irrational fear inside our tent

Dream image inside a tent, where I felt myself floating up above my pad with a glowing flat mandala circle off to the side.

I just returned home after spending two beautiful weeks in the four corners area. A close friend, Natascha, flew in from Germany specifically to explore and camp in the canyons and sandstone of this amazing part of the West.

During our trip we had a collection of curious happenings, and this posting is one of the more dramatic experiences. Natascha is here with me as I write this, and she’s been adding details she remembers as we try and make this written work as accurate as we can.

We were on our way north back to Idaho when we noted some issues with the brakes on my car. We went into a small mechanic shop in Cortez Colorado and they pretty much said we would die if we drove on the broken brakes. So, we were stuck down in the four corners area for five more days waiting on parts. We rented a cheap car and made the best of it.

Late in the afternoon of Thursday May 13th, Natascha and I asked the very nice coffee shop girl (wearing a very groovy hippy dress) in Cortez if she knew of any spots to camp near town. She said there was open camping on the BLM land outside of the town of Dolores, just a few miles up the road.

We followed her directions and ended up in a secluded area of tall trees a short ways off the forest service road. We found a secluded spot with an old fire ring and some broken beer bottles. Perfect for our one-night camping needs.

We set up our tent and headed back into the town of Dolores and ate pizza at a cute local brewery. Our table was situated right next to the window and it looked out on the very quiet corner of a VERY tiny town.

During dinner, Natascha was quite emotional. As I write this she explained that she was very much in crisis, she was feeling sad and didn’t quite know where these emotions came from.

After pizza we went back to the camp site and climbed in our small tent. It seems like we quickly went to sleep. This is where things get strange.

I was suddenly jolted awake because Natascha had screamed. It was just a short shriek of fear. My instantaneous response was to bolt upright and scream with an intensity that would be hard to describe. I was screaming in fear, sure enough, but it was also a primal outburst of defense.

I've slept in the mountains for decades, and I've dealt with some scary stuff in the dark. Bears in camp, moose tangled up in my tarp strings, rats crawling across my face - but I have NEVER been frightened in a way that would come close to those moments in that tent.

I switched on my headlamp and held it in my hand. I asked Natascha what happened. I actually had the wherewithal to say, "Tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. Don't think, just tell me what happened."

She said almost nothing, simply stating, "I saw a face."

Natascha later explained that she felt blocked, like it was simply impossible to tell what she had actually seen. She also tried to articulate that she was perhaps still in a lingering realm where time had a different meaning, and I was firmly in our time reality, and it created a sort of disconnect between us.

While in the tent in the moments after our screaming session, I stammered to Natascha, in a voice on the verge of panic: "Look - if we need to - we can just leave - right now - we can leave the tent set up and just drive to town and get a hotel room - we can do that if we need to..."

I was freaked-out, and it came out in my voice. This is something I would never say in any normal circumstance.

She asked me, "Do you believe in evil ghosts?"

I thought carefully and replied, "No." My response was less out of honesty, and more an attempt to keep the mood from getting any scarier.

At some point I looked at my watch, and it was only 11:40 PM. My reaction was, oh sh*t, it's so early and now we have to worry about scary stuff for the rest of the night!

I had one arm over Natascha as we lay there. We sat in silence for a short time, we must have spoken a little, but I can’t remember anything of what we said. Perhaps we were both silent. I know my heart was pounding, and my thoughts seemed trapped in a kind of horror.

I lay there thinking, "This is f*cking terrifying. This is insane. How could I EVER camp out here? How could I ask for this kind of f*cking sh*t!" My mind was spiraling out of control.

I ended up chanting a repetitive mantra in my head, "Love and Light, Love and Light, Love and Light..." Over and over and over. This is how Anya Briggs ends her emails, and it might seem corny, but I really MEANT it!

At one point I put my arm back in my own sleeping bag and promptly fell asleep. I have to say it seems weird as I write this that I could slip back into sleep after being SO freaking' terrified. It seems impossible that we could both simply doze off again.

Later that same night I had a dream. This was a weirdly vivid dream. It took place inside the same tent, no dreamlike distortion, it was very accurate to the interior of the tent. (see the illustration above) I'll add that this dream was NOT scary in the least, it was curiously void of any emotion - good or bad.

I saw a big round mandala figure up and too my left, situated in a very specific point in the tent. It was a simple circle about the size of a large pizza with a lone dot in it's center. It looked very much like the blurry cataract image in my right eye, and strangely flat unlike a 3D orb. (more on that below).

Then I was floating up off the floor of the tent. The elevator-up sensation of slowly up rising felt strangely familiar (more HERE). I thought to myself, "I need to remember this - I need to remember this - I need to remember this..."

Then the the environment of the tent changed to a backdrop of white light. I thought, "Am I on a table? Am I on a table?" I didn't understand where I was. It was a mysterious realm with a uniform white glow around me. Was I on my back? Was I upright?

The dream abruptly ended when Natascha spoke up and said, "Mike, you are floating!" I don't think she actually said this, but I remember it clearly in that dream state. Her words sort of pulled me back down onto the sleeping pad, and the dream ended.

The next morning we immediately began to talk about the events of the night and more details emerged.

I asked Natascha what she saw that made her scream, and she explained that she saw a face within a circle. I pressed her for more details and she said, "I can’t say, but the only thing that seems to match is that drawing you did, of the face in the circle from your blog." [ link ]

This was very curious, she didn't know about my dream yet, and she described something very similar to the round mandala I saw. The way it looked to me was like the image I see in my right eye.

I asked where the face was positioned, at the time I assumed it was directly over her, centered above her face. She instead pointed up and off to her left, at an area in the wall of the tent - exactly where I saw the glowing circle in my dream. Again, I hadn't shared the events of my dream yet. More weirdness about this mandala shape HERE.

Notes from my small sketchbook, written the morning after the experience in the tent.

What actually might have happened is very difficult to say. I cannot dismiss the irrational fear that overcame both of us. This feeling of terror was entirely different than any emotion I have ever experienced, amplified in a way that seems extraordinary. I must have sensed something beyond a jolt of surprise when Natascha woke me with a short scream.

What is even more bizarre was the extremely vivid nature of my dream, along with the matching details to whatever Natascha witnessed. This is also extremely curious.


NOTE: I modified the swear words so the automatic blog format doesn’t add a extra blocking window when readers try and log on.

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Part TWO to this story inked HERE

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Follow-up posting:
There was an odd mark on my chest that appeared, as far as I can tell, from this experience in the tent. Click HERE for more on this disturbing story.

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Mac Tonnies and friends yukking it up in Wyoming

Additional info added Jan 28, 2012:

I found this image on-line, it was posted by a member of the film-crew from Canada that traveled with Mac in 2009 to produce a documentary for CBC television. I was struck by the orb in the photo, and it immediately reminded me of the floating mandala shape I saw inside the tent. Now, this floating orb in the photo could be nothing more than a speck of dust in front of the camera, but who knows? I am sceptical of these kinds of orb photos, but I suspect that some of them represent a genuine unknown.

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Max Ernst, The Twentieth Century, 1955

Text added Feb 11, 1012:

I found this image on a Secret Sun posting about Max Ernst. The mandala sphere in this painting seems to closely match my memory of the glowing circle in the tent.

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Text added March 13, 2013:
This experience shows up on a curious map with other odd events all lined up in a straight line in southern Utah. (linked HERE)
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Text added March 25, 2013:

In June of 2011 I had the honor to sit in as the guest host for Whitley Strieber's on-line subscribers and inter view Dr. Janet Eizebeth Colli. I had done my own interview with Dr. Colli just a month earlier. During this follow up interview we talked about this event in the tent with Natascha. This all ties back into the yellow line on the map of southern Utah, the tent experience was the Eastern most of the three points on that line (that's it's own bag of worms).

This conversation seems a little bit like a client and a therapist, where I ask for help and she shares her insights.

one-click audio download HERE

Thanks to Whitley for letting me post this 30-minute interview here on my site. His site is Unknown Country.

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