And I make the same mistake the other way around too, mixing up OWL for UFO. This has happened hundreds of time in the last decade. Both are three letter words, and both are at the core of my obsessive research. In my work I’ve argued that these these two “flying objects” are connected to the point where they are blurring together, so I guess this makes sense.
Standing on stage talking about my personal experiences and research
I spoke at the 30th Anniversary of the Ozark Mountain UFO Conferencein April of 2017 in Eureka Springs Arkansas. I am deeply honored to have been a part of this wonderful event.
My presentation was recorded and put up on YouTube in June of this year. As of this posting, this video has had 183,757 views. This is remarkable!
I've felt the influence of this video. Over the last few months I've received a LOT of emails that begin like this: "I just watched your presentation on owls and UFOs at the Ozark Conference and I need to tell you my story..."
I have been flooded with a wealth of amazing stories that all trace back to this video. The production team at the conference did an excellent job of capturing my talk. Thank you Adnan!
Adnan is the man behind an amazing set of videos found at UFO HUB. These are very thoughtful and grounded interviews. No sound bites, nothing sensationalistic. Just people talking calmly about their experiences and research without any pressure to make it seem zippy and fast paced.
I very briefly met Bob Dean in 2009. He was at the UFO Congress when it was still in Laughlin Nevada. He was quite the celebrity within that crowd so he was always surrounded by a group of people, everyone eager to talk with.
There came a point when I saw him sitting alone in the midst of the flurry of the conference. I politely approached and asked him if I could ask a few questions.
He graciously pointed to the chair next to him and I sat down. He wore an ascot and was smoking a cigar. I felt like Luke Skywalker meeting Yoda. I said I was new in this field and thought I might have had some UFO experiences and I was hoping for any advice he might offer.
He replied with that deep slow voice, "Be very careful my good man. You are standing before Pandora's Box, and once opened, it can never be closed again."
At that point I had been looking hard into my own experiences so I said something like, "Well, it's a little late for that."
I explained that I was taking my first steps into these waters. I was beginning my own research, dealing with my own memories, and it had been really confusing for me.
He told me, "Here's my advice in these matters. Keep a very open mind..." Long pause, "... and keep your bullshit meter set on high."
He was quite a radiant guy. Since then I've followed him through interviews on line. In the last few years I've noticed that he isn't shy about telling the world he was getting old and looking forward to finally going home.
This is a story from around three years ago, sometime in 2015. Andrea has a crystal pendulum tied with a black thread. The thread has two knots, so you can hold the the thread high or low depending on the knot. Andrea uses this pendulum while pinching the lower knot, and I use it at the higher knot.
For a time it was setting unused on a shelf in the closet. There was a day when Andrea asked me, “Did you do anything to the the string on my pendulum?” I said no and asked her what had happened. She showed me the string and it had been re-tied with three very short loops.
I didn’t have any idea how this could have happened and I carefully examined her pendulum. The black thread had been tied in a way that created three evenly sized loops near the top. I hadn’t tied it like this and neither had Andrea. I scrutinized the knot and tried to untie it. I am quite skilled with getting knots undone (see here), but I couldn’t make any headway to getting this knot undone. I really worked at it, even using tweezers, but nothing was working.
It seemed odd and I gave up. I set the pendulum back in its spot on the shelf. A few days later the knot was undone and it was in its previous configuration. I asked Andrea how it had gotten it untied and she had no idea what I was talking about.
Again, I carefully examined the string, and it seemed to be back in the original configuration. Neither of us have any idea how it might have gotten tied into such a tight knot and then how it would have returned to the way it had been previously.
Andrea's crystal pendulum with the thread in its "normal" configuration
NOTE: Pendulums are simply a small crystal pendant at the end of a short silver chain or string, and these are standard issue in the new-age community. The user will hold the string steady, let the crystal dangle, ask a yes or no question and wait for an answer. The pendulum gently swings or rotates as a reply.
In March of 2019 this blog will be ten years old. A lot has changed in my life in the last decade, and this blog has been a dairy of that journey.
I am considering doing a book with a collection of some of these posts. This is just an idea at this point. The blog has gotten so big that it’s become a hassle to try and dig through and find anything. I've been reviewing the site, starting at the beginning. There are well over 800 posts on this site and most of them wouldn’t be appropriate in a book format, but there are some remarkable entries here.
The content is all available online, so the ebook would need to be priced low. I doubt there would be a print book, but if there were it would be print-on-demand and would need to be priced like a tradition book.
A few question for my readers:
1. Would you be interested in a book like this?
2. What posts here have you found to be especially interesting?
