Activity in My Life (September 2020, Austin, Texas)

In September I left Burlington to move back to Austin, Texas. We drove down over the course of four days, arriving to the first place we have been able to call our own in nearly three years. It, of course, felt good, but I have a way of losing that steam fairly quickly.

The last time I lived in Austin, two years prior, I was going through a number of difficult life changes. In fact, nearly two years ago to the day (as I write this), is when Elizabeth watched "me" wake from a dead sleep, look at her, say "I'M BORED" in a different voice, and fall back asleep. My anxiety eventually hit an all time high, as far as I am concerned, with panic attacks creeping up nearly daily. Granted, some situations I was dealing with were difficult, but I can not recall ever being so utterly crippled by anxiety before that, even in far worse moments of my life. I am explaining this to give a bit of context, and potential explanation, to what comes next.

I read recently that statistically, people have a difficult time sleeping in a new place the first night, then an upward trend of comfort in their surroundings occurs from the second night onward. My trouble sleeping is well documented throughout my writing, but comfort is rarely one the issues. I did not feel comfortable in the new place. I was up all night. Staring. Listening. Sounds I couldn't identify (I chalked them up to being errant rodents, but come daylight I could find none of the tell tale signs of them). Shadows acting less like objects in the wind, and more sentient. Of course, the mind is a mischievous child. You can't trust it, especially in the dark. I felt watched. I felt something curious. I don't claim to be an empath, or anything of the sort, but that first night, that is what I felt. 

There was an alarm on the the back door. We were diligent about making sure the house was entirely locked down. Coming to a new neighborhood, in a city where we had previously been held at gunpoint, we don't take too many chances in that regard. The alarm was a motion sensor that when tripped, emitted a sharp, braying tone over and over. It tripped near 1:30 am and we both shot upright. Investigated. All doors still locked. No signs of intrusion or rodents. Back to bed. Two hours later it happened again. I had fallen asleep and when it went off the second time I nearly jumped out of bed and yelled "Hey!" in an attempt to frighten off who or whatever was in the house. Again we investigated. Again we found nothing.

Night two was no better. New sounds. New shadows. We killed the alarm. If it was malfunctioning then it was useless, but it seemed as though even if it was functioning properly it was useless if I could never find the culprit. I barely slept. My back began to ache.

Day three my back was excruciating. Standing upright was next to impossible. I was eating painkillers throughout the day and then in the middle of it my first panic attack in a few weeks. Elizabeth talked me down, and I went to bed. 

Each night I began taking Advil PM. Numbed my back and knocked me out, but it was difficult to keep under. Repeatedly I would wake up. Hear a clacking noise in the kitchen. The living room. The attic. See a shadow peering in the bedroom, and then sliding back into the kitchen. I was in pain. I was under-slept, I was filled with anxiety. Hallucinating was definitely an explanation.

We have been here two weeks at this point. I have run out of Advil PM. I take large doses of melatonin to help keep me down, but I am still waking up around 3am each night to sounds I can't identify. To a weight pressing down on the attic door. To a shadow peering into the bedroom. My panic attacks have become daily. At one point I fought the melatonin and forced myself to stay awake thinking "Go away, you are not welcome here," repeatedly. It was exhausting. In the morning, relaying the story to Elizabeth, I told her I felt "threatened", though, I don't remember feeling that way now.

Last night, Elizabeth and I were awakened at nearly the same time, though we both perceived things entirely differently. I heard something in the attic. A weight that must have been smaller than a person, but larger than a rat or squirrel. Walking around. Clacking. The weight of the attic door occasionally pressing hard enough to click the lock repeatedly. I, at some point, fell back asleep, despite being wholly attentive as it was happening. Elizabeth however woke to what she called "something communicating". She described laying in bed and hearing clacking in the kitchen, a moment passing, and then a reply of similar clacking from the living room. She said it happened a number of times. She did not experience what I experienced.

The reason I brought up my troubles with Austin the last time I was here is that I wonder if I am experiencing a sort of emotional flashback. A variety of PTSD.

However, Strieber also had some trouble in Austin.

The Back Roads of New York. (Galway, New York, 08.10.20)

As it usually goes, some people seem more attune to, or likely to experience, the abnormal than others. 

Recently, my friend Tara Rule (whose UAP sighting over New Jersey I covered earlier this year) reached out to me regarding an incident she and her partner experienced. 

In keeping with my code of keeping all information open and leaving as little to interpretation as possible, here is her email to me (titled "ghomst");

    My partner and I used to drive around all the time and look for spooky places when we were kids. We were feeling nostalgic so we took a night drive. I started filming on my phone out the window just in case we saw anything out of the ordinary. 

    My partner has multiple masters degrees in Science and is an AI programmer, so he doesn’t like to admit that he’s sensitive to things because it’s outside the realm of explanation, but he is. We drove aimlessly for a long time and ended up on some unnamed road near Galway when he started to feel something. We turned onto a desolate road with hardly any houses on it. He said, “If you see a flashing light at an intersection, we need to turn left.” I asked why and he said he didn’t know. Neither of us were familiar with the area we were in. About a mile down the road, we saw a flashing light at an intersection and turned left onto a road that didn’t have a sign indicating the name of it. He asked me to go on maps and see if I could find a road named Stairs. I thought the name was weird, but I looked on google maps and it said we were already on a road called Stairs Road.

    We drove for quite a while. At one point I said I didn’t feel anything and he said he felt like something was about to happen. A moment later, we drove through a mist. It was warm out, and we had been driving through the country all night. There was no fog or mist anywhere else. Not saying it couldn’t have been fog, but it seemed odd that  it only appeared in a narrow strip on the road and nowhere else. We drove for what felt like a very long time, but didn’t see anything. Whenever we passed an animal or a person in their driveway, we made sure to say something about it so we wouldn’t mistake it for something else when we watched the footage back. I didn’t look away from the road once, except to check for Stairs Road once - this was not only to ensure that there were no people, but also because my partner doesn’t see animals crossing the street as well as I do, and we’ve almost hit a few animals in the past. 

    At one point, my partner and I both made note of feeling like we were in some kind of time warp, as strange as that sounds. When we finished recording, I looked at the amount of time we had been filming - over 70 minutes. We only filmed for about half the time we were driving. We began filming at 8:49pm. The last video was taken at 9:11pm. The times just don’t add up. 

    Because of the weird time difference, I looked at the footage. 

    On route 126, only a few moments after driving through the mist and my partner stating that something weird was going to happen, a girl appeared in the video on the left hand side of the road wearing what looks like a bikini top and denim cutoff shorts. We did not see her with our eyes. She looked so real, I initially thought it was human error on our end and that it was, in fact, a person. 

    

    I really thought about it and know for a fact I did not take my eyes off the road for a second, and neither did my partner. I still wasn’t convinced it wasn’t just a girl until I looked at the footage closer.

    

    Before the girl appears, a car passes by us on the same side of the street as the girl. You can see the vehicle coming for quite a distance. The car never swerved out of the way. Based on where the girl was on the street, the car would have hit her if the driver did not swerve. I suppose it’s possible the girl jumped out of the way of the car, but it seems unlikely.

   

     A girl wearing a bikini top and shorts walking down the side of the road alone late at night was kind of weird on it’s own, but then I zoomed in on the footage. 

    

    It looks as if the girl just kind of fades in from the feet up. The headlights of our car hit the telephone poles down the way and you can see those clearly from a distance, but not the girl.  At one point, a mailbox is sticking out in her path and she appears to walk through it. When I blew up the video on my computer and brightened it a bit, I feel like I can see the mailbox through her, as if she’s not fully solid. 

   

     If that isn’t enough, she doesn’t have a head. I thought maybe this was an illusion caused by the headlights, but in the video, trees next to her and street signs right near her are illuminated all the way up. I also enhanced the brightness as high as I could, and it really doesn’t look like she has a head.

    

    I have all the footage from that night that I can send you, but I’ll just send you the important stuff for now and give you some timestamps below. I’ll chop some of it up so you don’t have to sit through boring nonsense while nothing is happening. 

    

    You did such a good job enhancing the UFO footage that I didn’t know if you could play around with this footage to make it more clear. I’ve tried on my computer, but I’m not used to working with low quality footage so I feel like I’m just making it worse, haha. 

    

    I also googled girls that went missing in the area, and quite a few girls in our age group have been bludgeoned in the head to death in that area. One girl was murdered this way last year and was found wearing denim cutoffs. 

    

    I’m HOPING that when you enhance the footage, it’s clearly just a person, because I really don’t like trying to wrap my head around shit like this, haha. But I SWEAR on every fiber of my being there was NO PERSON and we’re both militantly sober people, so we were of sound mind when this all went down. 

   

     Lemme know what you think!

Beginning of video is just some weird stuff that seemed kind of relevant conversation wise.

    1:41 - mist 

    2:15 - car comes into frame, does not swerve

    2:33 - right before girls legs appear

    (if you miss the girl, stop video at 2:36;25 , you’ll see her clearly on the very left hand side of the screen, right before the picture cuts off. It’s fast so she’s easy to miss the first time you watch it.)

    You can hear that neither of us react. 

Reading the email initially, I found the partner's intuitive exploration fascinating, but what really jumped out to me was the out of place mist and missing time. These two factors go hand in hand in paranormal reports for centuries. From the classic Bermuda Triangle tales, to the more recent Missing411 cases often involving sudden fogs, mists, or unexpected heavy weather, strange mists and missing time go hand in hand. For me, even trying to play the "fair skeptic" card, this (coupled with the intuitive exploration) indicated something was happening. Also, the fact that this is just one more oddity taking place in Saratoga County, NY really grabs me.

The footage I received was indeed cut up. But, to be fair, I'm not sure my horrible laptop could even handle processing multiple versions of a 70+ minute film clip. It should be noted that I have not seen the full footage, nor have I any evidence that the times that are claimed (8:49 to 9:11 pm) are accurate. I trust Tara, but would love to have that evidence. 

Here is the clip I was sent, as well as a couple of "cleaned up" (as much as I could) versions:

Tara's initial time stamps are inaccurate at this point, as I have pushed the footage forward for the context bit at the beginning of the video. In the footage you hear the two of them discussing the mist. Occasionally pointing out things they are passing. Toward the end of the clip you do see what seems like a girl walking on the lefthand side of the screen. As far as being headless... I don't know. No, I don't see a face, or anything above the neck, but a few things could be going on here:

1. She is walking with her head down and her hair is covering her face.

2. The headlights just don't reach that high up (coupled with low quality video shot at night).

I think either one of these are perfectly fine explanations, as much as I think it would be cool to see a headless ghost walking around in dukes and a crop top. As far as the cars not swerving, it's also possible they didn't see her, or she moved out of the way. It's an interesting and fun addendum to the evening, but in my opinion, the missing time is the real star of this show. 

However, Tara points out that there have been girls in the area that were found bludgeoned to death. I found one case that was similar, and not too far from where they were driving, but not necessarily tightly enough connected. Tara later sent me the same article, and agrees that the connection would be tenuous at best. According to the article the girl was found on "Dean Lung Road", which is about nine miles from the area Tara and her partner were driving.

In the end, and after watching, editing, and contemplating Tara's clip for about a week now, I'd have to say the "headless girl" is a combination of poor light, poor video, and poor decisions (seriously, don't walk on the side of the road at night without a light or something reflective, lest you end up headless). As for why neither Tara or her partner saw the girl until they watched the footage back, well even my first time watching the footage I didn't see her. I had to go back and look at the time stamp before I saw it. It remains possible that the two of them just didn't see her (again, I say; wear something reflective or bring a light).

The thing about this event to me that really grabs me, that I'd love to investigate a bit more is the missing time. Seventy minutes of footage filmed within a half hour? 

However, if you are a person who was walking that area around 9pm on August 10th, 2020, I'd love to hear from you. Ghost or not.

Activity in My Life (July 2020, Burlington VT)

A few months of general calm. 

One night in April I woke to the sound of the string lights in my room tapping against the wall. When I looked up it continued briefly and then stopped, almost with force. There was no breeze and the window was closed. Immediately afterward a large painting of mine called "Dry" fell off of the wall, again, with force. This, and other phenomena, has been known to happen, and continues.

Small synchronicities abound as per usual. Nothing to really note. I am sure I am forgetting something, but with the way this year has gone, can you blame me?

In July I began experimenting with the app "Randonautica", which uses random number generators to create GPS coordinates. The app suggests setting an intention and many, many people (myself included) have experienced synchronicities on a varying scale using the app. Chaos magic in the app store. 2020, am I right? I have a few thoughts on the idea of forcing synchronicity that I'm not entirely comfortable with, but, like any good man of damnation, I intend to fuck around.

However, it should be noted that since using the app, a number of interesting things have begun to occur. I will exclude small synchronicities (hearing a name I was just thinking, for example).

On July 27th -

I was lying in bed after work. It was shortly after 1 am. A water droplet fell on my leg. When I touched my leg the spot was wet before being absorbed by my skin. There was no rain, no leak, no source that I could find. I told Elizabeth and she thought that the fan may blown in water from somewhere. A few minutes later a larger drop hit my back. In the morning Elizabeth drew the connection to the water droplet sounds we had been hearing (and recorded) over the winter but couldn't find. The fan may be the best explanation.

July 29th-

At 7:08pm Elizabeth was lying on our bed when another painting of mine called "Routine is Taking it's Toll" jumped off the wall. Elizabeth was adamant that there was no breeze and no reason for it. Though she has experienced this sort of thing for a while, she was so disturbed by it that she left the house for a number of hours. A note on this painting is the title, which at the time I didn't think of. When I first moved to Austin, "I" woke up from sleep, looked at Elizabeth, and in "someone else's voice" (according to her) said "I'm bored".

A short while later, that same day, at 7:55 pm, Elizabeth is biking on a bike trail and according to her, she thinks how nice it would be to run into someone she knows. We have lived in this city for less than a year and know very few people. She immediately runs into someone we had met a few nights before.

Similarly, at 11pm, a coworker (who will remain nameless for now) and I were discussing another coworker we hadn't heard from in a long time. That morning the coworker emails her.

at 11:32pm, after I had clocked off and was walking to the elevator in the empty hallway, over my left shoulder a voice loudly says what sounds like "HOOOOF" in a breathy but strained adult female voice. No one is near me. No explanation.

July 30th- 

at 11:31 am Elizabeth is considering putting on her makeup while sitting at her desk. She looks around and sees a palette. Less than a minute later she gets an email notification selling palettes. This one is small, sure, but I include to point out the amount of noticeable activity.

A small note to end the entry:

Beginning in the last week I have begun to experience nocturnal leg cramping. Which is obviously more horrible than anything.

UAP (The Skies above New Jersey), January 13, 2020

I should have known 2020 was going to be wild.

On December 30th, 2019 around 10:45 pm a large explosion rattled a good chunk of my home area, Saratoga County, NY, followed by an odd green glow in the sky seen for miles. Explanations ranged from "frostquakes", to transformers exploding (debunked) to meteors. A meteor was the final conclusion that was drawn, but there seems to be as little evidence of that as anything else. More fantastical, or sarcastic types, may as well have just assumed it to be a herald.

Then a few weeks later, January 16th became an odd day for my Facebook feed. First, a good friend of mine (who remains anonymous here) noticed this in the Albany NY sky:

A few folks at the time pointed out similar ring pattern phenomena, but all seemingly at night, in cloudy skies. The fact that his sighting was in broad daylight, in a mostly clear sky makes his quite a bit more interesting. In his Facebook post he was certain the lights were not drones, however, in his NUFORC report, he does not say one way or the other. His NUFORC report is here:

http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/152/S152714.html

Very shortly after, another friend of mine, Tara Rule, posted to Facebook this status: 

anyone have any idea what this light could be? 

It is quite large and hovered right above the clouds for about 20 minutes. 

It must have been moving with us during the time it stayed directly across from us, 

because it would have moved farther out of my view if it were stationary. 

After about 20 minutes, it started to move upward and dart around in a really 

bizarre way. If you speed up the video, you can really see how it darts back and 

forth in an unnatural way. It was much too fast to be a weather balloon as it kept up 

with us, and lasted way too long and was much too large to be ball lightning. 

along with these photos, that were taken a few days before, on January 13th, in the skies over New Jersey (approximately near Trenton, according to a later email) on a trip from Orlando FL to NY:

as well as the footage used in this video:

In the video you will notice I have included the raw footage, then a version with brightness / contrast enhanced,  as well a third version with slight stabilization and sharpening. I tend to avoid sharpening due to it unfortunately creating artifacts in the video, but I figured the dim nature of the video could use all the help it could get. Finally, I added a fourth version with the raw footage at 3x speed. At this speed the erratic nature of the light is obvious against the clouds as it sort of bounces around the sky, even with the camera occasionally wandering about.

Upon seeing her post, I suggested she report the sighting to both MUFON and NUFORC (which I recommend anyone with a sighting do). Here is her NUFORC report, which she also later emailed to me:

http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/152/S152725.html

Here it is in full:

I was on Frontier Airlines flight F91006, with direct service from Orlando, FL to Albany, NY on January 13th, 2020.

At 5:30 pm, I looked out the window and noticed a bright light. The light hung directly above the cloud line. At first, I thought it may have been a tall building or another plane, but I saw the city lights below and realized that no building would have been tall enough to reach such heights since we were at 30,000ft. I realized it wasn’t another plane, as the light stayed consistent and did not move. I watched it for a few moments and saw another plane in the distance fly in front of it. At that point, I was able to gauge the size of it a bit better. The plane that flew in front of the light appeared much smaller than the light behind it. The other plane was maybe about 1/3 of the size of the light, and the light was very far away from the other plane as well. At that point, I decided to take a photo.

Moments later, I heard a few other passengers talking about the strange light. I did not engage with them.

The light stayed in the same place for 5-8 minutes. If the light had been stationary, it would have moved out of sight of my window. It stayed in the exact same place relative to my window. That’s when I realized the light must have been moving at the same speed that we were flying. That’s when I began filming at 5:38 pm.

After a few moments, the light ascended from its original position. It moved upward and then started to make unnatural movements laterally. Over the course of about 3 minutes, it moved higher into the sky and continued to make rapid movements to the left and right. The light would occasionally pause and remain still for a few moments. 

Eventually, the light moved back toward the rear of the plane and I could no longer see it out the window.

The city I listed is an approximate location based on the time and flight path. 

Unfortunately, I had fallen asleep at some point during my flight. I woke up from some rough turbulence and some unusual electrical activity on the plane. (Seat belt sign turning on and off, flickering lights.) I looked out the window when I woke up and I immediately saw the light. Unfortunately I cannot account for where the light came from and how it manifested because I was asleep prior to seeing it. 

Having watched the video and read the report a few times, a few thoughts came to mind;

1. The "unusual electrical activity". While a common detail reported in most sightings dating back to 1951, Tara explains that she woke up to both it AND rough turbulence. I am not aware of any reports (outside of outlier cases with seemingly antagonistic lights/craft) causing turbulence, however I am aware that turbulence can occasionally cause unusual electrical activity. This is caused by planes diverting power to systems that are a higher priority in turbulence.

2. The usual suspects were initially where I landed. Venus (debunked, in my opinion by the obvious movement of the light). Another plane on a similar trajectory (though seemingly debunked by Tara stating she was able to see another plane fly in front of the light, at which point she was able to gauge the size of the light as three times that of a passenger jet).

3. Her first thought that it was a building, I found interesting. There have been a handful other reports in recent years of buildings spotted breaking the clouds, but people realizing the buildings would be 30,000 feet in the air (not to mention the "sky cities" spotted from time to time, explained, perhaps dis-satisfyingly, as fata morgana and hoaxes). This is clearly not the case in the video, but an interesting first thought.

4. Other options of the ab/paranormal variety jump out. Unidentified craft is the first, but in my opinion, least likely. It moves erratically. Seemingly aimless, though intentional, like a fly. Though, as Tara states, it seemed to keep up with the plane, from a distance. If I had to lump it into an ab/para category, I'd file it closer to the "intelligent" light phenomenon with the Min Min Lights, the Marfa Lights, the Brown Mountain lights, etc. Those all generally appear only a few feet above the ground in most cases, however as anyone with even a vague interest in the phenomena would know, a massive amount of sightings involve lights and not (visible) craft.

5. Lastly, though she discounts ball lightning, I'm not certain I can. Ball lightning is not well understood, and it was only fairly recently (2006) that modern science accepted it as existing at all when it was recreated in a lab.

From a phys.org article on ball lightning studies:



"[Scientist John] Lowke proposes that ball lightning occurs in houses and aeroplanes when a stream of ions accumulates on the outside of a glass window and the resulting electric field on the other side excites air molecules to form a ball discharge. The discharge requires a driving electric field of about a million volts.




So, seeing as two planes are in this report, and the east coast of the United States is, in general, a heavy traffic air corridor, is it possible that electrical discharge has built and somehow sustained itself in a pocket of air pressure and whatever other conditions it would need at 30,000 feet to exist? Perhaps. I don't think an answer to that is available until we understand the phenomenon of ball lightning more fully.

I also looked into NUFORC for similar sightings within this four day period from Tara's sighting to the Albany sighting. This is a map with all regional sightings reported to NUFORC between January 13th and 16th, 2020. Red indicates January 13th, blue indicates January 15th, and purple indicates January 16th. Oddly, there were no regional sightings reported to NUFORC on January 14th (though most of the country panicked and reported Starlink like it was War of the Worlds).

One other interesting note about these data points is that there does appear to be a clear corridor of activity. However, this is also a high traffic area as far as commercial flights go, and I am positive that most sightings in this area could easily be attributed to regular, mundane, misidentified aircraft (as long as you don't read the NUFORC reports, anyway).

I have reached out to Frontier, with no reply.

Unwelcome in the Francis Marion National Forest (August 2018, South Carolina)

A few years ago now, Elizabeth and I took a long road trip down the east coast and eventually into Texas. While mostly mundane (as mundane as a month long road trip can be) a small handful of things happened that may have asked for attention, but we brushed off upon heading out for any new location. Apparent "star jelly" and odd noise distortions in the Glastenbury Wilderness in Vermont, immediately springs to mind, though I seem to have assigned any others to the "things I will only recall at 3 a.m." file in my brain. While our South Carolina experience was troublesome, and often regarded as a low point in our trip when we speak about it, only this morning did a few bits and bobs begin to click into place.

I will only recount here what I have spoken of in this blog, or what I can verify through online sources.

I don't remember what day we arrived in South Carolina. August 10th or 11th, I believe.

To save cash and further the adventurous spirit of the trip we had been camping in Wal-Mart parking lots and National Forests. We had left the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina (home of the Brown Mountain Lights) and spent the night between sleeping in shifts at a rest stop just inside South Carolina. After spending the following day at the ocean we found the closest National Forest and decided to make camp.

The Francis Marion National Forest is large and thick with new growth trees. Winding dirt roads and mostly empty, save for the occasional something to catch your eye and think 'huh...', such as blank road signs. Or a tricycle in the treeline.  We weren't sure how to get to the campsite, and had two different sets of directions. We picked one and drove into the forest, hoping for the best.

A truck followed us part of the way, and then wasn't. I didn't see it turn off, but I don't know the forest, and maybe he did.

Nearing dusk, we arrived at the Elmwood Recreation Area. Two (or three) campsites, a restroom, and a looped road. A camper was parked at the treeline of the furthest campsite, so we took the next largest open space.

Once or twice a truck would drive through, loop the dirt road, and go back out.

We explored the area (under a constant rising and falling screaming choir of cicadas) and noticed a large owl sitting in a tree. As we moved, so did it. Tree to tree. Never far. We both noted to each other how it watched us. How it felt as though it was keeping an eye on us. I became uneasy and messaged a friend where we were. They messaged back that multiple bodies had been found in that forest, which did not help.

As we set up our tent, a truck (not the same truck) pulled into the site, looped through the taken site, and then drove into ours, over the grass and right behind where we were setting up our tent.

The driver and I spoke, and while polite, I remember being unnerved enough to keep a hand on the knife in my pocket. At one point the driver asked; "Do you know where you are?"

"Yeah, Francis Marion," I said, not immediately recognizing what he meant.

He didn't respond to that, but then informed me that his friends will be there soon but we "shouldn't worry because they're all good guys", which comes off slightly unnerving.

He drove off and back to the actual road, and then to the camper which was apparently his. As he sat outside of it enjoying the evening, Elizabeth and I finished setting up for the night, sweating to death and decided we should just call it a night. We never heard a vehicle after that.

I had a bad sunburn from the beach on my back and slept uneasily because of it. Elizabeth also slept uneasily, and partly because at one point she said she heard two separate sounds. First an owl. Second, according to her, what sounded like multiple people behind our tent making fake owl calls. She said it kept up for a while before she passed out, though I have no memory of this.

In the morning, we both woke sweating, exhausted, and somewhat sick feeling. We assumed that was because we washed our faces and skin with water from a tap near our site and maybe that had given us something (we were sick feeling until we left the forest).

When we exited the tent shortly after daybreak, we noticed the camper was gone. There was no sign of our neighbor. None of his friends ever showed up, and despite our restless sleep, neither of us had heard him leave.

The sun was excruciating and, sick, tired, and uneasy, we both felt as though we were not welcome there, by the man in the camper, by the forest itself. It was hard to articulate, though it felt as two magnets repelling. We packed, and left, shortly thereafter feeling just fine (if not still exhausted).

We filmed most of our trip, and here is the section of that footage from that forest. Interesting to me now, a few years later, is the morning where we both seem distressed, tired, and a bit confused (though admittedly, the heat was unbearable).

Today, this morning, reading various reports and jazz online as I usually do, it struck me that the feeling I had leaving that place was similar to the feeling after shortly after this event. I know what I am implying, and to be honest, some of the obvious symbology makes it a bit hard to ignore. The Owl. The disappearing act. The odd ball questioning. The intense sense of being unwelcome. The activity in the night that Elizabeth heard but I did not, despite being awake in chunks through out the night and sleeping poorly. The "friends" that didn't show up (even though Elizabeth believes she heard multiple people in the woods). I am not entirely convinced that I remember everything that happened there, in the Francis Marion forest.





As a side note; shortly after our night at the site, there were at least four UFO/UAP sightings in South Carolina.

Activity in My Apartment (Updates from December 2019 through January 2020, Burlington VT)

The following paragraphs are notes I had taken over the last couple months of anything in the apartment that caught my attention.

12.20.19 - 7:30 or 8 am. Was awake briefly before it happened. Clacking again. Maybe a tack falling? No tack missing from wall that i can see. Felt as though I was woken up to hear it.

12.22.19 - 5:05 pm-ish. Elizabeth is in the bathroom putting on makeup. She hears a distinct whistle, almost a tune. She says it was in the hallway. I was at work and the apartment was empty.

01.06.20    - 10:45 am. I am in the bathroom and hear Elizabeth talking to the cat in the kitchen. Leaving the bathroom I hear her still in the kitchen say something to me. The cat however is in the living room. I ask her what she said and she doesn't answer. I go into the bedroom and she is in the bedroom with her headphones on.

                 - 11:14 am. Elizabeth is working and stops and tells me her desk just shook. No doors have closed in the house to shake it. She describes the shake as "more than a bump, as if someone purposely shook the desk." Says she had not bumped it.

                 - 11:30 -11:50 pm. Being such an active day, I use an EMF reader to conduct a house-wide emf sweep, looking for anomalies. The sweep is mostly normal, save for one corner of the bedroom and the front bedroom window. mid to high level readings over an old painting of mine called "Eve" that drop to normal readings outside of the painting. Mid level readings at 11:30. (thought: could be power lines in the wall or on outside of house). ten minutes later normal low readings in same area, save for a small bubble that seems to be about six inches away from the wall and 4 to six inches in diameter. Over three minutes of reading the area the bubble wanders and eventually dissipates. Low level readings throughout room (NOTE 02.05.20: and regularly afterward during random sweeps over the following weeks.).

the painting "Eve".

01.20.20 - sounds heard throughout the night in the closed bedroom. Around 2am I heard what sounded like a foil bag crumpled on the other side of the room. Nothing over there. Later Elizabeth heard what sounded like a pen being dropped on her desk and sliding across it. A pen is on the desk. She also heard the water droplet sounds that were occasionally picked up in the audio recordings from the earlier posts, 20ish randomly over the course of ten minutes or so. No source of a sound like that.

Anxiety in the apartment had overtaken both of us, whether due to a poor roommate situation (poltergeist  activity had crossed my mind), or perhaps something a bit more darkly fantastical, we had to move. On January 26th we moved out of the apartment. We discovered a small patch of mold growing in the same corner where the painting was placed. Both of us have experienced adverse reactions to mold in the past, Elizabeth physiologically and myself mentally, becoming paranoid and depressed potentially from constant (years long) exposure to black mold in a house I had lived in at one point. Mold is a suspect.

In our new apartment activity has not stopped. Update coming.

Past Life Regressions (July 4th, 2019 / January 13th, 2020 South Glens Falls NY / Burlington VT)

Generally, I try to talk about things that are more centered in "reality". Things that I, or the people around me, have witnessed or experienced. However, being a blog focused on the "ab/para" (as I've come to describe it) I'd like to talk a little bit about a slightly more mystical experience. As far as my skeptical point of view, let's get it out of the way right off the bat;

Most likely I imagined this all, and generally, I am inclined to follow this notion.

Now that the party pooping is out of the way, let's look at my two experiences with past life regression. 

In our western world reincarnation is laughable, and why wouldn't it be? You die, you die, right? 

Or wait... Do you die and go to an afterlife? What was the point of life? To learn? What if we have more than one lesson? Does my spirit (or as I'm more inclined to think; me) learn everything I need in my current life, as I would as say... a 1 percenter? Or as a Malay farmer? The more I consider it (and other eastern philosophies, karmic debt for example), the more I find it difficult to rule it out.

So, on the 4th of July 2019, I gave it a shot. I found a Brian Weiss video on Youtube, waited for a silent house, killed the lights, and laid down. First you are told to relax. Then a sort of hypnosis session begins, though I do not feel as though I was not in control at any point. You relax. Relax more. Relax more. From there you remember a childhood memory. Any memory. Focus on it. See it. Be there. Float above it. 

Then further back. In utero is the aim, but the point (I believe) is to jump start the next part, regardless of whether you remember being in utero (or the state of non-being prior as possibly remembered and described by a surprising amount of people). 

He tells you you see a door. Step through it. 

Where are you?

Look at your hands, look at your feet. What is around you? Are there people around you?

Your mind is not only capable of but duty bound to filling in blanks, and were it not for a few confounding reports of people remembering minute details only to be later verified independently, I would write the process off then and there.

However, I am an explorer. A wanderer. I want to see the journey through.

The regression is in three stages.

First, a random point in the life you are revisiting.

Second, an important event in that life.

Third, the end of that life.

These are the notes from my first regression, written immediately after coming out:

merchant/sailor?

17 or 1800s? English/French?

on a boat. blue coat. white shirt. brown leather boots. not a captain, or dont feel like a captain... maybe my ship. i feel emotionally lost. the sea is my respite but it also makes me feel detached as though i am wasting my time.

home now. wife (name Rebecca?) strained relationship. (my name is gregory? gerald? nathan pops into my head too but i dont think i am nathan.) love, but nearly broken. white shirt. brown vest. long hair. brown. she has dirty blonde/brown hair. white shirt. brown dress. house is small. in a crowded port city. stone. wood. paper and books around. arguing or just hostile. sad. i feel sad.

later. back at sea. under the water. coat gone. drowning. something wrapped around my legs. i am looking up. not fighting much. i think above the water it is evening. there is light above me but not a lot.

throughout the experience i can feel my body tightening. i can feel waves of pressure through my head.

The emotional experience was unexpected. I felt the sadness. I felt the emptiness. I felt the marital stress. I felt the relief and panic as this person drowned (a note: I, as in 2020 me, love the water, but am deathly afraid of drowning).

It is easy to draw conclusions or make connections to your current life here, much like newspaper horoscopes. Yes, I love water, who doesn't? Yes, I'm afraid of drowning, who isn't? 

There are a couple of other personal connections I can make, but again, if I am imagining it, of course those connections would be there.

I sat on this experience for a while. I can still see and feel it six months later. Even if I imagined it, my brain put it there for me to experience, and I wonder if there is a lesson in it.

Today, I decided to go again. 

Here are my notes from this morning:

January 13, 2020

11:17 am

Scenario 1:

It is early day. Maybe 10 am. I am in a field. I am a male. My hands are older, and I am wearing dark clothes. I am walking through a rolling field, with a tree line to my left, A small mountain to the north east. Wooden log fence on either side. I am walking in tire ruts. I feel as though I'm not the one who worked this field but it is mine. Maybe I haven't worked it in a long time. I know my house is behind me and I feel very safe in this sanctuary area. It's going to be a nice day.

Scenario 2:

It is earlier, ten years earlier maybe? I get the impression that I am in my late forties, maybe early fifties. It is night. I am at a garden party. There are lights above us strung across the top of a structure.  People are happy. I get the impression that it is a wedding. It might be my wedding.  I am old though and I feel like those days are behind me. I am dancing with a beautiful woman. Her hair is a dark blonde or brown and thick and her smile is big. She is so happy. She is happy because of me. I can feel myself smiling. Her face is bright and I can't get over how happy I feel at that moment. 

Scenario 3:

It is the end. I am only a few years older than I was in scenario one. Maybe five or ten years. I am in my bed. A grey blanket and a wool knit blanket on me. My bedroom is dark. A window to the right of me. Evening. My bedroom. Someone stands in the doorway. The room is dark I cannot see them. It feels like my son. The happy girl from scenario 2 is sitting on my bed. She is still smiling but she is not happy. She holds my hand. My brother is not here and even though I will not see him before I go I know that he is happy and I look at my son and my wife (it is my wife) and around my dark and safe bedroom and I think about the war and I am okay to go. I know I lived well.

I get the impression that this took place in the 60's/70's (maybe early 80's) in a rural area. Could be new england. I felt tired from life but fulfilled. I felt like I was alone most of it, and then became happy late in life. I felt like I worked hard, but was not happy until the people in my life came to me. I had a thought about the war (WW2? Korea?) but I don't know if I fought or served at all, or if it just had an impact in some other way.

A message in my head popped in just before coming out: The next one will be wonderful. Could mean next experience, but I took the meaning as my next LIFE.

Waking up I felt a thick sort of joyful sadness.

This one was also interesting for a handful of reasons. While the first one was at least a century (or two or three) back, this one seemed like it may have been my life directly before my current life, as I was born in 1983. 

Interesting notes to make: The wife in both, while to me now is the same woman, is at the least described both now and six months ago as similar looking. Both lives featured a mystery man that I loved, "Nathan" in the first, and my missing brother in the second. Both lives centered around a place of solitude, the sea in the first, the field in the second.

The emotional toll was definitely present in the second one, to the point where when I came out I felt as though I might start crying, even though I felt proud and satisfied. 

The message at the end though, was a surprise. I don't know where it came from. It just popped in.

So, imagination? Most likely. But even so, I found both to be powerful experiences that have left me with fresh perspectives. I will most likely explore these more, and if you have the time, I see no reason to not try one yourself. Worst case scenario you get a good 45 minute nap in.