Mac Tonnies, Anya Briggs and owls

Mac Tonnies, my pal.

On September 28th 2009, Mac Tonnies was the featured guest on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. He was a breath of fresh air on a radio show bogged down with the dubious. As always, he spoke with remarkable clarity.

Less than a month later, he was found dead in his apartment in Kansas City.

His performance on Coast to Coast was a triumph, he was delightfully engaging on the most popular show of it’s kind. It felt like he was just about to jump to a new level of success, and this was something he truly deserved. I can’t help but be struck by sad thoughts of what might have been.

During the 3rd hour of the show, he spoke about a friend of his who has been seeing owls. He says that this friend was self-aware enough to examine these sightings and make sure they weren’t some sort of screen memory. Mac was talking about me!

On October 1st, Mac and I had this short email exchange.

I wrote: Mac - My owl stories made it to Coast to Coast?!?!?

Mac replied: Yep. But I didn't have time to finish the story or even tell it properly.

When I read Mac’s reply I wasn’t sure what he meant, it was just cryptic enough that I was left confused. What was it in the story that he couldn’t finish? Sadly, I would never have the chance to ask him.

Anya Briggs, psychic, medium and intuitive.

Fast forward to the spring of 2011, during a phone call with Anya Briggs the topic of Mac Tonnies came up, and how I felt he was cajoling me from the other side to pursue the graphic novel. Anya is a powerful psychic and she suddenly blurts out, he’s here!

She starts frantically sharing what Mac is telling her, and then she laughs in her own voice and says, “Oh I really like this guy!”

This has happened more than once during phone calls with Anya, and each time I end up getting sort of intimidated by the intensity of the whole thing. But I suddenly remembered that unanswered question, and I asked Mac through Anya.

I said, “Mac, when you were on Coast to Coast, you told a little bit of one of my owl stories, but later you emailed me that you didn’t have time to finish the story. I never knew what you meant. What were you going to say?”

And without skipping a beat, Anya replied: “I was going to say that owls might be a kind of window into your world, and that some other force could be using those great big eyes as a tool to see into your reality. Their eyes are like a video camera, and they are being used as a direct link, someone was watching you.”

That bit of dialog is paraphrased from memory, but it’s pretty close.

I knew instantly that Anya shared exactly what Mac would have said. This was something that Mac and I had talked about during one of our late night multi-hour chat sessions. And this idea arose from a comment I got on a blog posting from none other than Whitley Streiber. He replying to a very curious owl story, the forth post on this blog (March 4th 2009). I wore about seeing three owls, on two occasions, both times with a friend named Kristy.

I was shocked to see Whitley’s comment, and it was followed up by a comment from Mac where he explained that it was he who told Whitley about the owl post. Mac and Whitley would occasionally exchange twitter messages. It was that same night where Whitley had shared his thoughts on owls, this happened during a subscribers chat forum on the UNKNOWN COUNTRY site.

I had been wondering for well over a year what Mac was hinting at when he said, “I didn't have time to finish the [owl] story,” on Coast to Coast. And when Anya communicated Mac’s answer to my question, it made perfect sense. Through some sort of magical technology, alien entities were watching me and Kristy through those great big eyes! Could it be true?

This is exactly the kind of esoteric detail that absolutely delighted Mac.

Comments from two of the most inspiring thinkers that have graced this planet. And the number 17 for Chris Knowles.

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