owls and sychronicity with Micah Hanks

Great Horned Owl

Micah Hanks invited me to talk about owls and synchronicity on his GRALIEN REPORT podcast. We both bat around the owl meme and what it might imply. I share a few of my owl experiences and Micah tries to interpret their meaning. We spoke for about 45 minutes, and that conversation is logged on the audio-file below.

one-click audio download HERE

one hour / 9 minutes

At the end of that excerpt, I add few more of my curious owl stories to the mix. This includes a mysterious real-life story titled Mac Tonnies, Anya Briggs and Owls.

A Great Gray Owl in full-camo.

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owls and 1111

owl in flight

The 11-11 phenomenon is a term that gets used among people (like me) who take synchronicities very seriously. I found the number 1111 in my listings of all time page views on this blog. It was for the forth essay that I posted on this blog, a very strange story about owls, lots of them. The story is titled OWLS AT SUNSET, and was one of the defining moments of my life, and I feel that this short essay is worth reading.

owls, a beautiful story and a synchonous number

Now, I don't put all that much meaning into the number 1111, my focus has been on the numbers 12345. I am sharing this here simply because I made a very real commitment to post EVERY synchronicity in this very public format. And some of these number syncs seem to glom onto the weirder stuff. Believe me, I have been trying to find 1111 and 1234 in my bank statements and in time stamps ordinary emails, but they just don't seem to appear in those mundane places.

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white owls and hell-hounds

I just read a first-person of strangeness account involving a large WHITE OWL, a hell-hound, crop circles, ley lines and ancient sites in Briton. This was an experience that also included Bert Jansen, the Dutch crop circle researcher. Well worth reading.

Here's the LINK to this fascinating owl story.

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it's really called OWL POD!

I just stumbled on a podcast sharing service called OWL-POD. Yes, that's really it's name. It collects on-line podcast series and creates a simple search engine for subjects. Beyond that, I like the name!

OWLPOD.com linked here.

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two owls crossed our path

Two days ago I saw two owls, and they both crossed my path. Click on the image for a hi-rez view.

I was driving at sunset with my friend Erika, we were driving south out of town toward my home. There is a bridge right where the highway crosses the Teton Creek just a little bit out of town, and there is a row of tall cottonwoods along this river.

Then, right above the highway we both watched the obvious silhouette of a big owl swoop across the road from left to right and toward a branch on one of the tall trees next to the road. It flapped it’s wings and it looked like it was harassing a bird on branch, and this tussle caused the other bird to take off and it flew across the road from right to left. When we saw it in flight it was obviously another owl.

So, two owls crossed our path, in two different directions.

At the time Erika and I were trying to figure out what DVD we would watch that night. One was a stand up routine by an Australian transvestite comic, the other was a presentation by investigative mythologist William Henry titled STARGATE 2012. When we saw the two owls, we both sort of declared to each other, “Well, I guess we're gunna watch the William Henry thing.”

The fact that the owls crossed my path is a sort of curios confirmation for me, and I talk about why in the beginning of this post HERE. And in that same post I tell about another odd owl crossing my path at that exact same row of cottonwoods along side Teton Creek. This was also the location of another other interesting owl sighting with it’s own blog post HERE.

Three curiously sightings of an owl crossing my path at the same spot. It’s quite probably the same owl. Now, all this said, I do live in a place with lots of owls, but still...

Various owl stories

Below is a series of five stories. I wrote these in a diary form over the last few years, but I haven't posted them. I'm including them here simply as a way to catalog 'em as part of my experiences.

In June of this year (2011) I was driving on a dirt road in late afternoon with my friend Erika. It was late afternoon on a lovely sunny day and we were in a forested area near my home known as Darby Canyon. We were driving slow because the road was bumpy, and we watched an owl swoop down in front of our window.

This was odd because it was fully daylight. Please note, the owl crossed our path.

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I saw two owls in what was probably the summer of 2005. I was hiking alone in a beautiful part of the Tetons (pretty much the exact same spot as noted in THIS blog post). I was planning to spend the night out and i was enjoying the twilight on the trail. I noticed two owls that were perched in the trees above me, as I hiked past them they flew along to the next tree as if they were curious about me. This went on for about 15 minutes or so, where they would land on a branch, watch me pass, and then fly to another tree further along the trail, criss-crossing my path as I walked.

The experience was positively mystical. As best as I can remember, these were small (immature) Barred owls.

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This happened in the pre-dawn on Christmas day, 2010. I was driving to the Idaho falls airport to visit my parents on the east coast. During the lonely drive I saw two owls in my headlights. Neither crossed my path, and both flew off from posts on the side of the road as my car passed them. The first one looked absolutely enormous.

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In the summer of 1996 I was driving at night with a friend Peter. I had just picked him up at the Jackson Hole airport and we were driving at night to a camping spot in Grand Teton National Park. During the drive on the lonely road, a huge owl crossed our path, flashing frighteningly close to our windshield. I note this rather mundane sighting here because this was an extremely emotional time in my life, having just experienced the death of someone close to me.

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In February of 2009 I went to a UFO conference in Laughlin Nevada, and sat in on the abductee support group, there were about 20 or so of us in the room. During the two hour session, one guy sat silently for almost the entire time, but near the end he raised his hand and cautiously asked: "Has anyone here had any experiences with owls?"

And he nearly jolted out of his chair when EVERYBODY in the room raised their hand.

He told a story of being alone in a car, and driving down a dark country road at night, on edge of the road was a giant owl, over five feet tall. He slowed the car, rolled the window down and stopped directly next to the owl. He said he got a very weird vibe, like the owl was angry and wanted him to leave and they guy drove off feeling confused and scared. Later he went to photograph an owl nest in a beautiful canyon near home, and when he saw the "real" owl in it's nest, he immediately thought, "I don't think that was an owl I saw that night."

He eventually tried to use hypnosis to try to retrieve a more detailed memory, and all he came up with was that the giant owl on the side of the road was wearing boots!

I'm cautious to read too much into this story, but it seems to be some sort of screen memory, a reoccurring pattern in abduction reports. The implication that some sort of deceptive projection was beamed into his mind making him think that the thing he saw on the side of the road was an owl - when it was actually - who knows?

There are abductions researchers who would conclude that the owl was instead a gray alien with big eyes, and they might even be right, but I am cautious to make that leap.

Great Gray Owl in full cammo.
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In October of 2009 I went to a conference put on by Whitley Strieber in a retreat center in Joshua Tree California. It was set to begin and there were a few people out sitting around at tables in front of the doors of the building with the lecture hall. There was going to be an informal introduction of the speakers that evening and the actual conference lectures were set to begin the following morning. The retreat center was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, so it was pretty impressive. There lecture hall was on a hill, with a set of stairs leading down and a long promenade stretching out beyond that. 

As we all waited, I spoke with a few of the attendees. At one point as twilight approached, I looked down from the seating area out across that promenade, and an owl flew from left to right - crossing my path.

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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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owl and the full moon

A big owl on a tiny branch as seen from my sleeping spot in the Tetons. The moon was positioned impeccably. I worked hard on this illustration to accurately capture what I saw, I did not have a camera with me. Click on this image for a HI-rez view.

Last night I saw a lone owl, and the experience was absolutely magical. I was in the Tetons alone, and I was sleeping out under the stars in one of the most beautiful meadows imaginable.

I travel in the mountains with a tiny pack on my back. I checked the weather before leaving home, and it said that it would be a clear night, and that means no tent and thus an even smaller pack. Plus I one it was going to be a full moon, and I just NEEDED to be out there! Last night, I set my pad down on the ground just at the point that it was getting too dark to hike anymore. There is nothing in the world I love more than just sleeping out under the stars. The full moon was rising in the east, and I watched it creep it’s way up above the big peaks. Right then, I was awash in awe and amazement.

A few minutes later I was lying in my sleeping bag with a book, I was reading THE HANDPRINT OF ATLAS by an author names Sesh Heri. (more on this soon, there is a LOT of syncho-intensity connected to the book and the author, for now I'll just say it's about cosmic and terrestrial alignments)

As I was reading with my headlamp, there was a visual swoosh of something right above my head, and I sort of jumped. I looked up to see a big bird land on in a nearby tree. The moon was full so I could clearly see the silhouette of an owl. It didn’t have the cat-like ear-tufts, so I am guessing (by it’s size) that it was a Barred Owl. I'll add that it looked way too big to be perched on the spindly little branch on that dead tree.

I sat and watched it for maybe 10 minutes, and the entire time it was in a pose of scrutiny, it was looking right at me.

Now here is the amazing part, from where I was lying on the ground the tree with the owl was precisely back-lit by the full moon. The perfect symmetry was amazing! Right in that moment, I was very aware that I was seeing something spectacular. How and why it landed on that exact tree, when I was lying in that exact spot, and the full moon was in that exact point in the sky makes me think that something more was at work rather than just mere chance.

I was looking up from my sleeping bag and I asked a series of questions. What are you trying to tell me? Can you communicate with me? Why are all you owls showing up in my life. Is someone watching me through your eyes? If you wanna tell me something, I get good information through dreams (I’ll add that I didn’t have any dreams after that).

All those questions were asked out loud, addressing them directly to the owl.

When the owl did fly away, it actually sort of scared me. It flew directly AWAY from me, but that was impossible to tell in the dim light, so it looked like it was zooming right at me.

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More about the short trip:
I started hiking in the afternoon yesterday, and on my way into the mountains I saw a small black bear. It was along side of the trail eating huckleberries. It was a safe distance away, and it made for a wonderful sighting.

And - I started hiking very early this morning, just as the sun was coming up. I crested a hill, and there in front of me was a WOLVERINE! It looked at me for about 30 seconds, and then crossed my path and trotted off across the high alpine tundra. Dang, those things are fast! Just so you know, it is extremely rare to see a wolverine, and I felt perfectly blessed.

This image shows two, but I only saw one. It's coloring matched the top one.

Right ON

for my awesome

POWER ANIMALS!

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Also, check this out! Here's a little screen grab from an email reply from Anya Briggs on the subject of this very post. Note the time mark, 1234!

owl leaves spooky imprint on window

An eerie image gets splatted onto a window

Kendal UK - A woman returned to her home to find a near perfect imprint of an owl on her window. The bird had apparently crashed into the window of Sally Arnold's home, leaving the bizarre image - complete with eyes, beak and feathers.

Experts said the silhouette was left by the bird's "powder down" - a substance protecting growing feathers. Mrs Arnold said she could find no sign of the owl, so assumed it had flown off without serious injury.

She said: "Fortunately, there was no sign of the bird and we can only assume that it had flown away probably suffering from a headache."

Read the full article HERE.

(Please note: This wasn't my house)

owl stories

Lilitu With Owls

People send me their owl stories. It's one of the very curious by-products of this blog. The stuff that fills my in-box is fascinating in the extreme. If any readers have any odd experiences with owls, please send 'em to me, I feel a responsibility to play the role of archivist.

hiddenexperience [the "at" symbol] me.com

And, plenty of folks have been posting their own stories on their own blogs, like THIS. And THIS, and THIS, and THIS, and THIS!

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very cute owl image

Close up image of the return address label from Mac Tonnies' mother.

While at the post office today, I received a book from Mac Tonnies' personal library. It was sent to me by Mac's mother, and I am deeply touched by the sentiment. The book is The Life and Times of R. Crumb, it's a collection of essays by his contemporaries. And the envelope came complete with a cute owl image.

When I got home (minutes ago) I had an email from Mac's mom waiting for me in my inbox. It tells of a documentary film maker who is working to put together a collection of stories about Mac, where people who knew him would share their memories. Basically, a collection of essays by his contemporaries.

My final email to Mac was from a bookstore in Moab Utah. I had just purchased, at Mac's recommendation, a big book by R. Crumb and I sent him a little note to tell him that I now owned the book. It was the entire Book of Genesis from the bible in a comic book format.

Mac and I were both huge fans of R. Crumb, and I made sure to embrace that inky scratchy look as I worked on the illustrations for his book THE CRYPTOTERRESTRIALS. I told him that was how I wanted the drawings to look, lots of black ink in an overtly Crumb-like style, he enthusiastically agreed.

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one year ago today

28 short eared owls on a fence in Missouri. Very eerie photo by Faren Fite, double click on the image for a HI-rez view.

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It was one year ago today that I recieved Mac Tonnies' book in the mail.

This was the same day I was sent a link to a series of still photos featuring a very unusual cluster of owls on a fence in Misourri. These two seemingly unrelated events were the opening salvo in an onslought of overt weirdness that almost drove me into madness.

These were the seeds to a series of postings all under the rather bland label: MAP.

Just so y'know, there will be a day when I follow up on this mysterious jumble of tangled clues, more for me than any reader of this blog.

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Below is a short note I found in my files, written to myself almost a year ago:

On the afternoon of March 12th I was trying to deal with the google maps program and create some more exacting lines. During this somewhat compulsive work, the phone rang, and it was Mac Tonnies’ mother. It was a very touching conversation, she called to thank me for the illustrations in the book. We spoke for almost an hour, and she shared a lot about her son. After saying goodbye, I was absolutely filled with gratitude.

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bright orb seen by Natascha

The red marker is the location of the campsite, and the blue marker shows where Natascha encountered the bright orb. These two points are approximately 1,500 feet apart. Google maps image, double-click for HI-Rez view.

This is a report of something highly unusual. In the very early morning hours of March 3rd, I was sleeping out under the stars with my pal Natascha. We were both lying in the desert sand in a very isolated corner of southern Utah.

We had been to the multi-day UFO conference in Phoenix, and we were taking the scenic route to my home in Idaho. We had been driving and hiking throughout the day, and we set out our sleeping bags just a little bit after sunset. Instead of getting a hotel room, we chose to camp just off the (very beautiful) Burr Trail Road, about 8 miles east of the little town of Boulder Utah. The map of Utah (below) shows our location with a blue marker.

Natascha had recently arrived from Germany, and she was still feeling jet-lagged, so she couldn’t sleep. She got up out of her sleeping bag at about 2:AM, and tried to do some work on her computer in the front seat of the car.

After a while, she felt cold and took a walk on the road with just the stars for light. This is a very narrow road with almost zero traffic, especially during these early morning hours.

I’ll add that during this time I simply lay in my warm sleeping bag near the car.

Here is her (slightly edited) description of the curious events that followed:

I woke up, thinking it might be about 4:AM (it wasn't, it must have been 2:15 or so). Mike didn't want to get up yet, but I was wide awake. I spent some time looking up at the stars and although I felt nice and warm in my sleeping bag, I just couldn't go back to sleep again.

I finally decided to get up to sit in the car and work on the computer for a while.

It was still quite early (approx 3:30) when I went back to Mike, complaining that I'm cold. He said, he won't get up before the sunrise and that I could go for a walk. I said: "I will get lost in the darkness." He said: "There is the road you could take."

So I went for a walk on the road. It felt good to move. I didn't use my headlamp, the ambient light from the stars was enough. After a short time my eyes adapted to the darkness and I could see where I was walking. The road went uphill towards a huge rock feature. I enjoyed walking in the stillness, there was a dark beauty to my surroundings.

But there was more, I could sense something, almost like a buzz in the air, like the air wasn't empty, there was some sparkling. It felt like I could sense energy. I have this sensation once in while, but here in the darkness and this place of pure nature it felt like I had a heightened ability to "see" more than we usually do. My sensations were enhanced.

I was thinking about this heightened sensation when all of a sudden I saw something very unusual: there, about 150 feet away, close to the ground on the right side of the road was a bright light. It flashed, so I just saw it for a second or so. It was round, like an orb and it was so bright that my first thought was that there is somebody with a very bright flashlight. But it didn't make sense, it just flashed and it was very close to the ground.

Next thought (my mind went crazy, because I wanted an explanation), maybe it was a lightning bug? But the round light was much too big, like two feet in diameter. And shortly after realizing that there was no way I could explain this thing, I started to panic. I turned on my heels and ran back to Mike, looking over my shoulder once in a while because it felt like I was followed.

When I arrived at Mike lying on the ground I woke him up, telling him that I saw a bright light like an orb and that I'm scared and that I won't walk around alone anymore. Well, that made him get up.

I have no idea why I was so scared, and I was relieved that we finally packed up and drove away.

(Natascha's entire report, without editing, has been added to the comments below)
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Mike again, chiming in with a little bit more:

While Natascha was walking on that road, I was snug in my sleeping bag drifting in and out of sleep. During this time I heard an owl hooting, over and over, and it was quite close to where I was lying. Here's an audio clip of the very distinctive call of the Great Horned Owl.

Let me add that the night was perfectly lovely, calm and very quiet. The temps were quite chilly, and we both got a lot of frost on our sleeping bags. We saw one car drive down the road shortly after sunset, but as far as I could tell, that was the ONLY car that night.

And - While typing up this post, I got to where I was writing about Natascha's memories, and I felt a little bit presumptuous writing about her direct experiences. And at that exact moment, I received an email from her (while she was sitting in a coffee shop at the Charles Du Gaulle Airport) where she shared her memories. That text is posted above (typed in Arial), with minimal editing by me.

Desert sandstone in beautiful southern Utah, and the logo-image for this blog.

two owls cross my path

At some point during the late summer of '09 I made a sort of pledge; I wasn't going to pay attention to owls that were off at my periphery. I had been seeing so many owls that I needed some way to filter out the ones that were just sitting in a tree as I drove down the road, those didn't count.

I literally stated out-loud that I would only pay attention if an owl somehow crossed my path. Basically, they needed to swoop down in front of me, as if they were demanding my attention. Well, almost immediately after my verbal declaration, the owls seemed to respond - and they would appear in front of me in flight - cleanly bisecting my path.

The overt owl "performance" where they would cross my path happened multiple times in October of 2009. It first happened as I rode my bike thru my little home-town. And again a few weeks later in the presence of Whitley Strieber during a conference in California.

I didn't see many owls during the winter and summer of 2010, there was pretty much nothing for a almost a full year. I saw a few normal owls off on the side of the road as I was driving, it felt like their overt performances had eased off.

In September of last year (2010) I spent several nights in a row recording and editing an audio post about the month of October of '09, and it's overwhelming load of weirdness. Recording this podcast was emotional and time consuming. I would edit late into the night, awash in a sort of compulsion.

Here's where it gets weird. One early evening while I was riding my bike from a friend's house to my home, and knowing that I was on my way to work on that heavy-handed podcast - an owl swooped down from a telephone pole and silently crossed my path, landing on a fence post on the other side of the lonely rural road. I was immediately aware that this was somehow associated with the podcast.

Now, here's where it gets really weird! Two nights later, I was riding home on my bike from town (on a totally different road) and an owl swoops across my path and lands in a group of cottonwoods along side the road, at a bridge across the Teton Creek. Again, this was when I was on my way home to work on that heavy-handed podcast.

This came after a year of almost zero owl sightings.

My consistent interpretation of these owl incidents has been either you're on the right path or pay attention.

But after having two owls cross my path while on my way to edit that audio essay about synchronicities and paranormal experiences, I was imbued with an even deeper dedication to be as honest as I possibly could.

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Also, I am pretty sure that the second owl sighting in this story (the one that landed in the cottonwood trees) was the exact same owl from THIS curious posting.
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owl on a cold winter's night

Last week I saw an owl on a telephone post. I was walking to my car on a cold winter night, after leaving a friends house. At the time I was in a somber emotional mood. It felt like I was in confusing point in my life. I stood directly under the owl for a minute or so, and it watched me from above but never flew off.

The next afternoon my friend (who's house I left the previous night) saw a Great Gray Owl on a post right outside her window. Earlier that day, she had received an emotional email from an old boyfriend, and when they were dating they both had lots of curious owl sightings, including owl dreams!

I'm not sure what any of this means, but I feel obligated to pay attention.

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Text added Dec. 30th:

Just found this, more collected owl weirdness (LINK).

an owl crosses my path

To better understand this little event, I need to share something relevant. At the end of last summer I had seen so many owls, that I needed a way to quantify what I was seeing. It was exasperating, and finally I overtly stated to the universe that I would only pay attention to owls that CROSSED MY PATH. I said it out loud as a declaration. For reasons unknown, right after that, all my owl sightings involved them crossing my path.

There is a bike path right in front of my house that goes straight into the center of the little town I call home. Two days ago, in the late afternoon I saw my old girlfriend from exactly a decade ago, she was jogging with a her three kids the bike path (I’ll call her Carol, not her real name). Two of her children were on bikes and the youngest was in a stroller. I rode my bike slowly along side Carol, and we chatted. Her only daughter (about 8 years old) was on a bike a little ways in front of us.

At one point, her little son said he had cold hands and she pulled out a pair of gloves for him - and at the same time we both realized that I had given her those gloves as a gift a decade ago!

We both talked about all the animals we had seen recently (moose, badgers, coyotes, foxes) and I told her that I’ve been seeing a LOT of owls. Less than two minutes later I saw an owl fly ACROSS OUR PATH and land on a low branch in a tree just a little ways in front of us. I was the only one who saw it, and in the way the bike path turned, I only caught a brief glimpse. This happened near a bridge in small stretch of cottonwoods. I whispered to the two children who didn't see it, and we all quietly walked toward the tree until we were right up close. It was right next to the Teton Creek, right along side of the bike path.

It was a handsome Great Horned Owl, a little less than 18" tall. It had those iconic "cat" tufts that look like ears, and electric bright yellow eyes. This was an unusual sighting in the daylight, and I think this is as close as I have ever been to a perched owl. I'm not kidding, it was probably 15 feet from where we stood on the bike path!

It stared down at us for about a minute, and then casually flew off. It felt like it was posing for us. Everything about the experience was beautiful.

I'll add after the owl flew off, the daughter was asking over and over and over, "Mom, do you love Mike?" This wasn't awkward at all, it was entirely endearing.

Carol and her daughter (who was right up close to the owl in the tree) both show up in the fourth posting on this blog. My friend Kristy held this little girl's hand on the hiking trail the morning after we saw the 3 owls (the first time) in 2006. I’ll add that we all saw a big beautiful moose that morning!

Carol shows up HERE too, in an experience that I can only call psychic.

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astounding owl video

More incredible owl imagery!

There was video footage that same day in the outskirts of Greenfield Missouri. I've been in contact with the two folks (Tony & Faren) involved with the photographs and video. (location here)

Tony wrote: "I have spoken to several people with of wildlife knowledge, including one conservation agent. He said he had never seen more than 3 or 4 owls in one spot. This video doesn't do the sighting justice. There was probably more than 200 in the area."

You simply MUST watch the Hi-Definition clips on YouTube:

Hi-Definition version and another clip and one more!

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Please keep in mind, the location of this incredible owl sighting is also a point on a map. A place that lines up with Kansas City and Byron North Dakota, whatever that means. As best as I can figure, this owl video was filmed 123 miles from Mac's apartment. Yes, 123.

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Update on the yellow line on the map

I just received a short note from the Missouri photographer who took those amazing owl photographs.

He wrote: "Yes, it was amazing. I have seen many things in my life but the owls were one of the most wonderful... There would have been more pictures, but I didn't realize what I was looking at until I had passed many of them."

He sent me a map where he penciled in the exact location of the owl sighting, approximately four miles North of the very small town of Lockwood Missouri. I could see the farmer's fence on google maps satalite imagery. It was about two miles west of where I had guessed (using the info provided on the site where I first saw his owl photos). So, this changes a few details on the map, and some of the razor sharp exactness on an earlier posting.

When I create a line from the exact site of the owls (the blue marker) directly to Byron North Dakota, the yellow line doesn't run right thru Mac's apartment (the yellow marker) in Kansas City anymore. Instead, it is now a little less than two miles to the west. It's still pretty close, but not as precise as the previous image.

Where oh where was the Starbucks where Mac worked?

The owls were seen near an area noted as "Grays Valley" on the map. These were not Great Gray owls, but were Short Eared Owls. (they were not gray aliens either!)

Alas, none of this will make sense unless you read the postings below.

a line on a map

That little red push pin is marking Byron North Dakota, whatever that means. Follow that yellow line 820 miles and it ends at the mysterious owl location in central Missouri, bisecting Mac's apartment along the way. The blue line is even stranger.

Sometimes I worry that I’ve gone completely insane, and this posting is an example of the out-and-out weirdness that leaves me utterly perplexed. Perhaps the easiest conclusion is that I’m just plain nuts. (maybe) That said, this little story is very interesting, at least to me. There is a yellow line in these map images, and it's either magic or folly.

First, I need share some information that came from Anya Briggs during a channeled session in early November 2009. At one point in the session she asked, “Do you know of a place called Byron, it’s somewhere near you?” I said I’m not sure.

She went through some rather comical attempts to make sense of what her guides were trying to tell her. Eventually she narrowed it down to Byron North Dakota. Right then, during our session, I googled Byron North Dakota, and pretty much ONLY one thing came up, a funny map with a marker in the middle of some farmer's field, right near the Canadian border.

Anya went on to tell me that: “Byron North Dakota will be very good to you, you will see us there.” And by us, she meant her guides, and by her guides, I suspect she meant alien beings in robes from another planet (or another dimension).

We both thought it was really funny. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it, but it was interesting. I suspect I'll make a pilgrimage there soon enough.

(I've added an audio excerpt from that channeled session, it's helpful in fully understanding this story, and it's funny. See the following post)

Now, let’s jump ahead to yesterday. I got a package in the mail from Anomalist books, it contained a few copies of Mac Tonnies posthumous book The Cryptoterrestrials. It prompted me to write a post (below) in praise of this amazing addition to the UFO literature.

Photo by Faren Fite, one (two actually) of over 200 owls he saw in rural Missouri.

And yesterday I also received a link to a series of super cool owl photographs, and I wrote a post about that too (also below).

It seemed curious that the two posts below, both come from Missouri. Mac Tonnies lived in Kansas City, and those beautiful owl pictures were taken somewhere between Greenfield and Lockwood Missouri. At first I was curious if they were two locations were close, so I checked google maps and put little YELLOW push pin marker on Kansas City and another marker (a blue pin) on the road between Greenfield and Lockwood. I checked and the two push pins were 123 miles apart, and whenever I see the numbers 123, I take a special notice.

(NOTE: On March 26th I received a letter from the owl photographer. See THIS post for more info)

The yellow line passes between Lockwood and Greenfield along US-Highway 160. This is the approximate location of those amazing owl photos.

Now, this is where things get weird. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. I just widened out the image on google maps and found Byron North Dakota, I used the map program and put a push pin in there too, a RED one.

Low tech tools incorporated in the detective work.

Then, without really thinking about it, I took a plastic ruler and set it against my computer monitor, and the three push pins line up EXACTLY in a straight line. I gotta say, this partially freaked me out, and at the same time, I sorta knew they were gunna line up before I even started.

A weird line, connecting the three dots across a BIG section of the US map. Byron in RED, Kansas City in YELLOW and those owls in BLUE.

I used some of the google-map tools to create a straight line on the map. It was funny process and hard to figure out. Alas, the line doesn’t quite precisely hit Byron, and I don’t really know the exact location of those owls. But I gotta say, it’s pretty feakin’ close!

There are 820 miles between the red push pin up North in Byron and blue push pin down in Greenfield Missouri, on the road where the owl pictures were taken, with that straight yellow line plainly bisecting Kansas City.

The hometown of my pal Mac, and the yellow line passes right through the city.

Three little dots on a map, all seemingly random, and I felt weirdly compelled to hold a ruler to my computer screen to figure it out. Again, don’t ask me why. I even set a protractor on my screen, and the line comes in at 17 degrees in relation to the latitude (and I knew that before hand too).

Owls, Mac Tonnies and message from Anya Briggs, all along one very straight line.

This whole thing is super weird, even by my standards. And during the time I was laboring over those maps, and trying to figure out how to position that line on the image, I get an email from Whitley Strieber. He writes: “Mike. we would love to interview you about him [Mac Tonnies] and your relationship.” What? I sure didn't expect that.

Earlier in the morning, I sent an email to Whitley telling him I thought he should read Mac’s book, and I could easily mail him a copy, but I didn’t really think I would get a reply, especially that reply. I’ll add I am not sure how serious he is, but if it happens, I would be deeply honored to praise Mac in an interview.

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The spark of the idea to lay that plastic ruler against my computer screen came from Stace Tussel. I was directly inspired by her straight line on a map of Kansas. Please watch this very curious video.

lotsa owls in Missouri

14 owls in one photo

28 owls (doubled from above) in one photo

Amazing owl photos from a man named Faren Fite. H claims to have seen around 200 owls in one small area between Greenfield and Lockwood Missouri. And on one corral fence there were more than thirty in a group, and he took photos!

You simply MUST click on these images for a HI-rez view of these Short-Eared owls, they are SO cool!

On September 21st 2009 (the autumn equinox) I asked if anyone out there has seen adult owls in groups of three (or five)? Well this was a sort of answer, along with Stacey's multiple owl story.

I got the link to these owl photos forwarded to me from a guy named Jim, and he was the guy who posted an very curious owl story on the SYNCHRONICITY site, and he's also from Idaho.

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Text added March 26th 2010

I received a letter from the photographer giving me the exact location of the owls in those photos. This helps define some weird lines on a map (see the posts above).