WHAT IF

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Trish and Rob

The other night, I was wondering how the world now might be different if Martin Luther King had survived. If Robert Kennedy had survived. If Lennon had survived.

Let’s take Lennon. He was 40 when he was assassinated by Mark David Chapman outside the Dakota, in NYC where Lennon lived with Yoko.

Mark David Chapman arrived in New York on Saturday December 6, and checked into a YMCA about nine blocks from the Dakota. He was seen hanging around an entrance to the Dakota. On December 7, he was outside the Dakota again and also changed hotels, moving into the Sheraton Centre farther downtown. On the morning of December 8, he lingered outside the Dakota once more and had Lennon and Yoko’s album, Double Fantasy with him for Lennon to sign.

Chapman struck up a conversation with Paul Goresh, another fan hoping to glimpse Lennon. Around 5 p.m. that afternoon, Lennon and his wife finally left the building on their way to The Record Plant Studios on West 44th Street. Chapman approached Lennon and held out a copy of Double Fantasy. Lennon scrawled his name across the front. Goresh snapped a photo of that moment.

The two men waited outside the building for another two hours. Goresh got tired of waiting and said he had to go home and would come back another day to see Lennon. Chapman tried to get him to stay and remarked, “I’d wait. You never know if you’ll see him again.”

Goresh left, Chapman waited.

The Lennons mixed sound for a new single, Walking on Thin Ice, a Yoko creation, until 10:30 that night. The title smacks of precognition, since in the aftermath of Lennon’s death, Yoko would be walking  on thin mental  ice.

At 10:50 p.m., their rented limo stopped at the curb in front of the Dakota’s 72nd Street entrance. Yoko got out first, with Lennon a few paces behind her. He walked walk under the archway and Chapman called out his name.

He was crouched five feet away, both hands clutching a .38 special, and opened fire. Four bullets tore through Lennon.

Nut case Chapman was obsessed with J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, specifically with the fictional character Holden Caufield, an icon for teen rebellion. He was reading the book outside the Dakota when the police arrived and arrested him.

So, let’s say Lennon survived. What did he create between 1980 and – let’s pretend – 2022?

I like to imagine that he started a worldwide movement called Give Peace a Chance. I like to imagine that the movement mitigated 9-11, or changed it so that there was never any Afghan War. Never a Gitmo where prisoners were tortured. No Bush, no Cheney, no Rumsfeld, and no trump. BUT – and it’s a big but – if Gore had won in 2000, would we have had an Obama? Without an Obama would we have had a trump? And without him, would we have a Biden?

The what if games are the ones that tie me in knots.

If the multiverse is real, then all of these scenarios are playing out…somewhere…

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The Mystical Underground: Rob MacGregor: The Devil’s Chair

Posted on July 18, 2021 by Trish and Rob

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Rob MacGregor: The Devil’s Chair”:

Join Rob as he reads from Trish and Rob’s short story collection “The Outliers”…

“The Devil’s Chair is a story based on an urban legend about a brick chair that faces two gravestones in a cemetery in central Florida, north of Orlando. The cemetery is located outside the spiritualist community of Cassadaga, which offers weekly ghost tours of the town. In this story, the spookiness is enhanced when a reporter looking for a Halloween story visits the cemetery at midnight as he investigates the urban legend.”

*MacGregor, Rob; MacGregor, Trish. The Outliers. Crossroad Press.

Available in print and digitally on Amazon.

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Life and Death Synchronicities

Posted on July 17, 2021 by Trish and Rob

 

I know this photo might look somewhat brutal to some folks, a shark with a spear protruding from its head. But you need to know the story behind it and why Rick Bettua went after this particular bull shark. Rick was a U.S. Navy diver for thirty-two years. Diving has been his life. After he retired, he moved to Queensland, Australia where his wife was from. It’s also close to one of the world’s best places for spearfishing, the Great Barrier Reef.

Rick likes to remain active so besides spearfishing he took up a martial arts practice called Muay Thai. His instructor, Glenn, became curious about spearfish and Rick started taking him out on dives from time to time. One day en route to the marina, Glenn said he was concerned about sharks while diving, and Rick assured him that the chances of getting bit by a shark are far less than the chances of getting hit by lightning.

That same day, Glenn was snorkeling in shallow water, about ten feet deep, when a bull shark attacked him and shredded his leg. Rick was able to get him back into the boat and apply two tourniquets that saved Glenn’s life. But he lost his leg.

The next day, Rick went back to the small reef that was surrounded by sand and talked to fishermen there who were familiar with that shark and they told Rick how to attract it to his boat. He revved his engine, as they’d suggested, and within a couple of minutes the shark came right up the boat. Rick shot it, killing it.

Three years later in October of 2020 Rick was free diving on a reef not far from where Glenn was attacked and a bull shark attacked him ,and he nearly bled to death before he reached shore 90 minutes later. But a series of synchronicities occurred that saved his life. Twenty miles from shore, they came upon a larger fishing boat, which could go faster. On board coincidentally was a pediatric cardiologist, who help save Rick and helped assemble a rescue team that awaited Rick’s arrival on shore.

I know about Rick’s story because I (Rob) have been editing his survival/adventure book that covers numerous dangerous encounters he faced over three decades as a diver. I’ve been very impressed with Rick, who has written a very compelling story.

Rick’s story will be featured July 17 on an episode of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, called I Was Prey, 

Also, here’s a video about Rick made by Kimi Werner. Rick calls Kimi the best known woman diver in the world. It’s an excellent video.

 

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Happy 38th!

Posted on July 16, 2021 by Trish and Rob

In November 1981, I was teaching English to Cuban refugees through Florida International University in Miami. It was a government-funded program and I was assigned to the Fort Lauderdale office. But it took us three months to find an office because back then the resentment against Cuban immigrants was at a peak.

Once we got settled and classes actually began, we were contacted by a journalist at the Hollywood Sun Tattler who wanted to know if the Cubans were actually learning English.  When the journalist  walked into our office, I thought, Holy shit, I know this guy. It’s difficult to describe this kind of  soul recognition. Yes, it’s visceral, but as soon as you   feel it, you doubt it, write it off to imagination. But it stays there, in the pit of your stomach.

When I went home that evening, I told my roommate I’d just met the guy I was going to marry.

That journalist was Rob.

Five months later, we moved in together.

Today is our 38th anniversary. He thought it was our 35th. But hey, I’ve found that women are better at remembering dates!

For 38 years, we have been creative partners, exploring the areas that interest us, much of it outlier stuff that is slowly making its say into mainstream thought. Pick an oddball topic and we’ve probably written about it – synchronicity, aliens, dreams, meditation, yoga, astrology, divination, magic… Between us, we’ve written more than 60 novels, hundreds of non-fiction books and, during this pandemic, we’ve ghostwritten another eight or ten books.

Our daughter just finished her first novel – Dystopian – and is looking for representation Our podcast,  The Mystical Underground, is 18 months old and a source of connection with other writers and individuals who are exploring different facets of this underground place.

In these 38 years, we’ve been fortunate enough to travel extensively, often in search of answers to the bigger questions about the nature of reality. We’ve grown to love dogs and cats and birds, have  discovered our boundaries as separate human beings, now know what we like and dislike abut each other.

He’s too quiet, I’m the opposite.

He’s a natural skeptic, I’m not.

As a Gemini, I live in my head.

As a Taurus, he lives  through his body, his physicality.

But. Toss us a challenge about the occult, any facet of it, and we’ll run with it.

Happy 38th, Rob!

 

 

 

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THE KARENS & THE KEVINS

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Trish and Rob

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c4mamfleWs

Have you ever witnessed a Karen incident? These videos  seems to typify who and what she is. They capture what has become an archetype.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFOHnPYUqw

I’m invariably appalled when I see these Karen videos. These women, whoever they are, seem to have a sense of entitlement, some serious mental issues, and have bought into Trump’s Big Lies about Covid, vaccines (never mind that trump and melania were both vaccinated) the election, the insurrection, and every other lie he has ever uttered.

According to FactChecker, those lies during his time in the WH add up to a total of 30,573 false or misleading claims. That’s a polite phrase for LIES.

Or, remember the Central Park Karen?

These women are embarrassments to our gender. The one entitled White Tears is especially reprehensible in her screaming tirade meltdown and the way she sinks to the floor like she has fainted. Moments later, she lifts her head from the floor and starts her tirade again. I mean, c’mon, ladies, WTF? Didn’t your mom or sister or friends or partner ofryour kids ever tell you how absurd you look acting like a Karen?

So who are Karen’s male counterparts?  Where are the Kens? No, Ken was with the Barbie doll. Let’s call these guys Kevins. The other day, I witnessed a particular archetype of   Kevin. As I turned into a convenience store lot to buy a couple of scratch-off tickets, this big white truck roared up behind me, so close to my back bumper than I could see the driver’s face in my rear view mirror.

My first thought? Uh-oh. A jerk. So I intentionally slowed down and he got angry about it and pulled in sharply to my right and parked directly in front of the store. I parked and got out and saw him hurrying into the store, a big beefy guy. My second thought: He’s a trumpie, keep your distance.

I got in line behind him and made sure I stayed 6 feet away. I was masked, he wasn’t. “Pack of Marlboro reds,” he says.

The clerk at this store is a good-natured Latina. She made some comment about “president” and Kevin’s head snapped up. “He’s not my president.”

Here it comes, I thought.

“Trump’s my president.”

I felt like tapping this big guy on the shoulder and setting him straight. But I’m 5’5″ tall, weigh 111 pounds, and I don’t know judo or karati.  I was pretty sure he was armed. So I moved back another few feet. The Latina laughed at something he said and he left with his pack of smokes, his head wrapped around the Big Lie.

I bought my scratch-offs and left. On the way home, I thought about this. A Kevin won’t melt down like a Karen. He might scream and yell, but he won’t sob like the Karen in the second video. A Kevin like this guy would just pull out a gun and start shooting.

But just as Karens don’t come in a single type, neither do Kevins. The second type is likely to be good-looking, charming, and informed. He communicates well, clearly. He might be a politician like Kevin McCarthy who tries to play both sides. He might be a Wall Street dude, a pilot, ex-military, your brother, your grandfather, a man who, to me, seems as brainwashed as any version of Karen.

But this is where we are right now as a nation. Trump’s toxicity has infected the republican party, where Karens and Kevins believe trump will be magically reinstated to the presidency when the Cyber-Ninjas finish their ridiculous recounting of ballots in Arizona and then they or their clones move on to Michigan, Georgia, and… well, you know how it goes. It’s going to happen on the date that the nutcase CEO of My Pillow says it will. I think the date now is August 15. But, well, his date is fluid.

This is how South American countries have ended up in chaos and ruin. Look at Venezuela. Or, farther back, Chile and Argentina. Or, now: look at Cuba. The autocrats in charge cleaned out the country’s bank in the name of the people and forgot a few details – like the necessities of food and medicine and, with Covid, vaccines.

The really disturbing part is that I believed democracy was in peril during trump’s years. Now I realize that was just a dry run. Trump may be more dangerous now than he was when he was president.

 

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BINX, THE SURVIVOR

Posted on July 13, 2021 by Trish and Rob

 

On June 24 AT 1:25 A.M., the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, killed at least 90 people and as of July 11, 31 are still missing.

However, we learned that a black cat named Binx, who lived on the 9th floor of the condo, survived and was reunited with his owner.

From CBS online: “The Gonzalez family and several of their pets were in their ninth floor apartment in Champlain Towers South the night of June 24 when the building suddenly collapsed in the middle of the night. At least two members of the family were seriously injured in the collapse one is still missing.  Several of their pets also went missing. But on Thursday, exactly two weeks after the 12-story building fell, they were reunited with one of their pets, a small black cat named Binx.”

Binx was spotted by a volunteer, Levine Cava,  with the local animal shelter, The Kitty Campus, which posted flyers on its website about the Gonzalez family’s missing pets. The family had two dogs and two cats, including Binx. Cava found Binx near the rubble while  she was feeding stray cats.

Here’s the synchro, at least for us. In mid-June, Megan adopted a black kitten and named him Binx. There’s Megan’s Binx, eating from a bowl larger than he is, while big dude Indy stands watch.

 

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The Mystical Underground: Preston Dennett: Wondrous

Posted on July 11, 2021 by Trish and Rob

A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Preston Dennett: Wondrous”:

Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…

Preston Dennett began investigating UFOs and the paranormal in 1986 when he discovered that his family, friends, and co-workers were having dramatic unexplained encounters. Since then, he has interviewed hundreds of witnesses and investigated a wide variety of paranormal phenomena. He is a field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a ghost hunter, a paranormal researcher, and the author of 26 books and more than 100 articles on UFOs and the paranormal. His latest book is WONDROUS: 25 True Encounters.

www.prestondennett.weebly.com

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ANDY PAQUETTE: PRECOG DREAMER

Posted on July 10, 2021 by Trish and Rob

Precognition occurs most often in dreams and may be more common than we think. The trick is remembering them and then remembering them in enough detail so you have a good idea what the dreams might be referencing.

In his book The Sense of Being Stared at And Other Unexplained Powers of the Human Mind, British biologist Rupert Sheldrake wrote that in his database of 312 cases of precognition, 76 percent concern dangers, disasters, or death. “It’s unlikely that selective memory alone can account for this predominance of dangers, deaths, and disasters in reported cases of precognition,” Sheldrake wrote. “There are strong evolutionary reasons for this bias. In people, as in animals, natural selection must have favored the ability to sense impending disasters.”

For fun, Google precognitive dreams. You’ll find the famous ones – Abe Lincoln’s dream of his own death, Mark Twain’s dream of his brother’s death, dreams of 9-11, the Titanic. You’ll find the contrasting opinions about precognitive dreams, the science, the speculation. But forget all that for now. Meet Andy Paquette, a comic book illustrator, author, and dreamer who, to date, has recorded more than 30,000 dreams, and a large percent of them are precognitive.

 

The first chapter of his book, Dreamer: 20 Years of Psychic Dreams begins with a dream he had while living in Amsterdam:

“Two people come up from behind me. One flanks me on the right, the other walks directly behind me. They want me to go into an alley with them, an alley I now seem to be less than a hundred yards away.”

From there, Paquette takes us through the detailed horror: how the men are armed and get him into the alley. He sees the the corpse of a dead man and knows these two guys are responsible. His body surrenders to terror, his knees hit the ground. The man with the gun is briefly distracted. His arm swings to his side, hand still clutching the gun but not aimed at him. Paquette seizes the moment, reaches for the man’s gun – then hesitates. That hesitation proves fatal in the dream. The man shoots him in the neck.

“The pain is intense…I want to yell but can’t…My throat doesn’t work…I know I’m dying…It takes an eternity crawl ten feet…I feel my life slipping away…”

As the dreaming Paquette dies, he thinks of his girlfriend, Kitty, and suddenly realizes he las left his body and is in her apartment in NYC, hovering near the ceiling. He notes that he’s dead -but not gone – and that she’s oblivious. Then he sees the sign for his apartment in Holland and is shocked that he’s alive, sitting upright on his cot. That night, he decided it was time for him to leave Holland and he called Kitty. They decided to get an apartment together in New York.

Two weeks later, Paquette is out and about, tying up loose ends for his trip back to the U.S. As he leaves a travel agency, he realizes he’s on the same street where his dream occurred. But he doesn’t see any alley and figures he’s safe – until a man falls into step beside him and a second man comes up behind him. And then he spots the alley.

Thanks to his dream about two weeks prior, Paquette knows when to make his move and manages to escape from the two men and race across the street to a newsstand. When he glances back, the men are running away.

This experience is the kind that turns atheists into believers. It no longer matters what the experts and scientists and skeptics think because you know what you’ve experienced. To date, Paquette has more than 30,000 recorded dreams, many of them precognitive, meticulously arranged I a database he has created.

I think it’s time for science to study someone like Paquette. Calling Rupert Sheldrake, Dean Radin, Bruce Lipton, and well, why not the  spirit of Carl Jung as well?

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11:11 and Coming Face to Face

Posted on July 8, 2021 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes when we repeat the same experience over and over, day after day, it starts to feel repetitious, like you’re on a treadmill. In this case, I actually was on a treadmill in the gym. Because of my knee issues, I don’t run anymore, so I walk, and walk and walk.

In order to deal with the boredom, I usually watch what’s on  the TV screen attached to the treadmill. On this particular day it was tuned to Fox News and I said to myself, Well, I’m not going to watch that. So I started going through the channels as I kept walking and walking. I would  pause on a station, feet still moving, and watch a bit one program, then move on to another.

Finally, I  reached The History Channel and just as I did, what appeared to be a promo ad for Expeditions Unknown came on. But immediately afterwards, an episode of the show began.  I thought this will keep me entertained while I walk, and I was hoping for a new episode, or an old one that I hadn’t already seen.

No such luck. Instead, the episode that came on was one that I’d not only seen, but I was actually in it.  And my part was right at the beginning. So within seconds, there I was on the treadmill watching myself talk about the Bermuda Triangle to the big guy, Josh Gates, who investigates mysteries and legends.

On one hand, it was surprising. I mean, what are the chances?  But on the other hand, I’d seen it, of course, so in a sense it was more repetition. But no matter how many I’ve seen the beginning segment, I do like watching the part where lightning bolts come out of my fingertips as I physically defined the Bermuda Triangle for Josh.

I watched a few minutes of the show until my time on the treadmill was over. On the way home, I saw something else that is somewhat repetitious in my life–the numbers 11:11. I seem to catch those numbers all the time, and this time they were in large numerals on the sign outside of Wellington High School as I drove by. Usually, there’s a message about something related to the school, but this time, oddly enough, the sign was a huge digital clock. And yes, it was 11:11.

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Remember Babe the Pig?

Posted on July 6, 2021 by Trish and Rob

In the mid-1990s, a book packager named Marty Greenberg, since deceased, asked if I would be interested in working on a book with Jamie Cromwell, star of the then recently released movie, Babe the Pig. Both Megan and I had loved the movie, so of course I said sure.

Jamie, I was told, had a cool story about UFOs and contact. Even better. Marty put us in touch and one day Cromwell landed in West Palm Beach and we picked him up and brought him back to our place. Megan, of course, was thrilled. Wow, the Babe the Pig guy was staying at her house. We shared that sentiment.

Jamie was a personable man, an Aquarian who didn’t think like other people. He’d spent time in the desert with UFO groups, had traveled worldwide, had unusual ideas and beliefs.  And he had a solid idea for a novel about UFOs. We spent most of our time talking about the plot and characters he perceived for his novel.

One night, we went out to dinner – an Italian restaurant, I don’t recall exactly where.  Several servers came up to him and asked for tips about how to break into movies. Others asked for autographs. Since Babe, his roles have been different and always terrific.  I was and still am a fan.

When he left after those several days of brainstorming, I emailed Marty and told him the meet and greet had gone well. Marty started putting the contract together and actually found a publisher offering a $30,000 advance before anything had been written.

I made the mistake of starting the book before the contact had been signed and sent a couple of chapters to Cromwell. He called me and wasn’t happy. “I don’t like that sex scene,” he said. “It’s not how I make love to my wife.”

Well, what do you say to that? “Then write it yourself.”

“I’d like to return to Florida and sit next to  you as you write my book,” he said.

I felt like laughing. Really? Sit next to me? Scrutinize my every word? Paragraph? Page? I used to work in the Florida prison system, as a librarian and Spanish teacher, and at the time his suggestion struck me as a kind of creative prison. “Forget that,” I replied.

“Then my wife and I will write the book,” he said.

During this phone call, I tossed an I Ching, an ancient Chinese divination system with which Jamie was familiar.

I got Hexagram 23, Splitting Apart. I told Jamie. We both knew what it meant.

Jamie and his wife never wrote the book. This is one of the  real perils of ghostwriting. Someone has a great idea, a fantastic outline, compelling characters. They’re  wedded to a sequence of events that work great in an outline, but not in the actual writing of the novel. An outline of characters and events is helpful, but there’s something that happens in the actual writing that dictates what works – and what doesn’t. It’s that creative element when the characters take over  and become living beings.

Novels are about actions and reactions, actions and reactions, over and over again, seen and experienced through your point of view characters. So even though outlines are helpful, they must be malleable.

I haven’t seen Jamie in anything recently. I hope he has experienced his UFO idea.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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