally ended up in the emergency room of the hospital which extended into three days of testing.  The vertigo finally stopped.  They speculated it might have been a heart attack but weren't sure.  It was strange.  Upon returning to my room, I looked for the little moldavite necklace which I had carefully removed from the safe, figuring it was too ugly for anyone to steal, and hidden under my baseball cap.  It was nowhere to be found.  I looked everywhere.  I tripled checked all the suitcases. It was gone.  I called the hotel.  No one had reported it.

I am not in the habit of losing things.  It bothered me that this little moldavite necklace had disappeared.  Months dragged on and it still bugged me.  I decided to look online to research moldavite.  I ran across some obscure chat rooms where people were talking about their experiences with moldavite and to my shock and surprise many of them spoke about their moldavite disappearing!  Apparently, it is a well-known property of moldavite to disappear from its owner.  It never occurred to me that a rock could disappear by its own volition. There are many theories about why and how it does this.  Some say it returns to its origins in native Czech Republic, the region of Bohemia and Moravia, where an asteroid smashed into the earth 14.8 million years ago, vitrifying the surrounding earth minerals in the collision, creating this unique tektite found no where else on earth.  Moldavite is said to be a transformational crystal.  It is said to understand the two universes of terrestrial and extraterrestrial life because it was indeed formed from them both - a "hybrid" in the truest sense of the word.  It is said to be one of the most intensely vibrational crystals of all crystals and comes with warnings that wearers should temper it with other crystals to "ground" its intensity.  It is said to open the heart, third eye and crown chakras.  In fact, it is known historically as the legendary "Philosopher's Stone" and also the green "emerald" that fell from Lucifer's crown or forehead as he fell from heaven that was placed in the Holy Grail itself.  Archeologists have discovered talismans with moldavite over 25,000 years old.  The history of this strange and highly unusual crystal, that doesn't even look like a crystal, is unique.

And so, I resigned myself to the strange idea that my moldavite had voluntarily disappeared by itself.  I had read that sometimes it returned to its owner in time.  I worried that perhaps I had offended it by referring to it as an ugly old prune.  Perhaps if I thought nice thoughts about it, it might consider coming back to me. 

In April, 2016, I was invited to go on a paranormal investigation in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  I asked one of the mediums on the team, who said she knew a lot about crystals, if she had ever heard anything about moldavite disappearing.  Oh yeah!  She said I needed to surround it with three other crystals so it wouldn't go running off.  As we were near a crystal shop, I bought all three in hopes it might come home to roost.

One month later, I decided to attend my college reunions.  I brought along my son William who is still in high school.  I remembered a tiny little gem shop called "Tomorrow's Heirlooms" I had once visited about four years earlier and decided to take my son there because the owner, John Miller, a sort of talkative Indiana Jones type of geologist whose shop was loaded with unusual crystals and jewelry, had a huge fossil of a femur bone of T-Rex dinosaur.  We entered the shop and the owner was still there.  He showed us the fossil. 

John said, "Now, I'd love to show you a particularly special necklace.  It was best in show.  It's up there in front of you on the second shelf." 

I looked up and instantly recognized what it was.  It was one of the most amazing necklaces I've ever seen.  It was a giant bib, about 6" long, loaded with more moldavite than I've ever seen in my life interspersed with huge heavy chunks of silvery meteorite.  I was absolutely speechless.  I had never mentioned a word about moldavite to him.  In fact, I was literally just about to ask him whether he had ever heard any stories of moldavite disappearing. 

To my great surprise, this serious geologist, said matter-of-factly, "Of course! Moldavite disappears in order to remove negativity.  It disappears because it is a stone of protection." 

I laughed and said, "Well, if I buy this necklace - and I think I have to - I don't think this moldavite will ever disappear because it's so grounded with all this meteorite!"

The shop owner said, "Probably not.  Unless you're about to be killed."

That sounded reasonable enough to me.  So I bought the necklace. 

We talked a bit more.  John said, "You know it's funny you talk about things like moldavite disappearing.  Someone just showed me a blog on the internet where someone wrote about my shop having the quality of disappearing and reappearing."

I said, "That was me.  You just saw that recently?  I wrote that blog about three or four years ago!  And yes, you have a magical shop.  It has some unusual characteristics." (http://skepticalpsychicblog.blogspot.com/2013_05_01_archive.html )

"Yes, I've been told that," John said with surprising seriousness. 

How peculiar that his path and mine seem to have had such strange intersections, I thought.  I went home that night, thinking about everything he had said, and then somewhere around 3:00 AM in the morning, it occurred to me that my tiny little dried prune moldavite necklace had probably disappeared because I had spent three days in the Las Vegas hospital with severe vertigo.  So it was protecting me.  I finally understand and now I could at last release it from my mind.

The next morning, six months after I had lost my necklace, I got up and got dressed to go to a Memorial Day barbeque with friend.  When I opened my jewelry chest, something fell out of the drawer and hit the ground.  It was, to my amazement, my little dried prune moldavite necklace.  I quickly popped it into a silk bag with the three grounding crystals so it wouldn't go wandering off by itself again.