This story comes from Bob Preston, an old friend from my college days with whom I shared many strange and inexplicable experiences. We lost touch for years, then reconnected and were delighted to find that our bond was still there, stronger than ever. There seems to be an overlapping of realities in this story, parallel worlds, perhaps, I’m not sure. Anyway, here it is.
++
March/1972: A Chicago Story
For several months I had been experiencing increasing pain in the area of my left shoulder. After multiple appointments with gatekeeper doctors and specialists, no definite diagnosis had been determined.
My apartment was located on the 2000 block of Lincoln Ave. in Chitown, above the Wise Fools Tap in Chicago. It was triangular shaped, with the point of the triangle situated in the alcove. There were windows facing to the west in the alcove , and to the north in the adjacent living room. By all accounts a wonderful place, at a wonderful time!
After returning from work one day, I entered my apartment, walked to my desk that was located in the alcove, and sat down to catch up with paper work. I put on an LP … (London Sessions with Howlin’ Wolf), smoked a bowl, leaned back to become ‘one with my world’, and shut my eyes. After a while my shoulder pain subsided. I opened my eyes, shook off the day, and stood up to flip the LP.
As I rose, I became aware of a shadow on the left side of my peripheral vision. I turned my head and focused on a shadow of a cat, midway up the west wall next to the west facing windows. I sat back down and watched ‘the cat’ as it appeared to be watching me. After a bit, the cat stood up, arched it’s back, walked across the windows to the end of the narrow wall. It then appeared to turn right and began to walk eastward, on the wall and over the windows!
Now my curiosity was peaked. I looked around to find the light source that was projecting the shadow. The interesting thing was that there wasn’t any apparent light source that I could attribute to the image. There was no cat sitting in a front of a window and I couldn’t help but realize that I didn’t own a cat! I stood up, following the cat on it’s easterly direction.
I began to watch my mystery kitty with greatly increased scrutiny. It stopped and sat down. It seemed as though the cat was waiting for me to pay attention to it. Kitty immediately stood up and once again headed to the east. At the end of the wall it turned to the south and continued walking! Although it did not seem possible, it was happening.
At the end of that wall it made another right turn, this time heading west, back to the place where I had first noticed it. When it arrived at the point of origin , it simply vanished! I looked around the room, searching for the furry apparition. It was no longer visibly noticeable. Shadows simply do not act like that. As I contemplated the incongruity of what I had just witnessed, the throbbing pain returned to my shoulder, and continued unabated.
I returned to the desk, sat down and glanced around the room. I noticed the clock…what I thought had taken a few minutes, had actually taken well over an hour. I didn’t know what to think. I heard my roommates entering the apartment. I tried to relate the story to them, but it didn’t make sense. They didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. The pain in my shoulder was increasing to the point that I decided to take some medication and go to bed.
The floor in my bedroom was going to be sanded the following day, consequently most of the furniture, including rugs, had been removed…only the bed remained. As I sat on the edge of my bed, I started to open a container that held pain pills I had picked it up at a pharmacy on my way home from work . The prescription had been for 30 pills.
My roommate came to my bedroom door, and started telling me about his day. As I listened, I continued trying to open the pill container, but it slipped from my hands. Room mate at door, no furniture except the bed and no rugs – yet, the pill case never hit the floor. No sound was heard by either of us, and there wasn’t any container was on the floor. We were amazed at this turn of events. We searched the room but nothing was found.
I said goodnight and settled in. A short time later, my girlfriend came by and slid in next to me. After a fitful night of pain and mental confusion, I finally fell to sleep as dawn approached. My girlfriend got up to go to work. I woke sometime later and discovered I was paralyzed and blind. An ambulance was called and I was taken to Northwestern University Hospital.
Somehow, during the night, three discs in my neck had collided together, causing fragments – splinters – to penetrate my spinal cord. The problem had affected L3,4 & 5. At last I knew what had caused the months of pain! Under the care of a wonderful surgeon and medical staff the problem was corrected and, in time, I was fortunate enough to recover all movement and my eyesight.
After many weeks, I was able to return home to my apartment. With help, I climbed the steps to the second floor. While I had been gone, the floor had been sanded and the furniture and rugs had been returned to the room.
I entered my bedroom, crossed the floor and sat on my bed. With my roommate standing at the door, I heard a rattling clunk at my feet. I looked down and, to my surprise, there, on the floor was the missing pill bottle! I had been looking at my roommate the whole time…he had not tossed anything.
I opened the container and, for whatever reason, counted the pills. There were 27! What had happened to the other three pills?: Where had the container been all this time?
++
At the time Bob sent this story, I was reading Whitley Strieber’s Solving the Communion Enigma, where he talks about UFOs, aliens, and parallel worlds.
“Just pot” was not meant to be offensive, Melissa. However, I DO tend to think that the SOURCE of visions and other-dimensional visitations indeed matters, because under the influence, these can be false although they are perceived by the experiencer to be real. I question the visions, etc, experienced by anyone, regardless of who that person is, when the experience comes when the individual has a controlled substance or lots of alcohol on board.
That’s just my opinion, but it does come from many years of study and many years of working as an RN, specifically more recently with terminal patients in Hospice who are on high doses of the most seriously controlled drugs on the planet, and I have watched these patients have hallucinations. One patient in particular told me the “walls were melting” around her. Some of their visions, such as interactions with dead relatives and loved ones, can be quite real, obviously. Some of the experiences, on the other hand, are the brain’s chemical response to the drug. Knowing which is which presents a dilemma. But it cannot be argued that certain drugs create hallucinations and visions that are unlike those which occur when the individual has a clear mind unclouded by substances. Just for myself, I prefer to have my visions and experiences to happen when I have no meds on board, visions and experiences which certainly happen to mediums frequently, without any use of any drugs. And for me, it DOES matter about the circumstances of synchronicity events. Again, that’s just me, and is in no manner intended to insult or antagonize anyone, or to judge. As mentioned, different strokes for different folks.
When I have no choice but to take my two meds for a chronic disorder before I go to sleep at night, one of which is a controlled substance, I invariably have ferocious nightmares and messed-up dreams that can be attributed directly to that medication and are listed in its potential side effects. Still, I love the Shadow Cat posted here, whatever its source may have been, and the accompanying synchros. As stated, I myself had a synchro with it….the visit from the kitty in my dreamstate that I feel sure was my deceased Mom, whose initials were C.A.T., dropping by to let me know she’s around.
Whether or not this experienced happened because of the “just pot” or not seems irrelevant. Does it matter why a synchro (thinking of the arched back here) happens or how? I thought it just mattered that it does happen and then we are here to learn from it. Just my little opinion…that aside….
Our building was a department store, quite like Macy’s maybe fifty or sixty years ago, and who knows what it was before that. I have all sorts of theories and am pretty sure it’s got something going on. We have a phantom cat in our apartment here in Brooklyn. We see Ghost Kitty quite a bit. Flashes of her here and there, quick glimpses. At first it made me nervous, thinking it was a ghost or spirit of some kind. Not anymore, she just sort of hangs out with us. Checks out the entryway, hangs by Star’s food bowls. I feel fine when she is around.
We think she is either a ghost of some kind, taking the shape of a kitty for our benefit OR she really is Star, bumping into us from one of those other dimensions. Parallel worlds bumping into us every now and then. Either way, I welcome the visits.
But if you think about what the mystical meaning of a cat is (forgive me, going from memory and a witchcraft class I took in college years ago) and this relates to Bob’s story as well in a way, is that they were thought to be the guardians of the Underworld, I think in Celtic mythology. They were the keeper of secrets (think missing bottle here). However, in Roman or Greek mythology, they were also the protector of homes/domiciles (that’s where our Ghost Kitty comes in, I think). Cats are mystical and mysterious — and we LOVE them!
Wow, I just realized I wrote a book in your comments section!
The book that I’m reading at the moment (well,one of them anyway) ,
“Sex, Drugs, Einstein & Elves: Sushi, Psychedelics, Parallel Universes and the Quest for Transcendence ”
https://www.amazon.com/Sex-Drugs-Einstein-Elves-Transcendence/dp/1890572179
mentions how people see black cats (pumas mainly) in shamanic visions,DMT,and certain vision diseases.
I’m only halfway through this book,but it is already turning out to one of the best books that I have read all year.
As far as I can tell Cliff is not into drugs and neither preaches one way or the other for or against them,but his eye on the world is fascinatingly unique.
The only thing I can tell Cliff has admittedly overdosed on is Marcel Proust literature.
oh wow, another for my llist. Thanks, Daz. This one sounds fantastic!
It is.
Here is a list of the table of contents –
1. On Fugu Sushi and Transdimensional Reality Worms
2. The Quantum Mechanics of Hopi Indians
3. Bertrand Russell’s Twenty Favorite Words
4. DMT, Moses, and The Quest For Transcendence
5. Brain Syndromes Open Portals to Parallel Universes
6. From Holiday Inn to the Head of Christ
7. The Business of Book Publishing: Unplugged, Up Close, & Personal
8. Neoreality and the Quest for Transcendence
9. Oh God, Einstein’s Brain and Eyes are Missing
10. Burning Man and the Conquest of Reality
I’m up to chapter 7 at the moment.
Great book.
As soon as I finish what I’m working on, I’m heading over to Amazon!
“Just Pot”. My experiences with friends who used it were different. I witnessed a few now and then who were eating brownies or smoking, and “saw” stuff. My system has never even tolerated a sip of wine, etc, and I’m deathly allergic to 99% of meds, so have had no choice but to avoid substances. Contrarily, if my sister and I had known where to buy some pot when our mother was terminal and suffering horrendously in S. GA, I’d have bought it for her in a nano-second!!
Regarding “controlled drugs” and “visions”, I’m well aware of the use of such substances by shamans all over the world and by Native Americans here in our country. However, to be on the side of caution, as a medium who did readings for folks over decades, I have one iron-clad rule for clients: I asked them to please not consume alcohol, etc, prior to coming to me for readings. I’m empathic to the degree that I absorb these from others, and they cloud my abilities. One of the two prescription meds given to me for Parkinson’s is a VERY controlled drug, and if I know I’m going to be meditating or working psychically, I won’t take that drug, or, I won’t do the meditation or work psychically if I must take it for symptom relief. Research in paranormal fields indicate that using substances, even recreationally, can and does often bring in entities from the lower dimensions who achieve a vicarious effect through the person. I won’t risk it.
Nevertheless, putting all this aside, I find the cat shadow beautiful, whatever its source, and I have a synchro: night before last, I dreamed there was a half-grown kitten/cat wrapped around my shoulder with its little whiskers tickling my cheek. The kitty was kissing me. My mother’s initials are C.A.T., and when I awakened, I honestly felt that my Mom was saying hello to me in my dream! Good post, guys. Very interesting and thought-provoking from many perspectives!
Before LSD was outlawed, there were some fascinating stories about people who were able to penetrate dimensions. DMT: the spirit molecule is a terrific book that explores this very phenomenon.
This is a very strange story. Could the cat arching have a reference to his back?
The pain killers might have masked his problem and so maybe “someone” made him go without which then brought out what was really wrong.
The world is a mysterious place.
I wondered about that back arch, too.
That is a strange and interesting story, full of unsolved mysteries. Rob and Trish, what do you make of these kinds of events? Being a cat lover, of course I enjoy that part of the tale but the part about the disappearing and reappearing pills – tangible items, not shadows – what about that? Wondering, did something like that ever happen again? It is a long time now since 1972. As I write this response, I’m thinking about that year and all the wonders that happened then for me – not all so mysterious but many in the realm of magical. Just musing on this after reading your story.
We’ve had things like this happen to us. We now joke about the disappearing $100 bill that happened a couple of Christmases ago. Rob held out the bill, I had my hands full, so he set it on top of the container that holds coffee on the kitchen counter.
When I turned around to pick it up, it was gone. We looked everywhere, even went thru the garbage. No bill. Anywhere. We still haven’t found out. I don’t know what to think of events like this. Trickster, magic, who knows?
OK. THIS time I’m the skeptic. He “smoked a bowl”. I assume this was a hallucinigenic, perhaps pot. Hallucination cat? Maybe, maybe not. The missing pills? Prescription for pain meds would be narcotic. Room-mate slipped bottle in pocket and later “took” 3 of the pills. Mystery solved for me, just this time, by marijuana or crack on board and a room mate who decided to get a little high on a prescription drug. Am not trying to be offensive, but this is my intuitve take and could be very, very wrong. However, anytime controlled drugs combine with unusual psychic experiences, my antenna becomes wary. Have been an RN too long to not have witnessed just such incidents a zillion times with patients. Again, I could be very wrong about this and am not trying to be offensive.
Just pot,math
Pot generally doesn’t create hallucinations like what he describes.