Doug's anomalous experiences

02 - Flood lamp
...

I don't think I've commented directly on this experience so far, and I did want to.

It raised so many thoughts for me, about different things.

The build up of emotional stress to the point where a metaphorical explosion is imminent.

The extension of our consciousness and its influence beyond the immediate boundary of the body - the air-skin interface.

The effect of intention, not in the sense of intending a physical event, but our intention regarding a particular situation we are in, and the need and desire to change that situation, hopefully for the better.

The inter-relatedness of things, not just our immediate environment, but the relationship between people and events further afield in either time or space, rather than being separate, there are interactions not simply according to the laws of physics, but interactions at a human level, in terms of emotions, in terms of our relationships and responses when dealing with other people.

Those are just statements, I'm not making any particular point here, merely mentioning some of the trains of thought this evoked for me.

One thing which did emerge was that overall the result was a positive outcome, the stress and pressure was not simply released in a catastrophic way, but the situation afterwards was a better one than before (if I read correctly).

03 - Doorknob (1/2)

They do say a picture paints a thousand words. Though I've disassembled door-knobs in the UK and am familiar with their construction, and have spent some time in the USA, I'm not certain that the geometry of the construction is the same in each country. Maybe so, maybe not.

But moving on. A couple of thoughts here. One was an initial reaction that this required matter passing through matter. And then I don't think that's the correct description. We need some other way of conceiving of the physical reality where such occurrences are possible. The word 'dematerialised' was used. That is perhaps better, certainly that gets around the idea of matter passing through matter. But maybe there's some other way we can conceive of things, so that the physical matter remains intact at all times, while still giving rise to the observed events. Here I don't have anything to offer, yet I feel a need to conceive of things in this 'impossible' way. It necessitates possibly a different understanding of the material world or the way we interpret it.

The other aspect, one which I feel less clear on, is the emotional and human situation in which this occurred. I need to re-read the account when I have more time, I feel such things don't take place in isolation from our lives, but are enmeshed in the context, the thoughts and drives which we have, expressed and unexpressed at the time.

Thanks Doug for continuing to share these accounts, I find them fascinating.

1: Shoelaces

What’s most interesting to me about this is the spiralling motion. Its reminiscent of the spiralling that happened during my “machine learning snap” and it’s also similar to the wagging in the “Rose Rune”

Because of that it sounds like a collection of energy in the shoe bleeding off. How the energy got in there who knows?

I do think this could be replicated in a lab. I mean, I’ve spent years researching this sort of thing to figure out how to decouple the intense emotions from the effects to get them to be controllable. So far I’ve determined that one of the reasons negative emotion in particular seems to get most of these is because it makes you stop thinking about what you perceive as the rules of reality. Rejecting it’s “authority”. A reality that for the most prt probably doesn’t allow things like this to happen. So when you get really angry you basically open the throttle and things just happen because you’re not holding yourself back anymore (Cue rendition of “Let it go”)

2: Flood Light

What’s interesting about cases liek these is that, if this was unconscious PK, you’d think that the thing that would get affected would be what your attention was on. Like the guy who broke the ashtray. But instead it affected something totally unrelated in your case. Whic is what I’d expect if say, your anger unlocked the energy you had and it radiated out evenly and maybe lights and other electronics are more susceptible as some f the reports seem to indicate. I highly suspect that the people at the table would’ve felt something odd from you. I doubt they would’ve been able to pinpoint exactly what it was since I doubt any of them would’ve been skilled or experienced energy users. But I would not be surprised if they felt some sort of unease or general “bad vibe” coming from you during the event. I know for myself, when I’ve been around people who are incredibly, incredibly angry or otherwise have high emotion, I’ll feel it. Even if they’re not doing anything overt. I’ve picked up on other things too but that’s contextual. In Kung Fu at higher levels you are somewhat taught to use this feeling to target and respond to attackers. Somewhat being the operative word. I have no doubt it could be developed much further and with much more precision than what I’ve run across so far.

3: Doorknob

I remember a guy in university telling me the reason he thought quantum mechanics was bogus was because according to it there was some infinitesimally small chance that something like what you described with the doorknob could happen. Because matter could just randomly dephase according to QM. He thought that was ridiculous, I didn’t see why. I don’t know what other comment to leave on this one

Thanks for sharing your views, Mediochre.

A powerful psychic once told me, "The unconscious mind has its own logic". The statement comes to mind whenever I encounter a poltergeist, PK or MMI incident without an apparent emotional connection to its agent.

[Ninshub]

I'm not sure that mundane causes are applicable here. Shoelaces standing on end and tracing out a conical path? Bows twisting and untwisting? The only way that it didn't happen as described would have to mean some sort of collective hallucination. Given that objects flying off shelves or whizzing across a room are reported by others, it seems within the range of poltergeisting in terms of physical forces required. I think we can take it that there was a real physical event, and one not susceptible to mundane causes. Though adolescent angst is commonplace enough, so maybe it was mundane in that respect.

That's an interesting post considering the Flood Lamp story that Doug followed up with, and what Doug said about his childhood and how it may relate to his psi experiences.

But I had a fair amount of childhood trauma too - where's my poltergeisting?

04 - Phone Call

This incident occurred on the afternoon of Tuesday, June 17th, 2014. As with the doorknob incident, I recorded the details in emails written within hours of their occurrence.

My stepfather's final six weeks on earth were spent in a veteran's hospital on the edge of town. He'd suffered a heart attack at the end of March, followed by a collapsed right lung that needed to be slowly reflated in the hospital. Ironically, the lung was finally fully reflated within a day of his death from a fatal heart rhythm in late July. After six weeks in the hospital, he'd hoped to be released to die at home, as my mother had done years before. Alas, his wish was not to be granted...


After leaving the VA hospital on Tuesday afternoon of June 17, I heard the little tune my cell phone plays when I have a new message in my voice mailbox. At the time I thought it odd that I didn't hear the phone ring a minute or two earlier, when the person who left the message must have called to speak with me. The phone was in my pants pocket, but I should have been able to hear it as I walked out of the hospital to my car.

I was in my car, about to leave the hospital complex, when I heard the voicemail tune. I paused to listen to the message, but instead I got a "Check call restrictions - 34" error message. The hospital was way out in an undeveloped area of the Las Vegas Valley, but I was still surprised that my cell phone couldn't connect with the nearest tower. At the time, I didn't get many phone calls, so I thought there was a good chance that the voicemail message was from E, my stepfather. I figured he'd simply left me a reminder for something to do when I got home. I decided to listen to the message when I got there, instead of walking back into the hospital to find out what he wanted (if indeed he was the one who left the message). It took about an hour to get back to the house, in part because I stopped to get a few things at the local supermarket.

It was a little after 3 PM when I got home. After putting away the groceries, I listened to the voicemail message. Sure enough, it was E, but what he said thoroughly alarmed me. First he said, "Doug, I can't breathe". Then there was a short pause, after which he said "I'm having so much trouble", or something very close to that (the shock of the first sentence made it hard for me to remember the second one exactly).

Interestingly, he didn't sound out of breath, but his voice was weak, with a forlorn, desperate quality that really frightened me. Thinking this might be the last voicemail message I'd ever receive from my stepfather, I made sure not to delete it. I phoned him back immediately, but he didn't answer. He didn't have the voicemail box on his cell phone set up, so I wasn't able to leave a message. I called a couple more times, then waited for him to call me. When we finally connected, I told him I'd heard the message he left just after I departed the hospital, and asked if he was breathing better. He didn't understand what I was talking about, asserting he hadn't called me. He said he dozed off to sleep right after I left his hospital room. At that, I realized right away that I might have experienced the living equivalent of a phone call from the dead. I shared my thought with E, saying I was going to look for the message, and that I'd play it for him when I saw him the next day. After our conversation ended, I looked for E's message in my voice mailbox. It was gone!

Even though E was seriously ill, he was still very sharp mentally, so there's no doubt in my mind that he was telling the truth when he said he did not call me. Besides, if he were dangerously short of breath, why would he phone me when the nurses' station was just outside his door? If I'd been able to hear the message before leaving the hospital parking lot, it still would have taken me a few minutes to reach his bedside. Having previously driven to the hospital himself for doctor's appointments, he knew this, so there's no reason he'd call me first in such an emergency.

For those wishing to learn more about the phenomenon described above, something similar happened to the author Scott Rogo (Phone Calls from the Dead, and many other titles). I've forgotten the details, but I believe a recording of his voice was heard on a friend's answering machine, although Rogo had no memory of having made the phone call. I think he was able to demonstrate convincingly that he could not have made the call, yet the voice definitely sounded like his.

In addition, a parapsychologist from our current era, Cal Cooper, has augmented the list of cases cited in Rogo's book with many of his own in Telephone Calls from the Dead.

Thanks, Doug! That's another strange one, somewhat unnerving, I would imagine. Have you or did you have any subsequent "contact" from him after his death ?

Thanks, Doug! That's another strange one, somewhat unnerving, I would imagine. Have you or did you have any subsequent "contact" from him after his death ?

Not yet, tim (at least to my knowledge), and he's the parent I most wanted an after death communication from. We'd been partners in a number of memorable gambling ventures, and I'd secretly hoped he'd find something for me to make money from. (My financial health wasn't so great when he died.) I guess I have my sheer arrogance and selfishness to blame for the wall that seems between us now, blocking communication.

Not yet, tim (at least to my knowledge), and he's the parent I most wanted an after death communication from. We'd been partners in a number of memorable gambling ventures, and I'd secretly hoped he'd find something for me to make money from. (My financial health wasn't so great when he died.) I guess I have my sheer arrogance and selfishness to blame for the wall that seems between us now, blocking communication.

I doubt it's your arrogance Doug. Just thinking about it makes me tired, but a large chunk of the paranormal in my life, probably the majority, revolved around dealing with people who made it very clear they didn't want people down here to have any "good" evidence of the paranormal if at all possible. I had a lot of arguments and outright fights with them, they made it very clear how much they dissapproved of my goal of developing magic down here with the intent of teaching others. They threatened me, they threatened Dreamsop and they demonstrated that they could follow through on those threats. They attempted to seal my energy multiple times and made no real attempt to hide it. Two of which were shared dreams with Dreamsoap that happened within two days of each other. Personally I think maybe one of those finally stuck and that could be why I can't get any of my energy out of my body to fucking just do magic like I really should be able to at this point like I could in 2010.

My unincarnated friends used to poltergeist down here quite a bit, especially Scarlet, and occasionally freaked me out with how solid they could get. Yellow, or at least someone with energy incredibly close to hers, had been hanging around me pretty much my entire life until just a few years ago actually, Even Dreamsoap could tell. We assumed it was her even though the energy was just slightly off, chalking it up to some sort of distortion from the distance and other factors. They used to tell me that they were limited in what they could do, partly because it's just plain hard because of the distance, partly because they claimed punching right through and becoming fully physical had certain ecological risks, but mainly because others had given them the same ultimatum. Something like them coming through on a phone like what happened with you was very explicitly not allowed.

After everything stagnated they were restricted even further. Told in no uncertain terms that they are not to ever have any sort of direct physical interaction down here ever again "or else." Which meant no more poltergeisting or doing really any of the stuff they'd been doing up to that point. It's a really dumb, complicated situation that I can't prperly explain here.

The reasoning given is essentially "humans are too dumb to handle magic safely" and having it would screw up their whole plan of trying to get people to grow by subtly influencing the world to get more and more authoritarian until people finally realize that they need to grow up and take care of themselves instead of waiting for a god or government to come save them. Basically grinding self respect into people. Even if they're genuine about it, which I doubt, I have many problems with this methodology.

My interpretation, especially because of their hostility towards me and Dreamsoap especially around the topic of teaching magic, their refusal to stop using religious imagery and other forms of emotional manipulation in interactions with people, their handwaving of the idea of education being a possible solution to their fears of magic being misused, leads me to believe that really, the reason is that if there was too much good evidence out there too many people would start seriously investigating the paranormal. And if they did that they'd start to realize that such abilities are real. And if that happened they'd start developing those abilities themselves. Then the celestials would lose their power monopoly because now other people know how to do what they do. And that all the stuff about using authoritarianism to help people grow as souls is just bullshit and a cover for them to just control things for whatever dumb purpose.

I'm aware how crazy it all sounds and I'm not expecting anyone to believe me. Nonetheless it's shit I had to go through and deal with and I know I'm not lying.

I guess I have my sheer arrogance and selfishness to blame for the wall that seems between us now, blocking communication.

I'd say you are probably doing yourself a disservice in assuming that you are at fault in some way, in blocking communication. There are likely other factors involved, you needn't blame yourself.

I've had occasional brief contact with various deceased, sometimes when asleep, and on one occasion during meditation when wide awake. But it doesn't happen frequently, and only in a limited way, often there is no message, other than a very real presence. It has also taken the form of simply 'getting together' in the sense that we mean in everyday life, when we meet up with friends or family and spend time with them. It isn't so important what is said, it is just being in one another's company which matters.