Other Incidents of My Unusual Spiritual Awakening

Having profiled many documented cases of people experiencing happenings often categorized as so-called 'paranormal' or 'unexplained phenomena,' I realized that it would be informative for new readers to have an outline of significant occurrences of this type in my own life that I attempted to place in perspective soon after investigating the phenomena of a contemporary 'talking poltergeist' case in rural Oklahoma in 1995.  My understanding has been enhanced through comparing my own experiences with other case studies encompassing phenomenal events.

1990s

After researching the case of Julia Pastrana for a 'spec' screenplay, I decided to find another interesting offbeat true story and selected the Bell Witch talking poltergeist case.  Below is the somewhat frightful cover of the first book I found about the 19th Century Bell Witch case.  This 1972 publication presented facsimile editions of books published in 1930 and 1934.  Also shown is an 1855 advertisement showing how Julia apparently appeared before grooming for public exhibition in the United States after leaving her native Mexico.

To develop a perspective of the events of the Bell Witch case, I researched other famous poltergeist cases.  At this time I was employed as a movie publicity writer for Paramount Pictures.  One afternoon I was having lunch with a publicity department secretary, Michelle, at a restaurant near the studio and upon mentioning the Bell Witch case, there was a power failure.  (Some details of the Bell Witch case are described in comparison with the Gef Isle of Man case in an article from earlier this year.)  I was residing in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles at the time.  My condo overlooked the lake and Angelus Temple where Aimee Semple McPherson preached in the 1920s.  There were a variety of strange incidents that occurred during this period in my life. 

Ever since some mysterious childhood events, I've been interested in unexplained phenomena.  I would watch telefilms purportedly based on 'poltergeist' cases to see how the subject was being depicted.  While watching one of these programs, I witnessed an outline of a man take form on the screen and then recede.  It was obviously not a part of the storyline and I even wondered momentarily if the telefilm producers had staged the special effect as a publicity stunt.  Years later, I learned that this phenomena is known categorically as Instrumental Transcommunication.

One night I experienced a vivid dream where my dream 'self' was inside what could only be associated with some manner of spaceship.  In some of my dreams, 'my' behavior and thoughts are different from what rationally I would expect of myself.  This 'alien' dream was a fearful experience for me as it occurred.  When somebody was about to come into the spaceship room, 'my' actions were to slam a door against the mysterious being and at this moment I immediately woke up.  Looking back, it seems that either this 'test' produced negative results as in the Maureen Puddy case or the 'dream' was an example of how not to respond upon finding oneself in such a strange situation.

One night, I was preparing to go to sleep when I suddenly heard an emphatic male voice say, "Father, I have waited so long."  I was extremely startled — what was that?!  However, there was nothing that I could do but shrug off the odd occurrence as it didn't seem to have any meaning in relation to my life.  When I was around five years old, there had been another instance of 'voice hearing' when I was living in Pasadena.  One morning, I awoke to a male voice calling my name.  While my twin brother and our mother were asleep, I searched through the apartment to see who was calling me but nobody was there.

Another person I'd researched was Catherine Cadiere, a figure of the early 18th Century chronicled as being abused by a priest and having rapturous visions or dreams.  While living in Echo Park, I also had experienced two visionary interludes unlike any previous dream state experiences.  I wrote a description of these two 'rapture of Christ' events after each one occurred but didn't give much thought to them because I didn't know how to interpret them in relation to my life.  (The descriptions were published in the nonfiction case study Testament published in 1997.)

In the summer of 1994, on two occasions bushes went up in flames on the hillside directly below and across from my condo.

Not long before my trip to Oklahoma in 1995 there was a strange series of events that occurred involving a draft of my production information for the movie "Clueless."  After being promoted to Senior Publicist and then being laid off during a corporate restructuring to become an 'independent contractor' working from home, there was a problem uploading the file of the "Clueless" production information draft I'd been asked to write.  The diskette file was corrupt and my attempt to retype and transfer the file on another diskette to the publicity department computer also wasn't successful.

Oklahoma Trip (August 10-14, 1995)

I had arranged my Oklahoma research trip after reading the Fortean Times magazine article "The Stone-Throwing Spook of Little Dixie" about "America's Talking Poltergeist."  I had completed a draft of a book about 'talking poltergeist' cases when I learned about this contemporary case and realized this was a rare research opportunity.  When I first spoke to Maxine McWethy on the telephone, she revealed that her first husband's last name had also been Bell and this was also the name of her children.  The visit to Oklahoma occurred the same week I reached the age of 39 on August 8, 1995.

As chronicled in many 'poltergeist' cases, I witnessed the materialization and movement of small objects and one large object (a heavy wooden table).  When I held a stone that had just fallen on the floor, it was still warm to the touch.  When a family member, Twyla, accompanied me on a drive through the vicinity, there were two occasions when I heard utterances of unseen entities: first, the giggle of a little boy and then later, a deep groaning that sounded like it was coming from the back seat.  Family members told me about hearing and conversing with many different voices over the years with the entities sometimes mentioning their own names.  Names of manifesting entities included Rachel, 'E.T.,' Ricky and Nicky, 'Trouble' and 'Leader.'  The most prominent manifesting was 'Michael,' who was said to have conversed with the family and house visitors.  The family indicated that Michael's mysterious manifestations encompassed adult conversations along with apparent communication from a murdered child and also from extraterrestrial aliens.  At the time of my visit, the family was experiencing a minor infestation of wasps.

Even while I was inside my hotel room in nearby Ada, there were phenomenal occurrences.  On the night following the first day of interviews, I telephoned my twin brother Mike in Los Angeles.  After he sleepily answered the phone, he suddenly stated, "My bed is shaking."  The next night, I heard a knocking against the door.  Upon eventually looking out the window, there was a large beetle that looked like an Egyptian scarab repeatedly throwing itself against the door of my room.

On the third night of interviews during a long conversation with Maxine, we went to a diner.  We successively felt what I can only describe as a fluctuation of the physical density of our chairs.  Back at the house, there was a moment while we were talking when suddenly a water spot the size of a silver dollar permeated the fabric of my pants.

For me, the most jarring moment during the interviews had occurred when one of the materializing objects, a nail, hit my head and then fell to the floor.  It had felt as if the sharp end had hit my scalp yet no blood was drawn.

Incidents Witnessed upon my Return to Los Angeles in August 1995

Coins continued to be found and once I even saw and heard one (a "swoosh" of air) when it materialized and dropped on the carpeting during the visit of my brother and a friend.  My one request for 'Michael' was that he not speak to me because I didn't want people to think that I was hearing voices.  I decided to continue interviewing people and keep an audio tape journal of my experiences.

The family in Oklahoma had complained about Michael taking money from them.  When I conversed on the telephone with my friend Marie about the trip, I learned about a disturbing occurrence in her own life at the same time as my trip.  Her bank account had been cleaned out under mysterious circumstances.  There were other unexpected incidents during telephone conversations.  While I was speaking to my friend Fiona, she reported seeing a magnet fly off her refrigerator.  When I was speaking to my mother, I asked Michael to give me another sign.  My mother said there was no sign but the next moment she put the telephone down and when she picked up the receiver explained that a wasp had suddenly acted strangely.

After turning on my television one night to watch a reality series, the TV set turned off as the youth being filmed was complaining about the telephone having stopped working.  I understood that the entity 'Michael' didn't want me watching television although there were times when it would come on just long enough to present a 'message' and then go off again.  These incidents included a commercial aphorism or proverb: "Love is the only religion"; a scene from an old movie of the "Topper" series involving ghosts; a Rose Parade float with an environmental message; and a few moments of a newscast showing Colin Powell.  At my brother's house, I watched the documentary about the Oklahoma family on the NBC special "Ghosts, Mediums, Psychics: Put To The Test" that included footage of several anomalous occurrences. 

Once when I was talking to my mother she began ranting so I put the telephone down.  When I picked up the receiver a few minutes later and told her what I'd done, she said she'd heard my breathing during the interim.  I told her "Oh, well, that was Michael."  On another occasion while I was tape recording a phone call with a listening device, the telephone receiver was tossed to the floor. 

At night while in my bed, I felt an unseen hand grab my knee.  I recalled this had happened before my trip to Oklahoma and I'd thought it had been a muscle contraction but now it was evident Michael was again confirming his omnipresence — he'd also been with me before my trip.  I realized that my Centrahoma research and my own experiences presented evidence of an interactive spiritual Force unrestricted by space and time.

As I transcribed the microcassette interview tapes recorded in Oklahoma, I heard numerous 'spirit messages' and diverse examples of what later I would learn to be known as 'Electronic Voice Phenomena' (EVP). 

The only time I tried editing an audio tape by recording over a portion that I thought was unnecessary, the following morning I found the microcassette had been destroyed — the tape of the cassette severed and left on the table.  I understood that Michael didn't want me altering any of my interviews or journals.  The case study Testament consists of verbatim interview and audio journal transcripts. 

When I attended a party where a slide show was being presented, the projector light bulb burned out just after the word "leader" had been mentioned.  I didn't know if I was joking when I told the partygoers "Michael touched it."

I experienced an actual visionary moment upon glimpsing through the sliding glass door leading to the condo balcony something bright in the sky ascending into the air over Dodger Stadium.  As I studied the object, I distinguished that it was a military missile.  Nobody else reported seeing the missile and the incident left me convinced that this type of experience could have happened to famous clairvoyants.

Once when I was in a happy mood feeling inspired and creative, I was telling people during telephone conversations about their previous reincarnations (metaphorically) and it suddenly felt like someone or something stepped out of my body.  I realized that what I had been saying was something atypical for myself and considered the possibility of 'possession.'  Feeling upset and bewildered, I telephoned my brother and mentioned "I want to die" although I didn't really mean it.  The next day, my brother and two friends convinced me that I needed a vacation.  I thought that they meant a stay at a resort hotel but what had been arranged was a sojourn at a community psychiatric clinic. 

While I was at the clinic for a few days, Michael manifested a spectacular display of unlimitedness as occasionally there were brief instances of channeling through several of the other patients near me.  For example: one of the other patients suddenly began telling me about a crop harvest on another planet.  When one person was channeling morose comments about being rejected, I angrily left the room only to immediately be confronted by channeling through someone else.

Upon leaving the hospital, Michael continued to express himself in surprising new ways.  My hasty consideration of so-called 'demonic possession' had been a momentary fear about conditions that have an obvious basis in 'channeling' and mediumship phenomena.

One afternoon my front door key to the condo suddenly wouldn't work and I ended up pursuing a hunch and visiting the library downtown to research my family tree.  I discovered the 1833 book published in London Historical Memoir of the First Race of Ancestry, Whence the House of Russell Had Its Origin: from the Subjugation of Norway to the Norman Conquest by J. J. Wiffen.



 

One Sunday afternoon I was driving home after attending a metaphysical lecture at the Philosophical Research Society and I saw a big black rectangle in the sky above Echo Park that reminded me of the movie "Time Bandits."  Each time I took my eyes away from the 'door' in the sky, it became smaller and then was gone.

 

Another momentous event for me occurred when I was driving on the Harbor Freeway among hundreds of other vehicles after doing the grocery shopping for my ill mother.  In the sky above was an opening in a large cloud that looked precisely like a valentine heart. 

 

I don't think anyone could be adequately prepared to read about some of my experiences.  The interaction between the entity and myself encompassed human sexuality.  For example: while listening to the tape of myself asking Brenda Bell about what the poltergeist would think about someone being gay, there were EVP messages: "YEAH" "IT'S YOU AND ME" and there was an abrupt physical response that came over me.  By this time, I felt so comfortable being 'with Michael' that I understood the purpose of the incident was to make me aware of a symbiotic aspect of our mentalities.

 

There were fascinating correlations between my spiritual and paranormal experiences and my work as a publicist for Paramount Pictures.  The mountain logo that appeared at the beginning of each movie was an obvious symbol of spiritual evolution as Moses and Muhammad had experienced revelations associated with a mountain.  I recalled metaphysical elements in the storylines of some of the films I'd helped to publicize while working as a staff writer for the Paramount publicity department, including such movies as "Ghost," the "Star Trek" series, "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," "Scrooged," "Dead Again," "The Butcher's Wife," "Leap of Faith," and "Fire In The Sky."

 

My previous career in the Hollywood entertainment industry provided lessons and insights into many conditions of consciousness and creativity as well as about the influences of wealth and fame on the individual ego and egoism/egotism.  Accounts of unexplained phenomena and chronicles of events fostering spiritual discovery also encourage reflection about the nature of one's identity and metaphysical reality.

 

Since August 1995

 

The interviews and audio journal that I recorded for a few years following my trip to Oklahoma show many surprises.  For example: I began an impromptu interview with an antique store owner and learned that he'd been a stunt man who played the roles of all the alien monsters in the original "Outer Limits" TV series. 

 

I found that it was possible for me to call in to the national radio show "Coast to Coast AM" whenever I had a comment to share as chronicled in a previous blog article.  Soon after my calls started being screened, I stopped listening.

 

Some of my continuing experiences have been described and documented at the testament.org website and this blog.  The manifestations of the spiritual Force associated with the name 'Michael' in Oklahoma have progressed to uncomplicated forms of symbolic communication for me.  When one realizes that we live in a spiritually interactive universe, the experiences of every day can be an adventure in problem solving, co-incidence and synchronicity.

 

Looking back at the diversity of the things that I witnessed—from the bizarre to the spectacular—I am not surprised by a response of disbelief when someone first learns about my case.  The reader who makes use of the information that I share and reads Testament will hopefully gain a better understanding.  As an individual who knows how important it is to always be honest, I can only ask a skeptical person to consider the circumstances of my case and of other documented cases involving 'unexplained phenomena' before reaching any conclusions. 

 

A fortunate aspect of my life is that since the publication of Testament in 1997 I've been able to live a lifestyle unencumbered by the uncomfortable realities of life among those who attract media interest and publicity.  Living a quiet and routine daily life has afforded me ample time to learn about other documented cases categorized as 'paranormal' and share my perspective through articles of this blog.  My objective is to help other people expand their spiritual and metaphysical awareness.  The Thanksgiving holiday is a time of the year for counting one's blessings and considering how one can share them.

This photo from Testament shows my Oklahoma trip 'souvenirs' — these objects materialized in my presence while I was researching a contemporary 'talking poltergeist' haunting in 1995.  The objects are three coins, two pebbles, a nail, a piece of costume jewelry and an amusement park token.  (photo by Timothy Fielding)