Old Friends

Posted on June 7, 2009 by Trish and Rob

In 2007, my friend Carol Bowman – author and researcher into past lives – received a call from a woman who was interested in bringing Carol’s story/books to television. Carol, whose journey is illustrated in her two books – Children’s Past Lives and Return to Heaven – and on her blog , is an avid Simpsons fan. So imagine her surprise when the caller turned out to be Julie Scully, who used to write for the Simpsons.

During the course of their conversation, it occurred to Carol that Julie should talk to Trish. “I didn’t know why,” Carol says, “but I brought up your name. There was a moment of silence, then Julie said, Wait a minute”…and she pulled your book from her pile of favorites on her desk and said that she uses your tarot book all the time.”

The other day, I received an email from Carol, reminding me of this odd occurrence. “Doesn’t this qualify as a synchronicity?” she asked.

And yes, to us it does. The three of us are intrigued by reincarnation.Well, for Carol, it’s more than intrigue. It’s her work and her passion. I met Carol after her first book, Children’s Past Lives, literally fell at my feet one day years ago while I was browsing the aisles at Border’s. I devoured the book in a few days, wrote to her, and subsequently recommended her to my agent, who became her agent and sold her second book. Julie and I are linked not only through our enjoyment of the tarot, but through the Seth books, written by medium Jane Roberts in the 70s and 80s. Then there’s the Simpsons connection for Carol and Julie, and that we’re all connected as writers. Somehow, everything came together in March 2008, when Julie and Carol came to Florida and we spent a long weekend together with several other people whose synchronistic connections to the group were also prevalent.

We may not have figured out the mystery of the universe, but we certainly started figuring out the mysteries of our connections. And maybe that’s how synchronicity works at the most personal levels, linking our individual stories to a larger collective, to the tribe of consciousness that birthed us.
***
Julie’s recollection is: “I didn’t rifle through books on my desk. Trish’s tarot book was the ONLY book on my desk! It’s the only book I use when I attempt to do an amateur tarot reading. It’s the only book on tarot I’ve given out as gifts to friends. We were all connected by books. I read Carol’s book, her book jumped out at you, I read your book… Wait a second… I don’t have a book. Maybe you two inspire me to write one. Or you two cross over into my world – TV & Movies. That feels like synchronistic symmetry to me!”

UPDATE: Teapot, I should have clarified this. Carol lives in Pennsylvania, Julie lives in Malibu. They had never met. Their conversation took place by phone.

Posted in friendships, reincarnation, relationships, Seth, simpsons, tarot, TV, writers | 9 Comments

Dark Passages

Posted on June 6, 2009 by Trish and Rob


One of our ‘secrets’ of synchronicity deals with creativity and the law of attraction. When you focus intently on a creative endeavor, you attract like experiences in the outer world. For example, when Trish was writing about a stalker years ago in her first novel, In Shadow, she attracted one who actually called her while she was working late at night on a related passage.

Thursday morning’s front page newspaper story about the death of David Carradine caught my attention in the same respect. The headline read, “Star of ‘Kung Fu,’ ‘Kill Bill’ lived by the sword on the set.” In the latter series, Carradine was the head of a group of assassins. He was filming another movie in Thailand when he was found hanged in his hotel room.

His passing brings to mind the death of other actors involved in violent roles. Heath Ledger, playing the Joker – the dark Trickster – in the The Dark Knight, died of an overdose.

Then there was the cases of Bruce and Brandon Lee, father and son, who died while playing deadly, violent roles. In both movies, The Crow for Brandon and Game of Death for Bruce, the actors played characters who were not only both shot to death, but subsequently return from the dead to exact revenge.

In Brandon’s case, he actually died in the very scene in which his character, Eric Draven, was murdered. The death was caused by the firing of a blank at point-blank range after a dummy cartridge had gotten lodged in the barrel of the gun.

He died at 28, his father died at 32. Both deaths were ruled accidents, but both were considered highly suspicious.

What are we to make of synchronicities that have a negative impact? One rule that dominates synchronicity is that like attracts like, and that’s especially true when the person is deeply focused on a creative endeavor.

Even though the two men were acting dark roles, not living them, they were experiencing what it was like to live such a life of violence and death. The same could be said for Carradine and Ledger. They were so involved in their roles that, unfortunately, they attracted the real life experiences that led to their deaths.

It may seem unfair, but it’s not. The bottom line is that we are all terminal. Death is a given, life isn’t. But it’s nothing to worry about. We’ll be back.

Posted in celebrities, death, law of attraction | 7 Comments

El Siboney

Posted on June 5, 2009 by Trish and Rob


A friend from Key West, Jim Moseley, called me late Monday evening. I hadn’t talked to him for several years, but we had corresponded. Usually, I write him in response to something he has written in his iconic newsletter called SAUCER SMEAR. Unless you happen to be a UFO-naut or nut, you’ve probably never heard of it. SMEAR has a circulation of several hundred ‘non-subscribers’ as he calls us.

Jim gleefully and humorously impales know-it-alls in the UFO field, deconstructing believers and debunkers alike, and especially those who take themselves too seriously. One of his favorite targets is the Amazing Randi, who in turn, from time to time, shakes his metaphorical fist and threatens to sue and send Saucer Smear into another dimension.

Jim is old-school eccentric. No computer for him. His eight-page monthly screed is composed on an electric typewriter and sent through snail-mail. Friends and contributors send him printouts from the ‘wretched Net,’ as he calls it, allowing him to keep up on the latest. Meanwhile, he vows never to Google.

Even though I hadn’t heard his voice for a long time, I wasn’t surprised by his call. I’d written him a few weeks ago about my upcoming appearance on the History Channel’s UFO Hunters to talk about my Bermuda Triangle book. He told me I’d pulled a cool ‘Bermuda Triangle move’ by completely disappearing from the said program. Good one, Jim.

I mentioned that the next time we’re in Key West, we should meet him at a certain Cuban restaurant a couple of blocks off Truman. He asked the name of it, and I drew a blank.

After hanging up, I casually picked up a book on my desk called Synchronicity and You: Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in Your Life, which I intended to page through. First, I noticed that beneath the book was the latest edition of SMEAR, which I hadn’t looked at yet. Then, I opened the book to a marked page and was astonished to find that the marker was a business card to El Siboney, the Cuban restaurant in question, where we ate in February. So there it was: a synchronicity stuck inside a synchronicity book!
Rob

Posted in c6, names, restaurants, saucer smear, trickster, UFOs | 6 Comments

27

Posted on June 4, 2009 by Trish and Rob




Twenty-seven. 2+7=9. Nine is about beginnings and endings. Many of us are just getting started in our careers at 27 after a few years of false starts. But for others, 27 is an ending.

The other evening, Megan was watching some Hollywood story about Kurt Cobain and we were sort of half-listening from the other room. We knew that Cobain was a suicide. But what we didn’t realize was that he – like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison – died at the age of 27.

What’s up with that?
***
UPDATE:
This afternoon I opened up a book on my desk called Synchronicity and You: Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in Your Life, by Frank Joseph. It opened to pages 28-29, and here’s the first thing I read. “But the number nine also demonstrates the degree to which such symbolism is subjective and how susceptible it is to different, personal interpretations. Among some musicians it is regarded as death’s own number. This negative association began with Beethoven, who died after completing his ninth symphony.”

WOW! Nearly fell off my chair when I read that. This book, BTW, also plays into tomorrow’s synchronicity. Stay tuned.
Rob

Today marks the four-month anniversary of this blog. We’re enjoying it, and hope you are, too.
Rob & Trish

Posted in 27, cobain, hendrix, janis joplin, morrison, musicians, Numbers | 11 Comments

The Holts

Posted on June 3, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Brenda, a certified deputy assessor with a law degree, lives in New Orleans. We found her story on another blog and asked if we could use it. Synchronicities that involve repetition of names, like those that involve clusters of numbers, are always so odd that they beg for further exploration.
***
I was on the internet at work one day, reading about an odd Negro cemetery here in New Orleans named “Holt” cemetery. Just then, the phone rang and I looked at caller ID. The person calling? Susan Holt.”
***
Since we’re picturing a graveyard today, here’s a great ghost story and synchronicity by Butternut Squash called Heavy Footsteps.
***

Posted in clusters, names | 4 Comments

Last Titanic Survivor Dies

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Elizabeth Gladys ‘Millvina’ Dean, born Feb. 2, 1912, was two months old when she left on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. She died Sunday on the ninety-eighth anniversary of the launching of the ill-fated vessel that was billed as “practically unsinkable.” The Titanic sank on its maiden voyage, and Millvina never married, eventually becoming an old maid–an outdated term, but relevant here.

The Titanic saga was a ‘mass event’ that reached the awareness of millions at the time and has lived on. As such, it attracted synchronicities. One of the most startling ones was related to a novel called, Futility, by Morgan Robertson that was published in 1898 about the sinking of a supposedly unsinkable ship called The Titan when it struck an iceberg. The fictional story all but mirrors the sinking of the Titanic fourteen years later. Here are some of the most striking similarities:

> The Titanic was the world’s largest luxury liner – 882 feet,displacing 66,000 tons- and was once described as being “practically unsinkable;” the Titan was the largest craft afloat – 800 feet, displacing 75,000 tons – and was considered “indestructible.”

> The Titanic had three propellers and two masts; the Titan was also equipped with three propellers and two masts.

> The Titanic carried only 20 lifeboats, less than half the number required for her passenger capacity of 3000; The Titan carried “as few as the law allowed”, 24 lifeboats, less than half needed for her 3000 capacity.

> While traveling at a high speed of 25 knots, the book details how the vessel crashed into an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean on an April night, causing it to sink. Twenty-five hundred passengers aboard the Titan drowned to death as their “voices raised in agonized screams”.

Morgan Robertson said that the idea for his book was inspired by a “vivid trance vision.” And to compound the strangeness of these parallels, a tramp steamer was traveling through the foggy North Atlantic with only a young boy on watch, some months after the Titanic had sunk, when suddenly an ephinous-like thought came into his head that the area that they were traversing at that moment, was the area in which the Titanic had sunk. He became very aware of the fact that the name of the ship he was on was similarly called the Titanian. Terrified and panic-stricken, he sounded a warning and the ship abruptly stopped. As some of the fog began to clear, the passengers on the ship were all relieved to see that they had stopped just in the nick of time, for a huge iceberg ominously loomed before them, directly in their path, and thus were spared.

UPDATE 6/1/09: Here’s the Indy petition related to the post on May 30. Feel free to sign!

Posted in c5, global, mass, titanic | 12 Comments

The Painter and the Monk

Posted on June 1, 2009 by Trish and Rob

I came across this peculiar synchronicity on a site called System Glitch

***
Joseph Aigner was a fairly well-known portrait painter in 19th century Austria, but he was also a very complex and unhappy fellow, who made repeated attempts to kill himself.

His first attempt was at the age of 18 when he tried to hang himself, but was interrupted by the mysterious appearance of a Capuchin monk. At age 22, he again tried to hang himself, but amazingly was saved by the very same monk.

Eight years later, he was sentenced to the gallows for his political activities. Once again, his life was saved by the intervention of the same monk. Finally, at age 68, Aigner succeeded in suicide, shooting himself with a pistol. His funeral ceremony was conducted by the same Capuchin monk – a man whose name Aigner never even knew.
***
Since this one is pretty strange, I decided to dig a little. Who was that monk? Did he really repeatedly appear at crucial times in Aigner’s life and finally at his funeral? I Googled ‘Joseph Aigner painter,’ and that’s when things got, well, even stranger. Read on.
***

Joseph Aigner – The Sheboygan Press – September 23, 1929

Well Know Painter Suffers Fatal Stroke on Eighth St.

Joseph Aigner, well-known painter was suddenly stricken with paralysis shortly after 5 p.m. Monday while going home from work. He fell in front of the Ehrlich and Kindel Vulcanizing Company on North Eighth street and died at 5:20 p.m. at the entrance to St. Nicholas hospital where he was rushed in the city ambulance. A large number of people were present when the ambulance arrived.

Mr. Aigner was born in Frankenburg, Germany on December 24, 1870 and came to America with his parents when he was 14 years old. The family located in Kiel. In 1891 Mr. Aigner was united in marriage with Miss Ottilia Mais and moved to this city, where he lived since.
***
So, it’s a different Joseph Aigner, also a ‘well-known’ painter, and also a report of his death. The first Aigner died in 1886, two years after the second Aigner left Germany for America.

Upon further perusal, I found the story about the first Aigner appears on several web sites, and eventually traced it back to Robert Ripley’s Giant Book of Believe it or Not, Warner Books, 1983. But this post might be the first time that the two Joseph Aigners have been connected.

It was as if the universe was saying to me: ‘Oh, you’re skeptical about the monk synchronicities, are you? Okay, take a look at this!’

Posted in c6, death, trickster | 12 Comments

The Friendship Book

Posted on May 31, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This cover for the book is from 2005. I couldn’t find any from the 1960s. – Trish
***
We initially ran across Keith Fraser’s story while trolling the strange coincidence archive – – a real treasure trove of synchronicities. We liked his story and wrote him, asking if we could use it.

In many ways, it’s reminiscent of that final scene in What Dreams May Come, when the husband and wife whose lives went terribly wrong have reincarnated and meet up on a pier as a young boy and girl, playing with toy boats. There’s a moment in that final scene when their toy boats collide and they look at each other and we know that on some level, they recognize each other.
***

As a small boy in the early 1960s, I used to visit my Grandma’s house with my mum and read copies of DC Thompson’s, Friendship Book, to pass the time. The book (as it does today) contained a number of submitted photographs. One of these caught my attention – of a young girl painting a picture, and I asked my mum who she might be.

Years later, I was visiting my girlfriend’s home for the first time and noticed a copy of the Friendship Book on a book case. I mentioned that I used to read copies of this when I visited my grandparents, and started to flick through the book. It was then that I saw a photograph I recognized. It was that of a small girl painting a picture. I pointed this out to my future in laws and imagine my surprise when I was told that the photo was that of my future wife, which they had submitted to DC Thompson in the early 1960s. Bizarre, indeed!”
+++
Fraser doesn’t say what it was about the picture that seized him. But we can easily imagine him at his grandmother’s house, paging idly through the Friendship Book and suddenly stopping, staring, feeling something inexplicable. This story is reminiscent of one that Ray Getzinger set us, about a red headed girl.

Posted in books, c2, precognition, relationships, romance | 2 Comments

Indiana Jones and the Last Synchronicity

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Some of you might know that back in the early ’90s I wrote seven Indiana Jones novels, starting with The Last Crusade, then backtracking to the 1920s when Indy was just starting his career as an archaeologist. A few years ago, I was asked by LucasArts and Del Rey Books to write another Indy novel. I thought it was going to relate to the new movie, but instead it turned out to be connected to the sketchy story of a new Indiana Jones video game. I took the project and developed the story into a novel, much of which naturally diverged from the game scenario. It was a novel, after all.

The game and the novel, Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, were supposed to come out in June ’08 simultaneously with the new movie. But that didn’t happen. As my editor at Del Rey said, no video game has ever been finished ahead of the deadline, and many are delayed. And so it was with the Staff of Kings. Consequently, the novel was also delayed, first to the fall of ’08, then the spring of ’09. Then, I was told of a shake up within LucasFilm and the game was pushed back to June of 2010.

(There is actually synchronicity coming here. It just takes some explaining to get to it.)

Then another twist. In March, I heard rumblings that the game was coming out this June. I figured it was a false rumor, or wishful thinking by fan-aticals. 😉 Then last week I was told by my editor that yes, the game indeed was being released in June using the old game platform, rather than the long-planned new version. At the same time, LucasArts cancelled my novel because it wasn’t scheduled for publication for another year and would miss out on the publicity related to the game release. Ironic, since I’d completed the novel ahead of my deadline.

Since I’ve gotten numerous inquiries from Indy fans about this novel, I told the web master of an Indy fan site about the turn of events. He wrote back Wednesday evening saying that he and others wanted to start a letter-writing campaign and petition drive to get LucasArts to release the novel.

So here comes the synchronicity. I was thinking about that idea Wednesday evening when another e-mail arrives with a request that I write a letter and sign a petition to keep UFO Hunters on the air for another season. Of course that caught my attention, not only because of the matter of a petition, but also because of my recent involvement (or lack of it) with an episode filmed on Andros Island. So it was synchronicity of dual (or dueling) petitions.

Here are the links: UFO Hunter campaign
 and the online petition.

I requested that no petition for the Indy novel be made public until June 1. That’s an astrological thing, and also puts it closer to the release of the game.
Rob

UPDATE 6/1/09: Here’s the Indy petition. Feel free to sign!

Wow! Seventy-one signers on the petition after one day! Thanks all.

Posted in books, Indiana Jones, writers | 39 Comments

The Winner from Winner

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes synchronicity is so obvious that even the Associated Press recognizes it.
***

Powerball ticket worth $232.1M sold in Winner, SD

By CHET BROKAW Associated Press Writer , The Associated Press – WINNER, S.D.

Friends and neighbors greeted each other in this south-central South Dakota farm and ranch town with one question Thursday: Who won?

Word spread quickly that a winning Powerball ticket worth $232.1 million had been sold in town.

In businesses scattered along U.S. Highway 18 and in the brick buildings on Main Street, speculation about the big winner dominated conversations.

At the Ampride gas station and convenience store, one man walked in to pay for gasoline and asked, “Is this the store that sold the ticket?”

The only winning ticket for Wednesday night’s jackpot was sold in Winner, population 2,800.

“How often does something like this happen _ a winner in Winner, S.D.?” said Norm Lingle, executive director of the South Dakota Lottery.

“We’re a small state. We don’t expect to have a lot of winners but when we do have that and it falls in Winner, what more can you ask for?”

Late Thursday afternoon, Lingle said the Lottery had been contacted by the apparent winner.

It’s the ninth-largest Powerball jackpot ever and the biggest ever paid out in South Dakota, he said.
***
The article listed the winning numbers as: 5,6,7,12,16,21.

UPDATE:
The winner was a 23-year-old dirt poor rancher named Neal Wanless. He’s single, and lives with his parents. They don’t have a phone and their mobile home was repossessed last year, and they’re $3,500 behind on taxes. Neal’s father collects scrap metal an re-sells it, but the prices have dropped in recent years. Neal will collect $88 million after taxes.

Posted in lottery, names, Numbers, power ball | 8 Comments