Welcome to The Mystical Underground

My 29-year-old nephew, Ardon Anderson, my sister Mary’s  oldest son, got married on April 5, on Jekyll Island, Georgia, a slice of paradise off the east coast between Jacksonville, Florida  and Savannah, Georgia.  This three day extravaganza was held at the Jekyll Island Club Resort, where the past whispers through the very air you breathe.

The Jekyll Island Club was born in 1885, when a group of wealthy individuals invested in the ambitious plans of Newton Finney and his brother-in-law to create the most exclusive hunting club and vacation site for the very wealthy. The original 53 investors/members, who worked in Manhattan, became part of the incorporated Jekyll Island Club, which bought the entire island. 

This group of business and financial luminaries included  J.P. Morgan, William Rockefeller, Joseph Pulitzer, George Baker and James Stillman. These men spent summers on the island with their families. Some of them also built winter homes on Jekyll, which were large enough to house their families and servants. J.P. Morgan and William Rockefeller built Sans Souci in 1896. It had six units and was one of the first condominiums built in the country.

The club flourished into the 1930s, but with the Great Depression casting a pall over everything, half of the members dropped out. During WWII, the federal government was afraid that enemy subs might sneak in just off the shoes of Jekyll and evacuated the island. It remained closed for the duration of the war.

In 1947, the state of Georgia bought the entire island for $675,000, and turned it into a public state park. The hotel is now owned by the Radisson Hotel Chain, and has 134 rooms and suites that are located in the main building, the annex, and three restored cottages – the Sans Souci, Cherokee Cottage, and Crane Cottage, which is where Ardon’s wedding took place.

When we first drove onto the property and I saw the hotel and Crane Cottage, I remarked to Rob and Megan that it reminded me of the Overlook Hotel in Stephen King’s The Shining. Even though it isn’t as large as the Overlook, it has that same ancient, spooky feel to it. “This place has got to be haunted.”

Here’s a photo of the Jekyll River and the salt marsh as the sun was setting – the view from Crane Cottage. The second photo was inadvertently taken with some sort of  filter app on my iPhone:

As I found out after the fact, the hotel  apparently is haunted. 

JP Morgan supposedly still hangs out in the Sans Souci, where he continues to enjoy sitting out on the third floor balcony, sipping coffee and smoking his favorite cigar. Guests who stay in this condo unit and are early risers have reported the scent of cigar smoke – and smoking isn’t permitted. General Lloyd Aspinwall, one of the original investors, has allegedly been seen in a room named after him. The Aspinwall Room was originally called the Riverfront Veranda and the general has been spotted strolling the veranda, still enjoying the magnificent view. Here’s more about the apparitions, which include a mysterious bellboy who leaves gifts for newlyweds.

Now that I’ve discovered that the place is haunted, I wonder if it helps to explain an odd event that happened Saturday night after the wedding and dinner, when Crane Cottage rocked with music, dancing, and a lot of celebrating by the nearly 200 guests. The entire house had been reserved for the wedding. My youngest nephew, Ashton, made his way through the crowd and tapped me on the shoulder.

“Aunt Trish, the weirdest thing just happened. I found a baby bird in mom’s room. I think it’s a baby hawk.”

“Is it still in the room?”

“Yeah, I wrapped it in a towel.”

“We should release it.”

“C’mon, I’ll show you.”

Rob, Megan, and I followed Ashton up to the room on the second floor. Interestingly, the door to the balcony was shut and so was the door to the bathroom, which had an open window that overlooked the grounds and the Jekyll River beyond it. Ashton said he’d found the bird near the bed and took us over to it. He carefully folded back the edges of the towel and, sure enough, there was the baby bird.

“It’s a swallow,” Rob said.

 And what came immediately to mind was a synchro we experienced with a pair of swallows in 2009.  Ashton picked up the towel, cradling it gently in his hands, and we hurried back downstairs and out onto the property and found a spot near a bush where we left the swallow.

“So what’s it mean, Aunt Trish?” Ashton asked. “It must mean something, right?”

“Birds often act as messengers.  So yes, I think it means something. We’ll have to wait and see what unfolds.”

A little while later, I realized I had misplaced my iPhone and was running around, trying to find it, when Ashton hurried over to me again. “You aren’t going to believe this. I just found a second baby swallow in the bedroom.”

“What?”

We hurried back upstairs to Mary’s room. It was just Ashton and I this time and later on, Rob questioned whether this was the same bird, maybe it had flown back into Mary’s room after we’d released it. But the windows and balcony doors were still shut, Ashton said, and no, there were definitely two birds. Ashton said he had come back to the room to get something and had heard fluttering under the bed. When he got down on his knees and looked under the bed, he’d seen the second bird. He had caught it, wrapped it in a towel, and set it in a corner of the room, where he now picked it up. 

The little thing didn’t move, yet when I touched it, I felt the rapid, frantic beating of its heart. It seemed to be stunned. I suggested we take it outside to the same spot where we’d left the first swallow. So we did. The towel that had held the first swallow was  now empty. Ashton and I looked at each other and grinned. We hoped that meant the first baby had flown off.

By the next morning when we returned, the second swallow was nowhere around, either.

Rob’s interpretation of this discovery of two baby swallows is connected to its meaning as a verb – that there was a lot of “swallowing” going on at the festivities – i.e., the open bar, the copious amounts of wine that flowed after the bar had shut down for the night. Or perhaps Ashton must swallow the fact that his older brother is now married, a big change in the sibling dynamics. And while those interps may be part of it, there could be something deeper here.

Two baby swallows. The incubation period for swallow eggs is from eleven to twenty days, more twos. Perhaps within this time frame, Ashton, a tattoo artist seeking to expand his creative venue, will be offered a new opportunity of some kind. But since the birds were in Mary’s room, maybe something comes her way in eleven to twenty days. Or perhaps in eleven to twenty days, something new occurs for Ardon and his new wife. No telling. Stay tuned.

The wedding and the discovery of the two swallows occurred on April 5. So the time frame may be from April 16 (11 days) to April 25 (20 days).

None of us saw or sensed a ghost at any time during our time at the resort. Nothing strange showed up in any of my photos – and I took a lot of pictures. No orbs, no questionable shadowy shapes.We did take a nine-mile bike ride to the north end of the island, a place called Driftwood Beach, but the only ghosts here were the majestic pieces of driftwood.

And the incredible live oaks strewn with Spanish moss:

Perhaps the haunting, for us, was that Mary’s ex-husband, the father of all three boys, died several years ago. Yet, his 85-year-old step grandfather attended and so did his 38-year-old son from his first marriage.

We didn’t sleep at the resort.  Our rooms were at a hotel up the road. I think I would like to go back to the resort and actually book one of their ultra expensive rooms for a night and see what, if anything, puts in an appearance.  If nothing else, I would enjoy falling asleep to the sound of the wind moving through these ancient, majestic live oaks, many of which were infants when JP Morgan and Rockefeller and the other bankster boys bought the place more than a century ago.

What do you get when you combine the concept of synchronicity with the comic book/game world? In this instance, we get a game called Dead Synchronicity: Tomorrow Comes Today, in which a rampant disease in a future time spawns psychic powers among the infected. The catch, they don’t have long to live.

One reviewer describes it this way: “The story is an interesting one; it’s set in a bleak future where “A terrible pandemic is turning all of humanity into the Dissolved – the sick whose deliria provide them with supernatural cognitive powers… but also steer them towards a gruesome death.”

Even though I have a minor association with the comic book world through adaptations of movie scripts (SPAWN and The Phantom), I’m not really into such games. I already have plenty of distractions in other arenas.

I haven’t sampled the game so I don’t know how synchronicity plays—if at all—but such dystopian scenarios always lead me to wonder if the writers are tuning into our future, or at least one version of it. I suppose if such a scenario turned into a god-awful reality, then that would be synchronicity, as well as precognition. Then there’s the question: Are we creating such a reality through these tales?

Some writers have had ‘luck’ in this type of story-telling. Edgar Allan Poe wrote an eerie tale about cannibalism on the high seas after a shipwreck (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym), and the story came true 47 years later. In fact, the victim in each case was a teenage cabin boy named Richard Parker. Go figure.

Then there was the novel, Futility, also known as The Wreck of the Titan, by Morgan Robertson, that paralleled the true life story of the Titanic. The size of the ships, the speed, the number of passengers, shortage of lifeboats, the enormous iceberg—besides the similarities in names of the ships—are all so similar that it seems Robertson tuned into the tragedy 14 years before it happened.

But did Poe and Robertson create these future events through their writings? I really doubt it. If they did, well then I don’t want to play Dead Synchronicity.

However, if you’re curious about the “space-time distortions, dystopian atmosphere…and dark, bloodstained plot,” described by the game’s creators, you can play a demo  here.

Hopefully, you won’t be taking a peek at our future…or helping create it.

 Every so often I open our copy of Mysteries of the Unexplained and invariably run across a story I don’t recall reading before.  This one about a phantom bus is strange.

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In the mid-1930s, a driver in North Kensington, London had an odd report for the police. He claimed that as he was turning the corner from St. Mark’s Road into Cambridge Gardens near the Ladbroke Grove underground station, he saw a bus tearing toward him. “The lights of the top and bottom deck, and the headlights, were full on but I could see no sign of crew or passengers. I yanked my steering wheel hard over, and mounted the pavement, scraping the roadside wall. The bus just vanished.”

Sounds pretty wild, right? Like maybe the driver was drunk or hallucinating. But after one fatal accident at this corner, the local corner took note of the story about the phantom bus and discovered that dozens of people had claimed to have seen the double decker ghost bus.

It turns out that there had been a number of “ordinary accidents” at this corner, as well as several that were fatal. Eventually, the city council straightened the road and the accident rate dropped. There weren’t any subsequent reports about the phantom bus.

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Why did the ghost bus no longer appear after the road was fixed?  Since the bus had caused some of the accidents, it seems unlikely that its appearance was a warning about the junction. Maybe when the road was straightened, the energy of that particular corner was changed or a portal between the dead and the living was closed.

Our weekends are weird. Since we haven’t worked regular jobs for years, our Saturdays and Sundays shouldn’t be much different than any other day of the week. Except they are.

Maybe it’s that we live close to an elementary school where, during a regular week, traffic starts backing up in the morning and the afternoon, drop-off time and pickup time for the kids. When I’m at my desk on the weekend, I hear less traffic out there on the road beyond our fence. I’m aware that we’ve reached a weekend just by the sounds and activity around me.

Recently, our Saturdays have been about excursions- to the outdoor green market, for instance, where we can get fresh tuna for about 13 bucks a pound. At our local supermarket, that same chunk of tuna would cost close to 40 bucks a pound. Last Saturday, our fish truck wasn’t around. Another vendor told us the fish guy had trouble with his truck. So this Saturday we went off in search of Crabbie’s, Scottish beer that has only recently become available in the U.S.    

When Rob first did a search for who in our area might carry this beer, Google led him to a spot nearly 500 miles away, in South Carolina. He kept poking around on the Internet and eventually discovered that a store called Total Wine carried the beer, in a particular aisle, and even narrowed it down to the side of the aisle where he could find the beer.

So as we set off for Total Wine I thought, Okay, let’s have a synchro. I’m usually thinking that when I head anywhere. We’d never gone to Total Wine before and when we walked in, I was drawn through one aisle after another of wines from dozens of countries, hundreds of areas. Wines of every variety and price.

I veered down one aisle, scrutinizing the wines, and Rob veered down another, searching for his Scottish beer. In the foreign wine section, I selected a bottle of Hungarian wine and immediately imagined myself sitting outside a café in Budapest. Then Rob and I ran into each other and he still hadn’t found his Scottish beer, so I asked an employee about Crabbie’s.

It turned out that the beer was a recent addition and the employee talked to some other employee via Bluetooth and led Rob away. I returned to my fantasies about Budapest and wondered what other foreign country I might visit among the wines.   And then, there it was, a bottle of red that became my synchro for the day, Police Synchronicity. 

And it cost less than ten bucks.

I haven’t tried it yet. But already, I expect to be transported into the realm of the implicate, the enfolded order that physicist David Bohm talks about. Already, I’ll need the album by The Police playing in the background. Already, I’ll need to be wearing a shirt that reads, Synchros here and now.

John Sims recently had been wondering how much it would cost to order a new class ring to replace the one he lost 25 years ago. He’s a graduate of the Miami Beach High School class of ’81 and has fond memories of his days growing up on Miami Beach. He played football and even had his jersey number, 56, inscribed inside the ring, along with his name.

“I’m kind of a nostalgic fool. I think of things like that,” Sims told the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel. “You always remember where you came from, and we’re a close-knit group, even if we’re spread out over the country. We talk every day on Facebook.”

He figured he would never see his old ring again. After all, he lost it in Italy while serving in the Navy. He suspected that it slipped off his finger one day while playing baseball. However, before he had a chance to inquire about the cost of getting a replacement, voila, his lost ring was returned to him.

The well-timed recovery of the ring came as a result of a message posted on Facebook. A Virginia family found the ring 20 years ago, then promptly forgot about it. When they found it again in late February, they went online and found Margie Schulman Alter, a Miami Beach High grad from the class of ’66, who is now active in the online alumni community.

She posted a message on Facebook: “Does anyone know John Sims, Class of ’81 MBSHS football player #56? Class ring found 20 years ago however, placed in a drawer (NOT my drawer) and forgotten until recently.”

Within hours, several alumni had located Sims. But before he was contacted, he saw his name and photos of his lost ring being discussed on Facebook. Sims said the ring must’ve been inside the Navy glove that was shipped to the States, and the ring fell out.

Now that he has it back, he plans to wear the ring every day, just like he used to. “It just became my other wedding ring.”

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So, once again, a lost object returns to its owner. This time, it does so via social media. What are the odds? What kind of force is manifesting itself in these kinds of synchros?

Wellington, Florida is supposedly known as the winter equestrian capital of the world. That means we have basically two seasons in this town – when the horse industry is here and when it’s not.

This means that shortly before the snow starts flying in other parts of the country and the world, huge horse trailers begin pulling into town. In late October and early November, I can hear them outside my office window, trundling toward a barn or farm somewhere nearby.

Many of the horses these trailers carry cost upward of a million bucks. They are the crème de la crème, bred for speed, jumping, dressage, polo.  These are not horses that simply graze in a field of grass all day. They have schedules. Their riders have trainers. They are housed on vast tracts of land that feature barns, paddocks, riding and jumping areas. They require riders, grooms, barn managers, ferriers, veterinarians, acupuncturists, feed and hay, stores that sell saddles, bridles, all the accouterments. As our housemate Cassie, a groom, says, “The horses have better health care than I do.”

Wellington isn’t the only horse area in Florida. Ocala, in the middle of the state, is known for its horses and recently had a competition with a purse worth a million. In fact, according to The Barn Book, the Florida horse industry generates $3 billion in goods and services. The national industry has a $5.1 billion impact on the Florida economy when you take into account the suppliers and employees. Supposedly, 440,000 Floridians are involved in the horse industry in some way and there are half a million horses in the state, with 60 percent of them involved in recreation and showing.

For us, all of this translates in a personal way. We live a canal’s hop away from some of the largest equestrian estates, where dirt roads twist past properties so beautiful they belong in movies. We ride our bikes through this area and the dogs run free, without leashes, past paddocks where these gorgeous horses graze, past small, private ponds where swans sometimes drift in sunlight. Traffic is sparse, even during the horse season. During the off season, you can bike ride for miles and never see a human being.

Between January and April, when the competitions take place, the horse people often hire private trainers, massage therapists, and yoga instructors. This year, Rob was hired by a Venezuelan family for yoga. They live on an estate so large that he sometimes has trouble finding his way back to the car. And there are always so many people around he isn’t sure who is family and extended family and who is an employee. The estate has barns, paddocks, several houses, a private gym. The family owns horses that compete primarily in the jumping category.

Our daughter started horseback riding when she was eight. When we moved to Wellington in 2000, she was just eleven and continued her lessons. When she comes home for a visit, she usually squeezes in a ride somewhere. In 2001, Rob started a novel, Seventh Born, that takes place in a fictional equestrian town fashioned after Wellington. Crossroad Pres published it a few weeks ago and we wrote about a synchro associated with this novel and our housemate, Cassie, a groom for the Vanderbilt family who will be living with us until mid-April.

So we MacGregors, who had always figured we lived at the periphery of the horse industry, now realize that we live in the heart of it. It has provided fodder for novels, blog posts, and has delivered some really good synchros. Our income rises during the horse season. Since celebrities and the uber wealthy are often big horse people, we have talked to Bruce Springsteen at our gym – his daughter competes as a jumper;  have watched Bill Gates’ chopper hover over our dog park – his daughter is also a jumper; and have gaped at Tommy Lee Jones during polo matches – he owns a polo team.

Wellington calls itself a village. But as of the 2012 census, the population was close to 60,000, hardly a village. And during the horse season, that number probably rises by at least fifty percent and maybe even doubles.  Most seasons, Rob and I try to take in one or two horse shows and/or a polo match. This year, we did the dressage and jumping competitions. We rode our bikes to the first and got in free, and drove to the second and paid twenty bucks for parking.

Here’s a photo of the ring from where we stood for the jumping competition. That area just below us is the lesser reserved money area – maybe five grand a table, not sure.

I found the dressage competition pretty boring. It was like watching an episode of Downton Abbey where much is promised but little is delivered. While I appreciate the skill required to do the odd steps and twists and turns, which Cassie tells us dates back hundreds of years, dressage is, well, prissy. Class conscious. It, like the other competitions, sells tables for a mere $10,000. Dinner beneath a tent up close to the ring. Unlimited drinks. An expensive party.

But one of the perks for this expensive extravaganza was an actual old fashioned carousel, imported from Vienna,where kids actually got to ride on the ponies:

In Seventh Born, Rob captures the dichotomy of this world, and adds some stunning paranormal twists. Here’s an excerpt.

Last week, we wrote about pilot and author Bruce Gernon’s contention that Flight 370 might’ve encountered ‘electronic fog,’ a mysterious phenomenon linked with the Bermuda Triangle. Now Bruce has written an article expanding on his theory and describing what might’ve happened in the cockpit of the Boing 777.

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I call it Electronic Fog.  I have been researching this phenomenon since 1970.  I have communicated with over 100 people that have experienced it.  I have experienced it twice while flying my airplane.  I can relate my research and what I experienced to the disappearance of the Malaysian plane.

 The electronic fog is created in horizontal tunnels that form between thunderstorm cells.  They are usually about two miles high and last for about 5 minutes.  When they collapse they emit a puff of fog that can last for many hours after the storms have dissipated.  The fog can drift all the way down to earth and on rare occasions an updraft can lift the fog to higher altitudes.  If an aircraft flies through the electronic fog it can attach itself to the aircraft, similar to St. Elmo’s fire. 

This may have happened to the Malaysian flight 370, as I will explain.

There have been other famous flights that have had similar experiences.  In 1928 Charles Lindbergh was near Bimini when he encountered the electronic fog.  He did not tell anyone about it for 42 years so it must have had an impact on his mind.  He wrote about it in his last book just before he died because he thought it would be important for the world to know.  His compass was spinning so he wasn’t sure of his heading. 

He flew as high as he could get, trying to get above the fog with no success.  Then he flew just above the ocean trying to get under it with no success.  He flew for two hours before he was able to figure out which way was west by seeing that the right side of the fog was brighter because the sun was rising from the east.  He then turned west and flew for another two hours.  When he reached the coast of Florida the fog finally disappeared.

In 1945 five Navy bombers out of Ft. Lauderdale were flying in formation near Bimini when they encountered the electronic fog.  They radioed Ft. Lauderdale tower at 3:30 PM they were not sure of their position—something was wrong.  They were all unable to determine which way was west to head back to Florida.  They each had a compass and one electronic navigational instrument but apparently none of them were working properly.  They made a series of turns and became totally disoriented.  They kept flying for over six hours and finally ended up hundreds of miles from any land in the Atlantic Ocean where they were finally identified by radar.  A huge search team could not find any remains of them.

Exactly 25 years later, less one day, I was flying near Bimini when the electronic fog attached itself to my aircraft.  I radioed Miami radio at 3:30 PM that I wasn’t sure of my position—something was wrong.  My compass was spinning and my 3 electronic navigational instruments were mal-functioning.  I had entered a horizontal tunnel that was aiming for Miami.  It was 10,000 feet high and about ten miles long and 100 miles east of Miami.  I was in the tunnel for about 20 seconds then the electronic fog attached itself to the airplane when I exited the tunnel.  When I contacted Miami Radar Center they were unable to contact us on radar even though we had just installed a new transponder.  I slowed the plane down and maintained the same heading, never turning.   Three minutes after leaving the tunnel I reached the shore of Miami and the electronic fog electronically dissipated in about ten seconds.   I looked behind expecting to see a fog bank and there were only clear skies.   All the instruments started working again so I flew back to our home airport.  I landed 30 minutes ahead of time.  Somehow I traveled 100 miles in only three minutes and 20 seconds.

In 1986 Martin Caidin had one of the best documented encounters with electronic fog.  He was a famous science fiction author who wrote over a hundred books, including many on aviation.  He was flying a large twin engine Catalina PBY flying boat.  There were seven people on board.  All of them were professional caliber pilots.  They departed Bermuda in clear weather heading to Jacksonville.  Shortly after take off the electronic fog attached itself to them in an instant. 

All of their electronic instruments went out including their radios.  Their whiskey compass was spinning.  They tried to maintain their west heading by aiming away from the sunny side of the fog.  They climbed up to 8000 feet but couldn’t get above it.  They descended to sea level,but couldn’t get under it.  They continued for three more hours and when they got close to the Florida shore line the fog disappeared and skies were clear all around them.

 Caidin wrote about this flight on three separate occasions.  He knew they experienced something significant that could be dangerous for pilots.  He said the flying boat was enveloped by an intense electromagnetic field that dumped the instruments and blanked out the electronic equipment.  He said it was like flying inside a milk bottle. He never realized the milk bottle was attached to them.

Now for the Malaysian flight.

The first indication the airliner may have been in trouble was when the co-pilot signed off from Malaysian air traffic control.  He said, “All right, good night.”  Normally he would say something like “Malaysian 370 contacting Viet Nam at 128.4 thank you goodnight.”  Maybe the electronic fog had just attached itself to the aircraft so he cut the procedure short.  They never contacted Viet Nam airspace and strange things started happening immediately after that last call.  The fog can disable the radios.  The Boeing 777 has a glass panel cockpit.  All the panels could have turned off and turned blank.  The pilots would have no idea of their exact heading because even the whisky compass would be spinning.  They would have to rely on their mechanical backup instruments to maintain control.  They are the altimeter, the airspeed indicator and the attitude indicator. 

They made about 120 degree turn to the left apparently trying to aim for the nearest airport.  It appears they went up higher trying to get above the fog and down lower trying to get below the fog but it did not detach.  When the time came to the point where they should be able to identify the airport there was no visibility.  They may have made some more turns and that would have disoriented them to the point where they were  not sure of their heading anymore.  Pilots in the electronic fog often go through a series of turns, then became spatially disoriented, and enter what is known as a graveyard spiral, that always ends in death.

The Malaysian 370 pilots may have been able to control the autopilot, but the heading would  have to be controlled by their input.  After going through a series of turns they probably became disoriented and did something similar to Flight 19.  They just continued until they ran out of fuel.  Also, like Flight 19, they unfortunately aimed for a remote location over the ocean where they may never be found.             

It seems like every other decade there has been a significant encounter with the mysterious electronic fog.  Mainstream science has not yet recognized the existence of electronic fog so it is not even being considered as a possibility with the mystery of the Malaysian airliner.  It is a rare phenomenon and I know it is real because I have seen it and talked to others that have experienced it.  No one has been able to debunk my experience in over 43 years.

Could this be what happened to the Malaysian airliner?  Only time will tell. So far everything we know about the flight seems to point in that direction. 

People are starting to ask if this has anything to do with the Bermuda Triangle mystery.  Over the years I have worked with many scientists, many of them famous.  They all believed that the phenomenon of electronic fog is plausible.  My latest partner in research is professor David Pares.  My friend, the late great scientist and author Dr. Arthur C. Clarke, said that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine, and the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them, into the impossible.            

In the psst few days, I have heard about The Voice twice now. Rob and I don’t watch the show. I only knew that it was like American Idol, but supposedly better.  Then this evening I click onto Huffington Post for the latest on the missing Malaysian flight – and am treated to this stunning performance by a nun on The Voice:

And, oh wow, she floored them. She floored me.

Back in November, we met contactee Sandy, a retired veterinarian, and her husband for lunch midway across the state. She has since been on Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland, talking about her travel experiences into other dimensions and her contacts with entities she describes as inter-dimensional. She makes contact during meditation and has had numerous instances of physical contact and visual contact. The beings, whatever they are, don’t abduct her and she considers the contact benevolent, though sometimes startling. The aim of the contact seems to be related to healing and higher awareness.

At some point, we talked about doing synchronized meditations with Sandy and her husband, the Striebers, and others who wanted to join us. We’ve done two of them now, and they have yielded interesting results. We’ve had visions, similar to waking dreams, and some of Rob’s have been related to entities. In one, the beings were flying or hovering overhead, and he heard these words: “The crazy people.”

Hmm, maybe they have a sense of humor. Trish meanwhile saw a large cat, and a number of people moving about the room during that same meditation. She also saw a human form pushing up through the floor.

After that session, Sandy wrote this about her experience: “Greg and I had a quiet but enjoyable meditation. I had the usual leg rocking and body waves, then I started to buzz all over about 20 minutes into the meditation and I felt a being at my feet for only about 5 minutes. We cupped the little foam rubber brain as we held hands throughout the session and focused on Anne and Whitley. I had a vision of a man who stepped forward, dressed as a king with a deep purple satin top with gold embellishments and a thin crown wrapped around his head. His face had a nose and beard but it was just blank skin where his eyes and eyebrows would be. He just sat in front of me with a staff in his hand.”

On the day of our planned third session, we were on our way to the gym and started discussing the meditations. As we approached a traffic light, Trish was saying that she hopes something more substantial will happen, that it would be more than these dream-like images.

We stopped at the light, which was T-intersection. We had to turn either right or left. Directly across the intersection from us was a condo complex fronted by a ten-foot high ficus hedge that bordered a sidewalk. A man wearing a long-sleeved gray T-shirt was facing the hedge directly in front of us. Rob was gazing in his direction, but Trish didn’t notice him. The view of the man was partially blocked by three small diamond-shaped traffic signs, intended to keep cars from plowing straight ahead into the hedge.

Rob wasn’t paying close attention to the man until it registered that the man had seemingly faded and vanished. Rob told Trish what he’d just seen, and his first reaction was that the man, for some reason, had pushed his way through the thick hedge and disappeared on the other side. The light changed and Rob slowed the car as he turned and we inspected the hedge. There was no noticeable sign of disturbance to the hedge. But the branches most likely would have whipped back in place after someone pushed through them. The person also would’ve been scratched, because the hedge is thick.

That’s the logical explanation, of course, and we could prove or disprove it by trying to push through the hedge at that spot. But maybe that’s not the point of the experience.

Regardless of what had actually happened, what Rob saw was incredibly parallel to our conversation. Trish had said she wanted something more physical to happen, something that would prove that our meditations were somehow linked with Sandy and Greg and their meditations.

Trish’s reaction: “We’ve got to keep doing these meditations. That was my answer.”

Leonard Nimoy is 83. ‘Live long & prosper.’