Welcome to The Mystical Underground

When we moved from blogger to wordpress three years ago, we lost some readers. So I was delighted when I ran across a link to Jama Genie’s blog while I was going through some of my old notes. I went to her blog and left a comment about how great it was to find her again. Today, she dropped by for a visit and left this fascinating story about a trickster ghost.

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I’ve never understood the meaning of “trickster” either until I read this post. Thanks! That said, my perception of the Trickster has always been similar to the one you describe in connection with your father’s death. A few weeks ago, though, I had an encounter with the version of Trickster that isn’t so comforting… I had to go to an out-of-state funeral on a Saturday which required renting a car with unlimited mileage. What the heck, I said. I have to keep the car all weekend, might as well take advantage of those unlimited miles and make a road trip out of it.

My first stop was a 2-day visit with an 87-yr-old legally-blind friend I only knew online and through phone calls. I was to drive her to church Sunday morning, and she wanted to be there early, so I set my trusty travel alarm for the crack of dawn. As soon as I got out of bed, I turned it off and clearly remember placing it in a side pocket of my soft-side vanity case, which I then zippered shut. I don’t wear a watch and the legally-blind have no reason to keep regular clocks on the bedside table, so I opened the vanity case to look at the travel alarm, but it wasn’t there! Or anywhere else in the room! My friend’s response: “Mizz Fisher”, whom I would later learn was the previous tenant who’d lived in the apartment for 17 years before she died, but apparently had never left.

Weird things had happened while her son had been packing up her things. My friend felt cold spots in the kitchen. She’d find a cabinet door, that she couldn’t possibly reach without standing on a chair, wide open of a morning. Being blind, she naturally put certain things in certain places, but a special rosary went missing for several days until a sighted friend found it in a dish at the other end of the occasional table where my friend kept it. All Mizz Fisher’s doing, they decided. I suspect she was attracted to my travel alarm because it had a colorful dragon sticker on a silver background on the cover.

After church and brunch, I turned the room upside down again and emptied my luggage on the bed, and the clock was still missing. Then my friend and I left to visit a couple of area cemeteries and were gone several hours. On our return, I sat on the side of the bed farthest from my friend’s treadmill machine. Something shiny on the treadmill caught my eye. Yep, it was the travel clock, but sitting topside up, perfectly aligned with the edge of the rubber tread! Definitely placed there, not even close to where it would’ve landed had it slipped out of the vanity case or I’d dropped it without noticing.

I’m usually quite comfortable in residences with a “leftover” occupant, but the idea that an invisible entity was present that could remove an object from the inside pocket of a closed piece of luggage totally freaked me out, and that night I barely slept! At one point I heard a kitchen faucet handle turn and water hit the stainless steel sink. An hour or so later, it was the squeak of a cabinet door opening. Both times my friend was snoring away in a room across the hall. Trickster? Oh, yes! A playful trickster? Not MY definition of “playful”!

John Mack, right, with the Dalai Lama

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It’s rare that a mainstream magazine or newspaper tackles the subject of alien abductions without ridiculing the entire field of ufology and the people involved or, at the very least, without dripping sarcasm. But Ralph Blumenthal has accomplished this in a piece for Vanity Fair.

The piece begins in Rhode Island, where a group of abductees have gathered to share their experiences free of stigma and ridicule, and it ends with new information (at least to us) about Harvard psychiatrist John Mack.

 In the article, we  learned that John Mack had two unpublished manuscripts – one that he considered his “cri de Coeur against scientific materialism and ontological fascism,” and another about life after death. We also learned that after four years of negotiation, the film and TV rights to Mack’s story are going to MakeMagic Productions, which has partnered with Robert Redford’s Wildwood Enterprises. A major film is in development.

One the abductees Mack worked with, a man referred to as ‘Scott,’ recalled his last conversation with Mack in 2004. He was afraid about dying and this is what Mack told him in a reassuring manner. “You never know when it will be your time. We could all go at any time. I could walk out on the street and get hit by a car.”

A few weeks later, while in London, Mack was crossing a street in London when he was struck by a drunken driver and killed.

The article is here. The video link is courtesy of Daz.

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And Happy Mother’s Day to all moms out there!

Do yourself a favor. If you haven’t seen The Impossible, by all means do so! This film, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, may be one of the most emotionally powerful films I’ve seen in a long time, and it’s based on a true story. 

The premise is simple: a family – husband, wife, three sons – travel to Khao Lak, Thailand  for a family vacation.  Maria Bennet (Watts) is an English physician who no longer practices because she’s raising three sons. She and her  Scottish husband, Henry (McGregor) and their sons – Lucas, Tomas and Simon- stay at a resort in Khao Lak, Thailand over the Christmas holidays in 2004.

They arrive on Christmas Eve day and we get a sense of them as a family. Lucas is the rebellious older son who bullies Tomas, nearly 8, the middle brother. He’s interested in astronomy. Simon, the youngest, is a cutie, an innocent. Maria and Henry appear to have a good marriage, beset by uncertainties – he may be losing his job.

On the morning of December 26, a tsunami slams into the coast, decimating the resort, and sweeping away Maria and Lucas, the oldest son. At the moment the tsunami hits, Henry and the other two sons are in the resort swimming pool.

Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter  begins with a 2004 tsunami scene. But compared to The Impossible, Hereafter’s opening is like afternoon tea. As our daughter remarked while we were watching the movie, the opening of Hereafter is just for effect; in The Impossible, the tsunami and its aftermath are the story.

Without giving away too much, this story is about how human beings react and persevere in the midst of a natural catastrophe so devastating that nearly a quarter of a million people were killed. By focusing on one family, the emotional resonance is powerful, utterly genuine. Maria is severely injured, and she and Lucas end up in a makeshift Thai hospital, where the conditions are so gross, so unsanitary, that at certain points I writhed.

Maria keeps asking Lucas about the color of her severely injured leg.

“Red, “ he says. “Red. Why?”

“Red is good. Black is not good.”

Henry, meanwhile, has found his two youngest sons and sends them into the mountains with other refugees, so that he can stay behind on the coast and search for his wife and Lucas. This decision seemed like a plot flaw to me, but as Rob pointed out, maybe it actually happened, Henry only wanted his sons somewhere safe. In a situation like this, where a natural catastrophe has ripped apart normal, it’s difficult to know what decisions you might make. What’s immediately obvious about all the survivors are shell shocked, profoundly traumatized.  

There are moments in this film that show humanity at its worst – like when Henry asks a fellow survivor if he can use his cell phone to call his father-in-law and the man says the battery is low and he’s waiting for a call, so no. 

And there are moments when we see humanity at its best and most heroic. Henry and other survivors are sitting around a campfire somewhere, sharing their experiences about the loss of spouses, children, the sudden, unpredictable horror that slammed into their lives. Henry starts telling what he experienced and breaks down, sobbing, and one of the fellow survivors hands him his nearly depleted cell phone. “Make the call,” he says.

Naomi Watts was nominated for best actress for this film, and with good reason. In her scenes, I never had the sense that I was watching a movie. She’s totally genuine, a character in whom you vest your emotions as a mother, parent,  wife,  physician, human being. Through her and Lucas, we witness the chaos in the aftermath,  how the injured flooded rural hospitals unequipped for such massive devastation. Through her, a physician, you feel the horror of her situation, how the deck is stacked against her.

I was surprised at some of the comments about this movie. But the one that really struck me was how this movie showed an insensitivity to the massive loss of loss of native people. I disagree. By focusing on the emotional chaos and horror that a family of tourists experienced, we are led into the heart of the disaster itself and its wrenching, emotional  aftermath. In the end, the message of this film is clear: love pushes us into the unexplored, the unimagined, and can bring about miracles.

Noah and his new girlfriend,Brandy

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Last year, our golden retriever, who was just three then, started acting like a much older dog. He was winded after a few Frisbee runs, had trouble leaping onto the back seat of one of our cars, slept a lot, and then started losing hair from his tail and neck.

We changed his diet, gave him cod liver oil, olive oil, and concocted exotic drinks suitable for human consumption that we shared with him. Nothing worked. Then he developed an ear infection and we took him to our vet, a genius whose diagnoses are rarely wrong. He looked at Noah’s ears, then at his balding tail.

“Thyroid,” he said, and conducted a blood test.

Sure enough, the blood test revealed a low thyroid. Noah is now on the canine version of synthroid. A pill twice a day. In just three weeks, the difference in his energy is astounding. He runs faster, is more competitive at the dog park, chases away doggy thieves who sneak in to grab his ball. He also seems to have developed a crush on Brandy, a female mixed breed who jumps higher than he does to catch a ball.  That’s her in the photo above, looking up and watching a high ball that Rob threw her.

Noah, who was fixed when we got him, now humps Brandy  at every opportunity.  When she runs to chase a ball, he races alongside side her, trying to reach the ball first. People at the dog park who know him have commented about it.

Wow, what has gotten into Noah?

This is how he was two years ago with Cody!

Does he ever get worn out?

The thyroid gland controls how quickly the body uses energy, makes proteins, and controls how sensitive the body is to other hormones. Energetically, it’s centered in the fifth chakra – the throat area – communication.  I’ve noticed that since Noah has been on the thyroid meds, his barks tend to be louder, like explosive booms. Sometimes, he sounds like a hound at the  hunt.  

Golden retrievers are generally known as people friendly dogs who seek human company, seek out human touch and companionship, another form of communication. Noah has never been that kind of golden, probably because he was crated for the first nine months of his life. His previous owners intended to use him as a stud and gave him up when they ran into financial problems.

Yet, since he has been on the thyroid med, he is much less timid about approaching people. Just this afternoon, he went over to Jen, Brandy’s owner, and nudged her, asking for a pat on the head.  Of course, maybe he figures if he can get on her good side, Brandy will be more amenable to chasing him instead of that ball!

We took him back to the vet for a checkup and is thyroid level has gone from .5 to 7 in just four weeks. Normal, the vet says, falls around 4. His fur is growing back, lustrous and thick.

There’s no synchro in this story, no aliens, nothing conspiratorial. Noah has simply reminded me that our animal companions aren’t just ornaments that decorate our lives. They are beings whose inner, emotional lives are as rich – or richer than- our own. They have desires, needs, and longings we can’t fathom. 

Most people I know, for instance, think squirrels are cute or annoying or mischievous little devils. But if you stand in the middle of a dog park and shout, SQUIRREL, nearly every dog will stampede to where you’re standing, looking for that squirrel. They not only understand that word, they react to it.

For a dog, squirrel may represent what for us would be an adrenaline rush – skydiving, that first innocent kiss, winning a marathon, a tennis match, a game of chess. Or, squirrel to a dog may just be synonymous with the thrill of the chase, of running free beneath a vast blue sky.

Since we share our lives with Noah, we are energetically linked to him and vice versa.  So, symbolically, I’m wondering about the thyroid message.  Perhaps it’s saying that we should do more of what we enjoy, what thrills us, what makes us feel as if we are perpetually running free beneath that vast blue sky.

If Rob and I start howling at the moon, you’ll know we got the message.

Dean Radin himself must be considered supernormal. As a scientist working in the tiny field of parapsychology, he is surrounded by academics and intellectuals who not only  dismiss all psi phenomena, but think parapsychology is not a valid field of study. As a result, there is very little money available for such result and only a handful of full-time parapsychologists. Yet, Radin plods on tirelessly, turning out the studies and the book. He has the evidence, the undeniable proof that telepathy and other psychic phenomena are real.

from Radin:

Critics are fond of saying that’s there is no scientific evidence for psi. They wave their fist in the air and shout, “Show me the evidence!” Then they turn red and have a coughing fit. In less dramatic cases a student  might be genuinely curious and open-minded, but unsure where to begin to find reliable evidence about psi. Google knows all and sees all, but it doesn’t know how to interpret or evaluate what it knows (at least not yet).

In the past, my response to the “show me” challenge has been to give the titles of a few books to read, point to the bibliographies in those books, and advise the person to do their homework. I still think that this is the best approach for a beginner tackling a complex topic. But given the growing expectation that information on  virtually any topic ought to be available online within 60 seconds, traditional methods of scholarship are disappearing fast.

So I’ve created a SHOW ME page with downloadable articles on psi and psi-related topics, all published in peer-reviewed journals. Most of these papers were published after the year 2000. Most report experimental studies or meta-analyses of  classes of experiments. I will continue to add to this page and flesh it out, including links to recent or to especially useful ebooks. This page may eventually become annotated, then multithreaded and hyperlinked, and then morph into a Wiki.

This You Tube video is one of the things that came out of the Disclosure events in Washington, D.C. this past week. This man was apparently a CIA agent during the Eisenhower years. He strikes me as sincere, but I always ask myself if it might be more disinformation. The video was shot in early March.

Tonight, we’ll be live with Mark Johnson and KGRADIO, 9-10:30 PM eastern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=3eQx_5U4WV4

 For Mother’s Day, Rob, Megan and I went to the Norton Museum in downtown West Palm Beach to see an Annie Leibowitz exhibit.  Before we left, I slipped on my moldavite ring and told Rob and Megan the ring would attract a synchro,

On the way, we got stuck behind the SUV in the photo above.  With a canoe on the roof rack and three bikes on a rear carrier, it’s not an easy car to miss. 

Rob finally pulled around the car, we headed south on Olive, the street where the museum is located, and realized we’d gone too far. We circled back and turned into the museum lot – and saw the SUV with the canoe and bikes on it. The people were just getting out. to head into the museum.

“Them again?” Megan laughed. “This is starting to feel like a synchro.”

We went through the exhibit, which was fantastic.  The selection of 39 photos includes portraits of both celebrities and ordinary people.

We wandered around for about an hour, then decided to head for a Cuban bakery.

We were admiring the homes in a particular neighborhood  and weren’t paying any attention to where we were going. We ended up at another Cuban bakery  and while I went up to the sidewalk window to buy a couple of cortaditos, Rob and Megan filled the car with gas at the station across the street.  In other words, time passed, probably half an hour.

When we left the bakery, we missed our turn and ended up on the interstate. Rob decided to get off at the next exit and who’s in front of us? The SUV.

“What?” Rob exclaimed.

“A cluster,” I laughed.

“Impressive,” Megan remarked.

They apparently had gotten lost as well, because as soon as I snapped the photo, they made a U-turn and headed back onto the interstate.