In March 2019, our beloved Golden Retriever, Noah, passed away from cancer of the spleen. I wrote about it here. Not long afterward, I had a reading with animal communicator Heather Bristol and a year later, after we’d started our podcast, she was a guest on The Mystical Underground.
During that reading with Heather, she mentioned that Noah had been with us before – as a squirrel in our backyard and as one of our cats. The inter-species reincarnation is a detail some animal communicators don’t believe in and I loved the fact that Heather did. After all, why not? She believes that human and animal souls can choose whatever physical form they want. And Noah as a squirrel made a kind of intuitive sense. His greatest passions were chasing Frisbees – and squirrels.
Whenever he spotted a squirrel scrambling up a tree or along the fence, his barking was the clarion call to every other dog in the park to join him in the chase. None of them ever caught a squirrel and the squirrels made fun of them, scampering higher into the branches where even a dog with wings couldn’t catch them.
So yes. Yes, I could imagine Noah as a squirrel in our backyard.
Noah as one of the many cats we’ve had over the years? Sure.
When I asked if Noah would return to us at some point, Heather said he would.But maybe not as a dog.
During my only trip to Europe many years ago, I had two primary goals. I wanted to go Arles, France, where van Gogh had lived and lost his mind and produced some of his most brilliant work. It was the only part of France that interested me. And I wanted to see Carl Jung’s castle on the shores of Lake Zurich in Bollingen, Switzerland.
My interest in van Gogh always felt like some remnant of a past life. I’m not an artist, but I love his work and the texture of his weird life fascinates me. He died impoverished. But in March 2021, Sotheby’s sold a van Gogh landscape for $15.4 million.
In the 1990s, Rob and I got to know a Richard Demian, a psychic from Brooklyn who we subsequently met several times. We called him Fids, although I’m not sure why. The first time we met him, Megan was really young, in a stroller, and he gave her a beautiful gray teddy bear that she called The Fids Bear. That bear went everywhere with us. It eventually started falling apart- an ear, part of his nose, the neck leaned to the side.
Fids felt that the three of us had been together before, when he was van Gogh, Rob was his brother Theo and I was Theo’s wife. It felt oddly correct and explained my earlier intrigue and interest in Arles and van Gogh.
Then there’s Jung’s castle. I first became acquainted with his work when I was 18 and bought a copy of Richard Wilhelm’s translation of The I Ching. Jung wrote the introduction for the book in 1949 and and connected it to his theory of synchronicity. The only place I really wanted to go in Switzerland was Bollingen, to see Jung’s castle on Lake Zurich.
In his brilliant autobiography, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, he writes movingly about how he built it and why. I was traveling through Europe with Chris, a woman I worked with in social services at the welfare department. She didn’t understand why we needed to take a train trip to Bollingen, but went with me.
We missed our first train from Zurich, and that’s where the synchro begins. If we’d arrived earlier, we would have missed the man with his dog in the backyard of Jung’s place. He looked like photos I’d seen of a young Jung. I walked up to the fence and introduced myself.
He turned out to be Jung’s grandson. We spent about 30 minutes talking about synchronicity, dreams, the unconscious – and how the tower had changed since Jung had built it – like it now had electricity.
If we had made our first train, I wouldn’t have met Jung’s grandson.
The other night, I was wondering how the world now might be different if Martin Luther King had survived. If Robert Kennedy had survived. If Lennon had survived.
Let’s take Lennon. He was 40 when he was assassinated by Mark David Chapman outside the Dakota, in NYC where Lennon lived with Yoko.
Mark David Chapman arrived in New York on Saturday December 6, and checked into a YMCA about nine blocks from the Dakota. He was seen hanging around an entrance to the Dakota. On December 7, he was outside the Dakota again and also changed hotels, moving into the Sheraton Centre farther downtown. On the morning of December 8, he lingered outside the Dakota once more and had Lennon and Yoko’s album, Double Fantasy with him for Lennon to sign.
Chapman struck up a conversation with Paul Goresh, another fan hoping to glimpse Lennon. Around 5 p.m. that afternoon, Lennon and his wife finally left the building on their way to The Record Plant Studios on West 44th Street. Chapman approached Lennon and held out a copy of Double Fantasy. Lennon scrawled his name across the front. Goresh snapped a photo of that moment.
The two men waited outside the building for another two hours. Goresh got tired of waiting and said he had to go home and would come back another day to see Lennon. Chapman tried to get him to stay and remarked, “I’d wait. You never know if you’ll see him again.”
Goresh left, Chapman waited.
The Lennons mixed sound for a new single, Walking on Thin Ice, a Yoko creation, until 10:30 that night. The title smacks of precognition, since in the aftermath of Lennon’s death, Yoko would be walking on thin mental ice.
At 10:50 p.m., their rented limo stopped at the curb in front of the Dakota’s 72nd Street entrance. Yoko got out first, with Lennon a few paces behind her. He walked walk under the archway and Chapman called out his name.
He was crouched five feet away, both hands clutching a .38 special, and opened fire. Four bullets tore through Lennon.
Nut case Chapman was obsessed with J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, specifically with the fictional character Holden Caufield, an icon for teen rebellion. He was reading the book outside the Dakota when the police arrived and arrested him.
So, let’s say Lennon survived. What did he create between 1980 and – let’s pretend – 2022?
I like to imagine that he started a worldwide movement called Give Peace a Chance. I like to imagine that the movement mitigated 9-11, or changed it so that there was never any Afghan War. Never a Gitmo where prisoners were tortured. No Bush, no Cheney, no Rumsfeld, and no trump. BUT – and it’s a big but – if Gore had won in 2000, would we have had an Obama? Without an Obama would we have had a trump? And without him, would we have a Biden?
The what if games are the ones that tie me in knots.
If the multiverse is real, then all of these scenarios are playing out…somewhere…
A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Rob MacGregor: The Devil’s Chair”:
Join Rob as he reads from Trish and Rob’s short story collection “The Outliers”…
“The Devil’s Chair is a story based on an urban legend about a brick chair that faces two gravestones in a cemetery in central Florida, north of Orlando. The cemetery is located outside the spiritualist community of Cassadaga, which offers weekly ghost tours of the town. In this story, the spookiness is enhanced when a reporter looking for a Halloween story visits the cemetery at midnight as he investigates the urban legend.”
*MacGregor, Rob; MacGregor, Trish. The Outliers. Crossroad Press.
I know this photo might look somewhat brutal to some folks, a shark with a spear protruding from its head. But you need to know the story behind it and why Rick Bettua went after this particular bull shark. Rick was a U.S. Navy diver for thirty-two years. Diving has been his life. After he retired, he moved to Queensland, Australia where his wife was from. It’s also close to one of the world’s best places for spearfishing, the Great Barrier Reef.
Rick likes to remain active so besides spearfishing he took up a martial arts practice called Muay Thai. His instructor, Glenn, became curious about spearfish and Rick started taking him out on dives from time to time. One day en route to the marina, Glenn said he was concerned about sharks while diving, and Rick assured him that the chances of getting bit by a shark are far less than the chances of getting hit by lightning.
That same day, Glenn was snorkeling in shallow water, about ten feet deep, when a bull shark attacked him and shredded his leg. Rick was able to get him back into the boat and apply two tourniquets that saved Glenn’s life. But he lost his leg.
The next day, Rick went back to the small reef that was surrounded by sand and talked to fishermen there who were familiar with that shark and they told Rick how to attract it to his boat. He revved his engine, as they’d suggested, and within a couple of minutes the shark came right up the boat. Rick shot it, killing it.
Three years later in October of 2020 Rick was free diving on a reef not far from where Glenn was attacked and a bull shark attacked him ,and he nearly bled to death before he reached shore 90 minutes later. But a series of synchronicities occurred that saved his life. Twenty miles from shore, they came upon a larger fishing boat, which could go faster. On board coincidentally was a pediatric cardiologist, who help save Rick and helped assemble a rescue team that awaited Rick’s arrival on shore.
I know about Rick’s story because I (Rob) have been editing his survival/adventure book that covers numerous dangerous encounters he faced over three decades as a diver. I’ve been very impressed with Rick, who has written a very compelling story.
Rick’s story will be featured July 17 on an episode of the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, called I Was Prey,
Also, here’s a video about Rick made by Kimi Werner. Rick calls Kimi the best known woman diver in the world. It’s an excellent video.
In November 1981, I was teaching English to Cuban refugees through Florida International University in Miami. It was a government-funded program and I was assigned to the Fort Lauderdale office. But it took us three months to find an office because back then the resentment against Cuban immigrants was at a peak.
Once we got settled and classes actually began, we were contacted by a journalist at the Hollywood Sun Tattler who wanted to know if the Cubans were actually learning English. When the journalist walked into our office, I thought, Holy shit, I know this guy. It’s difficult to describe this kind of soul recognition. Yes, it’s visceral, but as soon as you feel it, you doubt it, write it off to imagination. But it stays there, in the pit of your stomach.
When I went home that evening, I told my roommate I’d just met the guy I was going to marry.
That journalist was Rob.
Five months later, we moved in together.
Today is our 38th anniversary. He thought it was our 35th. But hey, I’ve found that women are better at remembering dates!
For 38 years, we have been creative partners, exploring the areas that interest us, much of it outlier stuff that is slowly making its say into mainstream thought. Pick an oddball topic and we’ve probably written about it – synchronicity, aliens, dreams, meditation, yoga, astrology, divination, magic… Between us, we’ve written more than 60 novels, hundreds of non-fiction books and, during this pandemic, we’ve ghostwritten another eight or ten books.
Our daughter just finished her first novel – Dystopian – and is looking for representation Our podcast, The Mystical Underground, is 18 months old and a source of connection with other writers and individuals who are exploring different facets of this underground place.
In these 38 years, we’ve been fortunate enough to travel extensively, often in search of answers to the bigger questions about the nature of reality. We’ve grown to love dogs and cats and birds, have discovered our boundaries as separate human beings, now know what we like and dislike abut each other.
He’s too quiet, I’m the opposite.
He’s a natural skeptic, I’m not.
As a Gemini, I live in my head.
As a Taurus, he lives through his body, his physicality.
But. Toss us a challenge about the occult, any facet of it, and we’ll run with it.
Have you ever witnessed a Karen incident? These videos seems to typify who and what she is. They capture what has become an archetype.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSFOHnPYUqw
I’m invariably appalled when I see these Karen videos. These women, whoever they are, seem to have a sense of entitlement, some serious mental issues, and have bought into Trump’s Big Lies about Covid, vaccines (never mind that trump and melania were both vaccinated) the election, the insurrection, and every other lie he has ever uttered.
According to FactChecker, those lies during his time in the WH add up to a total of 30,573 false or misleading claims. That’s a polite phrase for LIES.
Or, remember the Central Park Karen?
These women are embarrassments to our gender. The one entitled White Tears is especially reprehensible in her screaming tirade meltdown and the way she sinks to the floor like she has fainted. Moments later, she lifts her head from the floor and starts her tirade again. I mean, c’mon, ladies, WTF? Didn’t your mom or sister or friends or partner ofryour kids ever tell you how absurd you look acting like a Karen?
So who are Karen’s male counterparts? Where are the Kens? No, Ken was with the Barbie doll. Let’s call these guys Kevins. The other day, I witnessed a particular archetype of Kevin. As I turned into a convenience store lot to buy a couple of scratch-off tickets, this big white truck roared up behind me, so close to my back bumper than I could see the driver’s face in my rear view mirror.
My first thought? Uh-oh. A jerk. So I intentionally slowed down and he got angry about it and pulled in sharply to my right and parked directly in front of the store. I parked and got out and saw him hurrying into the store, a big beefy guy. My second thought: He’s a trumpie, keep your distance.
I got in line behind him and made sure I stayed 6 feet away. I was masked, he wasn’t. “Pack of Marlboro reds,” he says.
The clerk at this store is a good-natured Latina. She made some comment about “president” and Kevin’s head snapped up. “He’s not my president.”
Here it comes, I thought.
“Trump’s my president.”
I felt like tapping this big guy on the shoulder and setting him straight. But I’m 5’5″ tall, weigh 111 pounds, and I don’t know judo or karati. I was pretty sure he was armed. So I moved back another few feet. The Latina laughed at something he said and he left with his pack of smokes, his head wrapped around the Big Lie.
I bought my scratch-offs and left. On the way home, I thought about this. A Kevin won’t melt down like a Karen. He might scream and yell, but he won’t sob like the Karen in the second video. A Kevin like this guy would just pull out a gun and start shooting.
But just as Karens don’t come in a single type, neither do Kevins. The second type is likely to be good-looking, charming, and informed. He communicates well, clearly. He might be a politician like Kevin McCarthy who tries to play both sides. He might be a Wall Street dude, a pilot, ex-military, your brother, your grandfather, a man who, to me, seems as brainwashed as any version of Karen.
But this is where we are right now as a nation. Trump’s toxicity has infected the republican party, where Karens and Kevins believe trump will be magically reinstated to the presidency when the Cyber-Ninjas finish their ridiculous recounting of ballots in Arizona and then they or their clones move on to Michigan, Georgia, and… well, you know how it goes. It’s going to happen on the date that the nutcase CEO of My Pillow says it will. I think the date now is August 15. But, well, his date is fluid.
This is how South American countries have ended up in chaos and ruin. Look at Venezuela. Or, farther back, Chile and Argentina. Or, now: look at Cuba. The autocrats in charge cleaned out the country’s bank in the name of the people and forgot a few details – like the necessities of food and medicine and, with Covid, vaccines.
The really disturbing part is that I believed democracy was in peril during trump’s years. Now I realize that was just a dry run. Trump may be more dangerous now than he was when he was president.
On June 24 AT 1:25 A.M., the collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, Florida, killed at least 90 people and as of July 11, 31 are still missing.
However, we learned that a black cat named Binx, who lived on the 9th floor of the condo, survived and was reunited with his owner.
From CBS online: “The Gonzalez family and several of their pets were in their ninth floor apartment in Champlain Towers South the night of June 24 when the building suddenly collapsed in the middle of the night. At least two members of the family were seriously injured in the collapse one is still missing. Several of their pets also went missing. But on Thursday, exactly two weeks after the 12-story building fell, they were reunited with one of their pets, a small black cat named Binx.”
Binx was spotted by a volunteer, Levine Cava, with the local animal shelter, The Kitty Campus, which posted flyers on its website about the Gonzalez family’s missing pets. The family had two dogs and two cats, including Binx. Cava found Binx near the rubble while she was feeding stray cats.
Here’s the synchro, at least for us. In mid-June, Megan adopted a black kitten and named him Binx. There’s Megan’s Binx, eating from a bowl larger than he is, while big dude Indy stands watch.
A new episode of The Mystical Underground is live! “Preston Dennett: Wondrous”:
Join Trish and Rob for a conversation with…
Preston Dennett began investigating UFOs and the paranormal in 1986 when he discovered that his family, friends, and co-workers were having dramatic unexplained encounters. Since then, he has interviewed hundreds of witnesses and investigated a wide variety of paranormal phenomena. He is a field investigator for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), a ghost hunter, a paranormal researcher, and the author of 26 books and more than 100 articles on UFOs and the paranormal. His latest book is WONDROUS: 25 True Encounters.
