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Recently, one of our friends from the dog park had an attack of colitis and ended up in the hospital for a week. The cost for just room and board at the hospital for 7 days? Are you sitting down? $52,000. Think about that for a moment, let it sink in.

If the conversion chart I used is correct, that’s more than 33,000 pounds. Or nearly 40,000 Euros, nearly 51,000 Australian dollars, more than 53,000 Canadian dollars. Regardless of the currency equivalent, it’s a lot of money for just room and board. In other words, it doesn’t include lab tests, scans, doctors’ fees and all the rest of it.

No surprise, then, that most bankruptcies in this country are due to medical care bills. Fortunately, this woman has great health insurance that probably costs her and her husband an arm and a leg each month. Her part of the bill was under a thousand bucks.

Suppose she had been uninsured? Well, the law stipulates that anyone can be treated in the emergency room of a hospital whether or not they have the ability to pay. In 1999, when Rob leaped off his windsurfer onto a beach and landed on a broken beer bottle, the treatment in ER- without any kind of surgery, just drugs for infection and stitches by a podiatrist – cost more than two grand. We didn’t have health insurance and paid it off at a  hundred bucks a month.

In 2007, when Megan broke her ankle, the treatment for a cast  and a couple of follow-up treatments – no surgery- was over two grand. We paid it off in installments. In 1989 when Megan was born, we had catastrophic health insurance. I discovered it didn’t cover anything related to maternity. The price for two nights in a hospital to have a baby, without complications of any kind (except a long labor): more than $8,000 – and I hate to think of what it would cost more than two decades later.

If you are a self-employed individual in the U.S., in your forties or fifties, your health insurance – depending on your deductible and the details – will cost you more than $12,000 a year. And you’ll still have to pay some of the fees. If you are 65 years old or older, then Medicare kicks in and pays 80% of most bills after a small deductible is met. You pay around $100 a month or about $1,200 a year. But not every doctor – or even every state – will take patients on Medicare. If you make less than $25,000 a year (I think that’s the cutoff now), then you qualify for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor.  And that’s basically it. Those are your options.If you don’t fit somewhere in those categories, then you are an outlier, a mutant.

After our daughter was born, we dropped our catastrophic health insurance. Had we kept it, we would have paid out nearly a quarter of a million dollars in the last 20 years. And we wouldn’t have been able to send our daughter to college, travel, buy new computers when we needed them, and might not have been able to get a mortgage on a home or own two cars.

And yet, if you’re a member of Congress who serves even just one term, you qualify for premium health care for life. You make about $175,000 a year and are, of course, privy to many perks – like lobbying money from special interest groups. If you weren’t rich when you entered Congress, you probably are rich when you leave.

Since parts of Obama Care were implemented – with the full program going into effect in 2014 – I’ve noticed that doctors are more willing to give you discounts for office visits when you’re private pay. Large operations like the Cleveland Clinic – which has offices all over South Florida – are willing to work with you on the cost and payments. By 2014, all Americans will be required to buy health insurance – or pay a penalty. Those who are against the program say it won’t change anything, that emergency room freeloaders and illegal immigrants  will still be raising the cost for people with insurance.

But the problem with health care in America isn’t freeloaders or immigrants. It’s greed. Until profit is removed from health care, until private health insurance is eliminated from the equation, until the government extends Medicare to all, this system will remain profoundly flawed. Bankruptcies from medical care will continue to proliferate, people will continue to suffer through unbearable pain, and others will simply die. Aren’t we, as a country, as a human collective, better than that? I mean, really. We profess to be a christian nation, yet so much of what we do and don’t do is the antithesis of care for your sick, your wounded, your elderly, and disabled. Care for those who can’t care for themselves.

Some years back, my sister – a nurse – applied to work for an insurance company. Her job would be to look for anything in a patient’s medical history that would be grounds for dismissal in a claim.  She didn’t take the job because she didn’t think she could live with herself. Many more years back, I was a social worker who approved or disproved – people who applied for Medicaid, food stamps, help.  I lasted less than a year at that job and here’s why it ended: a married couple ended up in my office, seeking medical and financial help. They weren’t Medicare eligible yet. He had heart problems, she was a diabetic, they earned next to nothing. But the social welfare rules at the time stated that because they were married, without children living at home, I had to deny them.

In this country, if you want great health care, then run for federal political office – or go to prison. Yes, health care in prison is free.

I ran across this story on Mike Perry’s blog and asked him if we could re-post it. He received it from one of his readers who calls herself Revelation Petra. It’s a strange story and as Mike says, “As with most stories received I have to take this at face value. There’s nothing I can research to verify what is said to have happened. So, as I often say, see what you think.”

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“I had just arrived home from a friend’s place and was lying on my bed  looking out of the window at the stars. I felt a sharp pain like a pin being stuck in my toe.

It felt like I was frozen and I wanted to yell out but didn’t want to disturb my mother who was asleep in the next room. I was wide awake and had only just put my head on the pillow seconds earlier, thinking about tomorrow and things I had to do. I felt someone was in my room and there were sounds from the foot of my bed.

I couldn’t see anything, and couldn’t move at all. It was then that I felt hands around my feet where the pin prick had been. I could only lift my head slightly and I saw three small figures looking at me from the foot of the bed.

There were two small entities standing at the end of my bed and one was holding my ankle and examining it. While this was happening I hoped my mother, in the next room, wouldn’t wake up and disturb these entities as they might panic and hurt her. After what seemed like just a few seconds I noticed three more figures standing at the foot of the bed and they stuck something in my leg.

I started to feel able to move again, only slightly and lifted my head off the pillow and saw right into their faces. They looked back but never stopped doing whatever they were doing. They knew I was looking straight at them and that I was wide awake.

They were not trying to intentionally hurt me and I felt no fear and I can remember everything that they did. I was aware of being awake and that this was not a dream. I tried to communicate with them but I couldn’t talk as no sounds came from my mouth.

They looked quite solid, long arms but not abnormal, smallish heads, not extremely large, more like small children feeling around and playing. They were around three or four feet tall, dark greyish in appearance with lizard like scales, Their skin seemed the same colour throughout the body as far as I could see. They had a almost sad look about them and there was definitely some kind of rank as one or two ordered the others around – not with words or telepathy but they just seemed to obey without answering.

They still had hold of my ankle and reminded me of well trained doctors with nurses helping them, this was a real event. I noticed that they had three large type fingers that seemed to be too large to do anything intricate, yet they were doing things to me with the skill of a surgeon.

I felt no pain except for the initial discomfort of a pinprick in my toe.

They wanted to look at my legs and feet and didn’t come near my face or touch any part of me except my toes and ankles, although they had direct contact with my eyes.

They seemed to be quite aware of my feelings and as they continued they would look my way to see if I was in any discomfort.

Before they left I noticed they looked back at me and then vanished.

It was then that I felt a sensation in my foot and toe and I immediately jumped up and went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror.

When I checked the time it was less than three minutes since I had arrived home. This was impossible as I had made something to eat when I first arrived home, went to the bathroom, got undressed and went to bed.

I then heard my mother talking and realized it was all over.”

This is our dog’s favorite toy. It’s called a chucker. The orange ball that usually comes with the chucker is covered with fuzz, like a tennis ball, and the one in the photo is a rubber ball, Noah’s preference.  When we take the chucker and the rubber ball to the dog park, he chases it relentlessly, races other dogs to catch it, and gets quite a cardio workout and general exercise.

Recently, the orange ball got lost. We substituted a tennis ball, but Noah wasn’t interested. So we switched back to a Frisbee, which used to be his favorite toy. But after months of chasing the orange ball, he really wasn’t that interested. He would either stand by the fence, hoping to spot a squirrel, or would do this:

We looked all over the house and yard, in both cars, but couldn’t find the  ball. So today we decided to head to the pet store to buy some new orange balls. While I was waiting for Rob to come outside,  I straightened the sheet we use on the back seat whenever Noah rides in this car. And there was the lost orange ball, just sitting there in the folds of the sheet.

I heard the trickster, laughing.  We had looked repeatedly in the back seat of this car, had removed the sheet and shaken it out, had even changed sheets since the ball had gotten lost. So how could the orange ball suddenly be there?

I have a sort of theory about this. We had already been out for several hours this morning, running errands. While I enjoy trips to the pet store, today I really just wanted to stay home and work on my book. So, just as we’re about to head out to the pet store to buy more orange balls, the lost ball is found. Rob calls it an instant manifestation – no more than a few minutes had passed between my thought about wanting to stay home– and finding the ball. But exactly what is manifestation?

According to dictionary.com, here are the choices:

a : the act, process, or an instance of manifesting

b (1) : something that manifests or is manifest (2) : a perceptible, outward, or visible expression

c : one of the forms in which an individual is manifested

d : an occult phenomenon; specifically : materialization

2: a public demonstration of power and purpose

I think “d” fits nicely, a materialization – it takes shape in three-dimensional reality,  we can hold it, see it, experience it. But why is it referred to as an occult phenomenon?  This immediately casts manifestation in a disparaging light -as suspicious, something that belongs in woo-woo land, something interwoven with hidden or secret knowledge. Yet, don’t most of us have desires that we hope will be manifested?

On a personal level, your desire may be as mundane as finding a lost orange ball  or as big as being healed of cancer. The manifestation of that desire underscores the mysterious nature of reality and may also address the powerful roles that emotion and belief play in the process.

So if a desire doesn’t manifest itself, does that mean your emotions and beliefs weren’t strong enough? This is where things sometimes get murky, at least for me.

Of course it’d like to have a million bucks,  to see all my books and Rob’s become bestsellers,  of course I want my daughter to be happy, of course I want world peace and an end to hunger. The last two desires involve the emotions and beliefs of everyone else on the planet, so I know I can’t do that one alone.  My desire for Megan is powerful, but unless it’s also her desire for herself, my influence is minimal. The first two desires, though, involve the combined reality that Rob and I share and synchronicity certainly is a significant factor – as guidance, affirmation, warning.

Lately, I’ve noticed other “quick” manifestations. I may not be in a place where I can manifest a million bucks by tomorrow morning, but I’m paying attention.

Now, if I can just manifest all those lost socks in the clothes dryer!

Like attracts like. That must be the best explanation for why Bruce Gernon met someone with a similar story to his mind-blowing leap of 100-miles while piloting a plane across the Bermuda Triangle. In this second case, however, the teleporter was not in an airplane and wasn’t even on land! He was actually underwater in a submarine.

Bruce was eating dinner at a sports bar a few years ago when he noticed a man on the opposite side of the horseshoe staring at him. The man whispered something to the bartender, who then came over to Gernon and asked if he was the pilot who had had the strange Bermuda Triangle experience. When Gernon said he was, the bartender told him the gentleman across the bar said he worked at AUTEC – the secret navy base on Andros Island in the Bahamas – and would like to talk to him.

Since there was an open seat next to the man during the crowded dinner hour, Gernon joined the stranger. The man, who was wearing a t-shirt with an AUTEC logo emblazoned on it, told Gernon that he was still employed at the secret navy base and wasn’t going to tell him his name. (We’ll call him Earl.) He said he’d had two unusual experiences during his time working as a civilian employee, but was only willing to tell Gernon one of the stories.

Earl explained he was working as an engineer on a submarine near the south end of the Tongue of the Ocean when the electronic equipment suddenly acted as if it were possessed.  It was as if they had entered a space where the known laws of physics collapsed. Several seconds passed, then everything returned to normal. Everything except that they were now near the north end of the Tongue of the Ocean, about 100 miles from where they had been moments earlier. No one could explain what had happened.

Gernon was fascinated and could only imagine what the second story—the one Earl wouldn’t talk about – must involve. Even though the incident took place deep below the surface, Gernon was fascinated by the similarity to his own encounter in the Bermuda Triangle that began on Andros Island,  where AUTEC is located. Gernon, like Earl, experienced an apparent leap of 100 miles after his electronic equipment malfunctioned.

We learned of a third case of a 100-mile teleportation from Charlotte Kosa, host of California Haunts, an Internet radio show. When Charlotte interviewed us recently, she mentioned her own experience. She and a friend were driving on a highway outside of Sacramento when she became confused about where she was. The surroundings looked all wrong and the signs and cars and buildings seemed as if they were from a different time – possibly the 1960s. A short time later, she came to a town and everything seemed back to normal. Except for one thing. She and her friend now found themselves 100 miles from where they had been just minutes earlier.

Maybe the 100-mile figure is insignificant, simply the synchro that ties the three teleportation stories together. But what could be the source of these experiences, what do they mean, and how often do such incidents take place? Is it simply to nudge our awareness and remind us that the everyday world with it’s physical laws is not the only reality? I’m curious because a few years ago, I also had a teleportation experience, though not one that covered 100 miles.

In my case, I was driving to a dentist appointment and was slowed by highway construction. A voice in my head said, ‘Look where you are and look at the time.’ I did so, thinking it was my subconscious mind reflecting my concern about arriving on time for the appointment.

I got past the road work, picked up speed, and started looking for familiar landmarks. I thought I would be passing a shopping center with a Home Depot at any moment before I reached Southern Boulevard, where I would turn. But the landscape didn’t look right. Instead of open land, there were tall pines on either side of the street and houses. I was no longer in a commercial-zoned area, and I was confused.

Then my jaw dropped as I came to Southern Boulevard, but at an intersection several miles from where I’d been moments earlier. To reach that point would’ve required taking a U-turn and retracing my path.  It would’ve taken at least ten minutes. I looked at my watch and I still had the same amount of time to get to the dentist. Oddly enough, I was now almost as close to the dentist’s office as I had been, but now I was approaching from a different direction. I arrived on time, even though if I’d actually driven the route, I would’ve been ten or fifteen minutes late.

As I stepped into the dentist’s office, I knew I was back in the everyday world.

What are the chances that we would hear three unrelated stories about human teleportation, and all three would involve instant movement of 100 miles? Whether or not the distance was exactly 100 miles is immaterial. More interesting is the fact that all three people used that figure as the distance. We consider this story a synchronicity, even though we heard the stories over several years. Time, we’ve decided, is not a primary factor in synchronicity if the meaningful coincidence is astonishing and a highly unlikely confluence of similar events.

The stories come from a pilot, a submarine crew member, and a talk radio show host. We’ll start with the pilot.

When Bruce Gernon flew his Bonanza into the heart of the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon in December 1970, he encountered a series of unusual incidents like nothing he had ever experienced. In brief, the flight began from Andros Island in the Bahamas and within a few minutes he skirted around a flying saucer-shaped lenticular cloud. Such clouds are usually found at 20,000 feet or more and are stationary.

But as soon as he passed the cloud, it shape-shifted into a huge, billowy white cloud and appeared to be chasing the plane. They climbed at a thousand feet per minute, and cloud built up underneath the plane at the same rate, then engulfed the plane. Gernon escaped and was engulfed again several times until he broke free. By then the cloud had projected two huge arms forming a semi-circle. Up ahead, Gernon spotted another cumulus-shaped cloud that also was sending out arms and linking with the former lenticular cloud to form a gigantic puffy donut in the sky.

Gernon and his two passengers were trapped inside the 15-mile wide donut hole. They couldn’t fly either over or under the cloud, which rose out of the ocean to an altitude of 60,000 feet. Finally, they noticed an opening where two of the arms were converging and flew toward it. By the time they reached the opening, it appeared as a tunnel that was collapsing.

They flew through it and out into a milky haze and as they exited the tunnel the challenging flight turned into a bizarre and dangerous one. First, for about 10 seconds they felt as if they were weightless with only the seatbelts holding them down. All the electronic instruments were malfunctioning and the two compasses were spinning about.

They had flown this routes several times and knew they were close to the Bimini chain of islands, about a hundred miles from Miami when they contacted the Miami Tower. Oddly, the air traffic controller couldn’t locate them anywhere on radar. After a couple of minutes of radio silence, the controller came back on and said there was a plane coming in over Miami Beach. That was impossible. Yet, the clouds cleared and below them was Miami Beach.

Bruce and his two passengers checked their watches and were baffled. They had literally skipped ahead 100 miles. Gernon thought they had time-traveled and that was how we wrote it in THE FOG, which we co-authored. They had arrived in 47 minutes rather the 75 minutes that the flight usually took. They’d gained 28 minutes and had too much fuel remaining. It was as if they didn’t fly that last hundred miles, but instead were instantly projected 100 miles.

While the experience could be viewed as time travel, I now find the term teleportation as more appropriate and also easier to understand – if not to comprehend. Tomorrow will be part two of this story in which we’ll relate two more teleportation stories, both of them involving the same distance – 100 miles.

Here’s a little survey. See how many of these questions you answer positively, and we’ll tell you what that means…or might mean.

• Do you remember ever seeing a ghost?
• Do you remember feeling as if you left your body?
• Do you remember seeing a UFO?
• Do you remember waking up paralyzed with a sense of a strange person or presence or something else in the room?
• Do you remember feeling that you were actually flying through the air although you didn’t know how or why?
• Do you remember having seen unusual lights or balls of light in a room without knowing what was causing them?
• Do you remember having seen, either as a child or adult, a terrifying figure– which might have been a monster, a witch, a devil, or some other evil figure– in your bedroom or closet or somewhere else?
• Do you remember experiencing a period of time, an hour or more, in which you were lost, but could not remember why or where?
• Do you remember having vivid dreams about UFO?
• Do you remember finding puzzling scars on your body and neither you nor anyone else remembering how you received them or where you got them?

“The focus of attention on skin samples and reproductive organs seems to suggest an interest in human anatomy and reproduction. If the examinations are for the benefit of the human species, the methods of involuntary intrusion and the subsequent post-traumtic stress that many victims report, is suspicious. The effort to produce amnesia is largely successful, as this study has shown. This could support a theory that the abductors have a more comprehensive understanding of our minds than we have of ourselves. It could also indicate a genuine consideration for our well-being, similar to our use of tranquilizers when examining endangered animal species. It could well be that the abductors have a similar mission with our species.”

The survey was sponsored by Robert Bigelow, a billionaire space pioneer, who is fascinated by UFOs and other unexplained phenomenon. He submitted the survey findings to members of an organization for psychiatrists. Unfortunately, the survey probably did more to damper the belief in alien abductions than support it, solely by the enormous numbers of abductees generated by the survey.

For more on this survey, look here. Since this survey, the Roper Organization has divided into the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, a non-profit organization, and a the for-profit Roper Poll. Both organizations were created by Elmo Roper. 

We’ve done several radio shows for Aliens in the Backyard, and have more shows scheduled. It’s an often overlooked publicity for books, with its own peculiar pace and texture, and you can do the show in your pajamas and who’s going to know? Radio even lends itself to synchros. But before we go there, a bit of background is in order.

Over the years, Rob and I have done our share of radio shows. We loved doing Coast to Coast with Art Bell back in the late 90s. He was an engaging host, with a genuine passion for the topics he discussed. Whitley Strieber’s Dreamland has also been fun and enjoyable. We’ve done that show twice, for our first two synchronicity books.  Whitley and his wife, Anne, are knowledgeable about the topics they take on, and understand the art of conversation. With them, you’re free to speculate, theorize, and you don’t have to hold back. We enjoyed the interview we did with Mike Clelland on one of the synchro books.  Mike engages, drills, asks unexpected questions.

We LOVED David Schrader’s show, Darkness Radio, that we did on February 14. He has a great sense of humor and that Midwestern affability that invites you to have a beer with him at the local watering hole after the show. He also knows his field – the paranormal –   and the questions he asks, the points he raises, are valid and insightful.

At one point in the show, we were talking about Charles Fontaine’s experience after he’d left the graveyard – and nine days before his encounter – when he found his pants filled with blood. His first thought was that he was going to die. His father had been diagnosed with colon cancer twenty years earlier and Charles believed it was now his turn. Before we could finish telling the story, the show  went to break.

One of the first subsequent commercials to air was a public service announcement about the importance of colon/rectal cancer screenings. Rob hurries into my office the phone at his ear, and says, “A synchro. Let’s pick up there!”

Wow, I thought, okay. A colon/rectal synchro. Not exactly elevated stuff, but okay, it’s a synchro, all right. Rob pointed it out to David when we went back on air and none of us really knew what it might mean… rectal alien probes?