Just When You Need It

Posted on August 27, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This story needs a little background. During the mid-1980s, Rob and I led trips to the Peruvian Amazon for travel writers. One of the writers who joined us for the 350 mile trip from Leticia, Colombia to Iquitos, Peru, was Gary Provost. He was a frequent contributor to Writers’ Digest, a book reviewer, and author who had an amazing gift for taking what is essentially a right-brain process – fiction writing – and breaking it down in a left-brain way so that he could teach the craft to others. He and his wife Gail, founded the Writers’ Retreat Workshop to pass on that wisdom to aspiring writers.
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Gary and Gail started the Writers’ Retreat Workshop in 1987. It’s a ten-day intensive workshop for fiction writers. The idea is immersion -classes geared specifically to the craft of fiction writing taught by the staff, with visiting authors, editors, and agents who teach and lecture as well. Gary passed away suddenly in 1994, but the retreat continued.

Fast forward to 1998. Gail had remarried and she and her husband, Lance, were struggling to continue the retreats. “Enrollment had dropped, we no longer had a location for the retreat, we didn’t have a budget for advertising,” Gail says. “It was a real low point. The future of the retreat looked pretty bleak.” But they kept reaching out, hoping, following leads, trying different fund-raising venues.

Upon returning from a depressing fund-raising trip, Gail felt like she had reached a low point. “I remember walking in the door of our house that Saturday morning, feeling frustrated and defeated,” Gail says. “I was ready to just give up the whole thing. Then I went into my office and found more than a hundred messages on the answering machine, all from people who wanted to know where they could sign up for the retreat. It turned out that the day before, USA Today had run a travel story on ten educational vacations and the Writers Retreat Workshop was mentioned.”

She and Lance began returning phone calls, signing up students, found a location for the right price, and started hiring staff. To this day, Gail isn’t sure how USA Today found out about the retreat. But the break arrived just when they needed it.

Today, the WRW draws students from all over the world and many of the aspiring writers who have gone through the course have been published.

I just returned from the 37th WRW, my third time there as a guest speaker, and I was delighted to find that the spirit with which Gary and Gail started the retreat is flourishing. The 22 students, an overflow from a retreat in May, ranged in age from a 20-year-old college student to retirees. They arrived with their laptops and manuscripts, their dreams and dedication to honing their craft. They came from all over the U.S., and from the Virgin Islands, Luxembourg, Malaysia, and India.

Several years ago, Gail turned the retreat over to another writer, but she still attends as a guest staff member. After a talk I gave on synchronicity my second day there, she said, “Trish, did I ever tell you how synchronicity is why the WRW still exists?” And then she told me this story.

Posted in law of attraction, writers | 9 Comments

Will It Come in Threes Again?

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Trish and Rob



Ted Kennedy died yesterday, August 25, and when we read about it this morning, we wondered if there would be two more. Less than 24 hours later, writer Dominic Dunne passed away at the age of 83.

On November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated. And authors Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis also passed away.

It would be nice if death didn’t come in threes this time.

Posted in avoiding death, celebrities, politicians, writers | 20 Comments

Graveyard Garden

Posted on August 26, 2009 by Trish and Rob


I mentioned in a comment yesterday to Gypsy Woman’s post that I’d never seen a ghost. On second thought, Trish and I had a ghost/spirit experience four years ago, but it involved sound and energy, rather than a visual encounter.

The incident took place while we were staying at a beachfront hotel in the Dominican Republic. The hotel consisted of three buildings forming three sides of a square with a ‘garden’ in the middle. When we arrived, we found that the so-called garden was actually a fenced-in graveyard. So our second-floor porch looked out onto the nearby graveyard and the ocean beyond it.

We assumed it was an historical graveyard. But one day, the gate was open so Trish and I walked in. We’d barely gone ten feet when we noticed a grave marker indicating the man had been buried four months earlier. He apparently was a windsurfer, because his gravestone was the top half of a windsurfing board, and his epitaph said: ‘Where ever the Wind Blows will be there.’

We were puzzling over this grave that was about 30 feet from our room when an old man approached us with a shovel. He was digging a grave and was excited because he’d come upon a coffin from an earlier graveyard below this one. He said the sand keeps rising so graves are one on top of another. He wanted to show us the grave, but we’d seen enough.

As we were about to leave, for some reason I picked up a smooth stone from the graveyard and took it with me. By this time, Megan, who was 15, was demanding we move somewhere away from the graveyard. So we took a three-room apartment in one of the other buildings with a front porch facing the ocean. Ironically, the entry and side porch had an even better view of the graveyard.

On our last night, we went to bed about 11 p.m. About half an hour later, I came awake to the sound of loud pounding that seemed to shake the building. It went: BAM-BAM-BAM…BAM-BAM-BAM. Three strikes, like a wrecking ball hitting the wall, a pause, three more strikes. After several repetitions, Trish and I simultaneously sat up in bed, and the sound instantly stopped. It wasn’t frightening. If anything, it felt energizing, life-affirming.

We’d both heard it. It was no dream. Then we heard voices from inside the apartment. I got up and found the television on, even though it was off when we went to bed, and Megan was still asleep in the back bedroom. (She didn’t hear the pounding.)

In the morning, I took the smooth stone and dropped it over the fence into the graveyard. We were the only ones staying in the building, so there was no one to ask about the pounding sound. But, as we checked out, we told the manager what happened.

He looked confused, then said that ‘the spirits here are all friendly..muy simpatico.’ Oddly enough, neither one of us had been frightened. Actually, I had felt quite energized, as if I’d experienced expanded awareness and contact across dimensions. But then I didn’t see any ghost standing next to the bed, either.
Rob

Posted in dominican republic, ghosts, graveyards | 16 Comments

The Girl in the Yellow Dress

Posted on August 25, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Ghost stories aren’t necessarily synchronicities, but here’s one courtesy of Gypsy Woman that ends with a startling synchronicity. Jenean, it seems, lives with her feet firmly planted in two different worlds!
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For many years, I lived in my little 1926 bungalow that was surrounded by beautiful pecan trees. Before I bought the house, I used to drive past it every day en route to work and I couldn’t help but slow down and admire its quaint charm. The house was vacant and since I had such an affinity for it, I tracked down its owner and told him I wanted to buy the house. I sent my initial proposal by mail, and in it I outlined all the things I envisioned for it. Based upon that letter, he sold me the property in which he had raised his family.

When I moved in, I immediately began restoration of the main floor. At the center of the house was a square island which housed a large closet and the stairwell. The closet door opened into a rectangular hallway which led to the other rooms. The closet door was directly opposite the door of the master bedroom – or in my case, the ‘mistress bedroom.’

During this time, my daughter, Cindy, and her two small children lived with me. On one particular night, the children were in their beds and my daughter and I decided to watch television from my big bed. Apparently, we both fell asleep watching a movie. Suddenly, I was awakened by a bright light and saw my daughter standing at my hallway closet with the door open and the light on.

Her back was to me and her long hair was down. She was wearing a yellow dress that I’d never seen. I was startled to see her there and asked her what she was looking for. Then I asked where she had gotten that dress. It had a very fitted waist, a ruffle around the shoulders and a full length skirt with a sash tied in the back.

I called her name several times and she didn’t answer. But she continued to stand there at the closet with her back to me. Then, my daughter spoke. “Mom, what’s the matter?”

I snapped my head around and realized that she was still on the bed beside me. I quickly looked back to the closet, but the girl in the yellow dress was gone and the closet light was off, and the door shut. Cindy and I talked often about that night, and later laughed about it, but it remained very real to me. My sister later moved in with me and over time, other spooky incidents occurred to us and visitors.

Several years later, I decided to renovate the upstairs of the house. I called in a contractor and the work crew began by piling all the previous owner’s leftover stuff along side the curb for pick-up. One day, my sister and I had prepared lunch for the crew and we were all sitting around my dining room table when we started talking about all the things that they’d pulled out of the attic.

That was when my sister said, “Oh, so has Jenean told you the story about the girl in the long dress?”

The foreman responded, “Was it a yellow dress with a big shirt and a big sash?” He went on to describe the ruffles on the shoulders and other details I had seen on the girl at my closet. He said he’d pulled it out of the eaves in the side of the attic wall. He added that it was outside at the bottom of the junk pile.

We didn’t attempt to retrieve the dress, but I knew it was the same one. I never saw the girl again, but I’ve wondered about her often. I researched court records and discovered that the home had been originally built by two women who both came from old prominent Shreveport families.

Posted in child, ghosts, Jenean, yellow dress | 17 Comments

Passport, please

Posted on August 24, 2009 by Trish and Rob


While getting our daughter set up in college for the year earlier last week, we stopped at an outdoor club in Sarasota one night to listen to some music. The outing, it turned out, elicited a couple of synchronicities.

The tables were full, so we went to a high-top and shared it with a couple who seemed to be enjoying their raspberry martinis as much as their new relationship. The man turned out to be a recently retired navy commander, and to our surprise he’d spent his last few years commanding the highly secretive naval base, known as AUTEC, on Andros Island.

Since Trish and I had some involvement on Andros earlier this year related to AUTEC and Trish is working on a proposal for a novel that involves an island base very much like AUTEC, we had lots of questions for him. He was friendly and surprisingly open, but denied the existence of any sort of UFO-related activity on the base. But he readily said there were mysterious things taking place in the area related to electromagnetic anomalies. He wouldn’t go into details, but said if there was UFO activity, it wasn’t related to any secret project. He did, however, say that the Chinese were very interested in activities on the base, and have established their largest embassy in Nassau, forty miles away.

After awhile, when it became apparent he wasn’t going to say any more about AUTEC, I ended up talking to him about travels in South America, and while doing so, I remembered a very strange synchronicity that happened during one of my trips. I’d just flown into Miami after returning from an extended trip that had taken me from Mexico through Central America to Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. I decided to visit a friend in Key West before heading north to Minneapolis to see my parents. The plane ticket, though, seemed way to expensive so I decided to rent a car. En route, I was stopped at a police barricade near Key Largo. I thought it somewhat ironic because for months I’d been dealing with authorities and borders as I moved from one country to another, and here I was in the U.S. and the same thing was happening.

But I was surprised by what happened next. An officer approached the car, looked at me, and without a single question asked to see my passport. That was remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, it was the only time I’ve ever been asked in this country for my passport (at least outside of airports). The other amazing thing was that my passport was readily available in my pocket. I casually pulled it out, as if it was an every day request, and handed it to him. Oddly enough, he didn’t seem a bit surprised when he saw it was an American passport. He studied the various stamps, conferred with another officer, then handed it back, and waved me on.

That was a case of like attracting like. Even though I was in my home country, I was still attracting the same energy. Passport, please. Synchronicity. When I related that story to the former AUTEC commander, he smiled, leaned across the table, and said: “So do you think they were looking for aliens?”
Rob

Posted in AUTEC, passports, travel | 9 Comments

Four of a kind

Posted on August 23, 2009 by Trish and Rob

I came across these two synchronicities about names on a previously mentioned site called System Glitch. https://www.systemglitch.ca/synchro.html
It’s difficult to verify whether they’re true stories or not, but oddly enough the sub-title of the web site reads: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
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In 1985, a man named John Stott was involved in a serious car crash. The accident was witnessed by a passerby named Bernard Stott, was investigated by police officer Tina Stott, and administered by desk sergeant Walter Stott. The four individuals were not related.

In 1920, three English men, who did not know each other, were sitting in the same booth aboard a train traveling through Peru. When they began to converse with each other, they were all surprised when one man introduced himself as “Bingham”, the second as “Powell”, and the third as “Bingham-Powell”.
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How many Binghams were traveling around Peru in 1920? The previous year, Hiram Bingham discovered the famed Incan ruin of Macchu Picchu. That makes at least four.

Posted in clusters, names, travel | 4 Comments

Seeing Double

Posted on August 22, 2009 by Trish and Rob

So we’ve been focusing on numbers lately. Three days ago it was threes (as in deaths), then came 11s, followed by 88. Today we go to twos, specifically twins. And tomorrow we’ll look at four of a kind.

This one is definitely a cluster phenomena, if not exactly a synchronicity. But what are the chances?

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KODINJI, India (Reuters Life!) – Walk around Kodinji village and you’ll think that you have double vision.

The village is home to as many as 230 sets of twins. Nobody knows why there are so many twins in the village of 15,000 people, although one local doctor suspects it might be due to the water.

In fact with about 35-45 twins per live birth, this village in North Kerala, India, has four times more twins than normal. Not surprisingly, the village has been dubbed “the twin village.”

The latest official estimates by the Kodinji’s Twins and Kins Association (TAKA), which conducted door-to-door surveys at the start of the year, found that there were 204 sets of twins.

Based on births since the survey was conducted, there are probably now around 230 sets of twins in the village, locals said. That number is set to rise as there are five women pregnant with twins.

“It’s an amazing phenomenon to see a medical marvel occurring in such a localized place where the people are not exposed to any kinds of harmful drugs or harmful chemicals. It’s a virgin village,” said Dr Sribiju, a researcher.

Pathummakutty and Kunhipathutty, 65, are the oldest surviving twins in the village. The youngest are Rifa Ayesha and Ritha Ayesha, born on June 10. Their proud parents already see a slight difference between them as one lies fast asleep, while the other kicks away with a mischievous grin on her face.

Being a twin is not always easy. Pathummakutty, who like many in the village have a single name, recalls how her family struggled financially when she was a child. But she also remember good times such as laughter after yet another mix up with her twin sister.

It is not uncommon to run into an identical twin while walking down the hilly roads of Kodinji and there are many tales of teachers getting mixed up between twin students.

At the local school, 15-year-old Salmabi said teachers often confused her for her twin sister and she was once reprimanded for something that her twin did.

“It happens all the time,” the students pipe in a chorus.

Scientists are still trying to uncover the mystery of why there are so many twins in the village.

“Based on scientific facts, we feel something in the environment is causing this. It could be something in the water,” said a local doctor, M.K. Sribiju.

“All the world over the cause of twins is mainly because of drugs. Everywhere in the Western world, people are exposed to fertility drugs, their food habits, they consume more dairy products. Everywhere the age of marriage is increasing. There are late marriages predisposed to occurrence of twins,” he said.

However in Kodinji, most marriages are between people aged 18 to 20 years old.

“All the factors leading to the occurrence of twinning world wide, we cannot see it here. There is something unknown that is causing this phenomenon,” he said.

The locals also believe it has to do with the water. Kodinji is surrounded by water in the fields and during the monsoon season it becomes inaccessible from heavy rains.

As scientists try to find the reason for the large numbers of twins in the village, the parents are busy trying to tell their children apart. It doesn’t help that many of the twins have similar names and often wear similar clothes.

While parents light-heartedly point out that their twins even seem to fall sick together, not all traits are shared. Identical twins Anu and Abhi prefer different film stars and one of the boys likes to play cricket, while the other prefers kicking a soccer ball.

With all the attention being showered on the twins of Kodinji, Ajmer, a 12-year-old school boy, feels like the odd one out in a village where being a twin is trendy.

Posted in 2s, twins | 14 Comments

Believed 88

Posted on August 21, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This synchronicity needs a a little background. We took our daughter, Megan, back to college Wednesday to begin her junior year. There was some uncertainty here because of a relationship that ended last year and she was feeling somewhat at odds with herself. She’s a proponent of the law of attraction – aka Esther and Jerry Hicks and the Abraham material – so she realized the importance of moving into a “better feeling place.” She was looking for confirmation that she could do this. Her favorite number, by the way, is 8.

So this evening she went over to the bay to watch the sun set. Her touch-screen phone was in her pocket, the keyboard NOT locked, which means that your body’s movements can sometimes cause the phone to call random numbers, to type random text messages. The usual result is gibberish. But as Megan tells it:

“So I’m sitting there and it’s all just a perfect moment. The sun setting, people swimming and splashing in the bay, and I’m feeling really good, optimistic. And suddenly I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket, and I slip it out, expecting to see the number of an incoming call. Instead, there’s a text message that says BELIEVED 88. I didn’t type this message. No one sent it to me. The message was created by my body’s movements because the keypad wasn’t locked. Even the word BELIEVED was spelled right! And 8 is my favorite number and this was double 8s. You guys call this synchronicity. To me, it means I was coming into alignment with Source. It was an affirmation.”
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8 is, among other things, the symbol for infinity. And if the quantum physics guys are right, if our intentions can effect matter, then Megan’s experience seems to suggest that sometimes that effect can be stunningly literal.

As a parent, this story is both humbling and exhilarating. And this photo is of Megan on birthday 19, to be repeated on birthday 20. It’s that sort of risk and rush that characterizes her intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. It leaves me standing on the ground, peering upward, breathless.

– Trish

Posted in beliefs, law of attraction, Megan, Numbers, phones | 7 Comments

11s, Again!

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Trish and Rob


While we were writing a chapter in the book about cluster synchronicities involving numbers – specifically the number 11 – we received a cleaning bill from Megan’s college. This was the move out of the dorm, cleanup bill. The charge? $111 and loose change.

That same day, we took a break so we could pick up our Mazda, which had just received its second alternator in two weeks. As Rob drove away from the garage at 3:17 PM, he looked down at the clock. Since the battery had been disconnected, the clock had stopped. It now read: 11:11.

Law of attraction?

Posted in 11:11, 11s, Numbers | 17 Comments

Fatal Attraction

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Trish and Rob


We’ve talked about deaths coming in threes, and here’s another example. This time though it’s not celebrities, but employees of Disney World, and one of them played Indiana Jones.
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ORLANDO, Fla. — A 30-year-old performer at Disney World is dead after rehearsing for a stunt show, the third worker to die in seven weeks at the Orlando, Fla., park.

Anislav Varbanov was pronounced dead late Monday at a hospital after injuring his head while rehearsing a tumbling roll for the “Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular.”

A Disney spokeswoman said the company mourned Varbanov’s death. The stunt show was canceled Tuesday in his memory.

The death comes a week after a 47-year-old performer died following an on-stage fall during another show, “Captain Jack’s Pirate Tutorial.” And on July 5, a 21-year-old monorail driver died when another train crashed into his own.

Posted in #3, death, disney world | 6 Comments