birthday numbers

Mike Clelland and Alex Clelland

My Dad and I share the same birthday, August 22nd.

Last year, I took him to his doctor for a check up, and I watched him fill out a form in the waiting room, he wrote slowly in strong capital letters. I was surprised when he filled in his date of birth. I couldn't help comparing it to mine, I had never noticed the tidy resemblance until right then, it was all the same numbers with the last two digits switched.

Dad's: 8 / 22 / 1926

Mine: 8 / 22 / 1962

Also, in 2011 we had another curious number synch with our birthdays. It was a reversal of our ages. This was our ages (below) when we finally noticed the similarity of the birthday numbers.

Dad was 84

I was 48

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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.

The 2012 meme

I thought this photo was so funny!

From Mac Tonnies' blog, one year ago today:

I took this low-quality cameraphone picture in a Barnes & Noble. Personally, I'm grateful for the 2012 phenomenon: it's helped focus much-needed attention on issues pertaining to the near-future and our role as planetary stewards.

I'm ultimately agnostic regarding whether anything remotely "weird" occurs on December 21, 2012. My guess is that the fervently New Age crowd is in for a disappointment (which will, of course, be duly incorporated into its existing belief structure for fear of fracturing the entire edifice).

But if thinking about the future by way of the 2012 meme catalyzes interest in making the future a place where we might actually want to live, I'm all for it. And perhaps the ancient Mayans would have agreed.

(Mac sent me this image in an email, a year ago today. It was actually posted on his blog on March 26th)

Byron North Dakota & Anya Briggs

A funny red marker in a farmers field defines Byron North Dakota.

The previous post was long and wordy and I tried to be as clear as possible, but this whole thing is very complicated. I tried to write about a channeled session with Anya Briggs and it's implications. The psychic reading was recorded, and I used that MP3 to create an audio excerpt (with some extra comments) as a way to help define this curious spot on the map. Byron North Dakota seems to be a pivotal place in this conundrum.

When Anya (or, more correctly, her guides) told me to visit Byron North Dakota back in early November, during our session, the whole thing seemed exciting, but also utterly strange. In the last few months, it's importance was sort of fading away. Well, this line on the map pushed it right back into the forefront of something to pursue! More weirdness.

If you listen to the audio, the very first thing Anya says about that whole thing comes out of nowhere, she changes subjects, and asks: "Is there a BRYON Wyoming or North Dakota?"

Somehow, when I searched I found the little marker under a different spelling. Mixing up BRYON to BYRON is normal for me.

Anya later replies in an email: 

"Well, spelling and hearing gets messed up in the translation sometimes . . . Odds are I heard the name wrong . . . Replace the Y with the R from BRYON to BYRON and its the same spot. I was telling you 'in North Dakota', so that's probably the same place they were referring to. You know this happens in channeling, it's not an exact science! ..."

During the last few years, I've definitely experienced the feeling of being freaked out, and sometimes I wallow unnecessarily in the drama of that feeling. Presently - I'm simply perplexed and curious.

audio download / 19 minutes long

Follow up 3 minutes after posting the audio:

Okay, more weirdness, I just finished editing the audio post. Please note, the red dot on the map is BYRON, and Anya was adamant that name was BRYON. Two letters are reversed, I messed up at some point (maybe). As I type this, I'm sorta confused, it's normal for me to mix-up letters in a word. BYRON is in line with the owls and Kansas City.

And there is nothing called BRYON North Dakota. But, there is a town in Wyoming called BYRON.

An hour after posting the follow up above:

Okay, even more weirdness. A straight line (690 miles long) passes directly through BYRON ND and BYRON WY goes straight though my house in Idaho, and I mean EXACTLY!

The blue line runs right through the Shoshone River, less than 800 feet from the Main Street of BRYON Wyoming. I find it curious that the line follows the river, especially after Anya is so adamant about dousing.

This pink push pin marks my cute little cabin in rural Idaho. The blue line ends right at my home after passing (in a straight line) from both BYRON's.

My gut reaction to that razor sharp blue line was that it was somehow pointing directly at me! It sorta felt like the floor dropped out from under where I sat. This little detail is (from my perspective) extraordinarily weird.

NOTE: This satellite photo (above) was super blurry, and I cleaned it up a little bit using photoshop, just so it was easier to visualize the square shape of my cabin.

Pink Pin: My cute house in Idaho

Green Pin: Byron Wyoming

Red Pin: Byron North Dakota

Yellow Pin: Kansas City Missouri

Blue Pin: The site where the guy saw over 200 owls!

Yellow Line: 835 miles longBlue Line: 690 miles long

White Line: 995 miles long

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Extra text, added March 13th

Kansas City is a big place, so I typed in Mac's address into Google Maps, and it happened again. The Yellow marker in this map and it lines up right he lived.

This Yellow line runs from Byron ND to the owl sightings 123 miles south-east, and it bisects Mac's apartment. I am absolutely thunderstruck by the exacting accuracy of these lines.

This line is dependant on the location of the owl photos. At present, I don't know precisely where (but I'm workin' on it!).

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Text Added March 22nd 2010:

As of yesterday, this posting has more comments than any other article on this blog. And, the comments are relevant and insightful. Thanks!

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Text Added April 18th 2010:

The word Byron and Bryon get mixed up somewhere. I have my paper notes from that session (and I may scan and add them here) ant they clearly read BYRON. So, she said Bryon, and I wrote down Byron. I typed BYRON into google as a way to search out what it might mean, so it was me that made the curious switch-a-roo with the two letters. What this means, I have no idea.

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.

Mac Tonnies' book is on the shelves

Mac Tonnies' book, The Cryptoterrestrials is now available. I got to read an advanced copy, and I feel strongly saying that this is a very important addition to the literatrure on the UFO phenomenon. The world is a lesser place without Mac's brilliant mind and gentle voice.

Forward by Nick Redfern, afterword by Greg Bishop and illustrations by me.

From Anomalist books.

And please, I encourage everybody to dig thru Mac's blog. It is still on-line, and it's astoundingly fun. The image above is a masthead idea for Mac's blog. I wanted to use hand lettering, and Mac seemed to like the simple idea. It was a work in progress, and I never followed up on this as a drawing.

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).

Ketroversy and UFO's near Sedona

Here is one more very curious ingredient in this weird soup surrounding Sedona. The first hand story from the late Kent Daniel Bentkowski (creator of the Ketroversy Papers Blog) is remarkably weird, and I found it very relevant to some of the previous postings. The story elements include a guy born in 1962, a lonely road outside of Sedona Arizona and a UFO. He seems to fit into a shared pattern of folks my age with certain experiences. There's more, and it's well worth listening. Kent has a slow way of talking that I find absolutely hypnotic.

This audio features a 17 minute slightly edited excerpt from an interview with Adam Gorightly from his collection of on-line podcasts, Untamed Dimensions. The interview took place (strangely enough) almost two years to the day of this posting, March 6th, 2008.

My experience of the "Lamp Shade" dream and the Blue Orb is relevant to this audio clip below. It would be advisable to read this essay in conjunction to the issues in this post here. And also this post too, where there is another story about an odd experience near Sedona. Sorry if this information seems all jumbled up and overlapping, this stuff can be overwhelming and confusing.
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audio download / 23 minutes long

NOTE: If the audio link is finicky, try refreshing this page. Or, to download directly to your hard-drive, simply click on the DivShare logo (at the right) and then click on the big ARROW labeled "Download Original"

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Is this Dondo?

There's more, and it's synchro-rific:

(added the evening of March 7th) Just minutes ago I hung up the phone after a 2 hour interview with Greg Bishop of Radio Mysterioso (more on that soon) and the ONLY question from a listener (via email) was: "What are your thoughts about Kent Daniel Bentkowski?" What? I almost dropped the phone! It was so weird to have someone ask me about Kent after I'd been finalizing this posting just minutes before starting the interview, and at that point it was still UN-posted!

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There's even more, and it's synchro-LAME:

(added the morning of March 8th) Greg Bishop emailed me last night. It seems that the "listener" with a question above was Adam Gorightly, and he knew full well that I had been working on a post with audio from Kent, and the listening audience got to hear my already mumbly voice stammer in out-and-out stupification. I was at the receiving end of a childish prank! Let the world know, equally childish retaliation is in order.
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my comrade in blogging

My sister blogger writes about her own experience with a BLUE ORB, it's a fascinating story and required reading. She posts under the name Lucretia's Heart, and her life has been awash in high strangeness. (like this, this and THIS!)

Lately, both of us have been writing about our weirdly vivid dreams.

Thankfully, she's been sharing more of her paranormal experiences in recent posts, and she even says that it was my prodding that's getting her to tell more. Maybe, but I didn't need to do much more than ask her, she was ready, and all I needed to do was give her a tiny nudge.

And, she's funny too.

audio describing the vivid lampshade dream (Laughlin 5)

Right after I had the weirdly vivid dream (from the previous post) I documented my immediate impressions into a small digital voice recorder. I'm sharing that audio, along with a little bit extra where I try and clarify some of the details.

I have no idea why this dream seems so significant.

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audio download / recorded March 5th 2010 / 14 minutes long

vivid dream and blue orb (Laughlin 4)

Glowing orange dream imagery in a pine forest at night. Click on any of these illustrations for a HI-rez close-up view.

I had a weirdly vivid dream on the night of Feb 16th. The next morning I was going to start the long drive to Laughlin Nevada for the annual UFO conference. My sleep was restless, and I had my lap top near my bed, and I listened to an audio podcast to occupy my time. Shortly after starting the podcast, I ended up asleep.

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This post has an accompanying audio file

audio download / recorded March 5th 2010 / 14 minutes long

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The dream began in a nighttime environment, and I an standing in a gravel parking lot (or gravel road) in a very distinct forest. The pine trees are evenly spaced, and there are no branches down low. The forest floor is flat without any undergrowth. I looked to my left to see a very weird orange light shining through the trees. I moved a little to get a better view, and I see that it was a simple lampshade set on the ground (or, maybe floating a few inches off the ground) and it's giving off a vibrant orange glow. Instantly, I had the thought that this was NOT a lampshade, it was some sort of hallucination, and something else was there.

Even in my dream state I clearly think about an event in a book by Dr. Karla Turner titled: INTO THE FRINGE. There was a creepy scene in that book where a witness describes seeing a “satellite dish” in his yard, but he knows it’s NOT a satellite dish, something else was there.

I look at the lampshade for just a few seconds, and then I find myself floating up off the forest floor. I rise up slow and smooth, and I think to myself: “Oh, this again.” My perception is that the experience is quite familiar, and actually very pleasant. This comforting feeling fits a pattern of what I call my reassuring dreams.

Floating above a black shape.

Soon I am levitating above the tall trees, and I am looking down into the pine forest. My floating body is positioned with a slight tilt forward, so I am sort of forced to look downward. Below me is a huge round circle, inky black against the pale orange glow in among the trees. I am above something, that I perceive to be a large saucer shaped craft, and I smoothly descend downward into the center of the circle.

Floating downward in a weirdly vibrant tube full of colorful symbols

The next thing I realize is that I am floating in a shiny glowing blue tube, slowly descending. The walls of this tube is covered with a collection of brightly colored puzzle pieces, and these are inlaid into the wall. Each of these shapes look like some sort of Egyptian hieroglyph, they seem to be made of candy colored plastic and they are back lit in a sort of frame. I’m reminded of a brightly colored child’s toy.

I'm compelled to pick out one distinct shape

I reach forward and pick out one puzzle piece, it’s as if I am drawn to this one shape. I hold it in my hand and examine it closely, it is shaped like a stylized “W” and I’m filled with an intense compulsion to remember it, and I focused on the outline of the shape. (more about this here!)

I continue down into the tube, and then I’m walking around in a series of blue rooms crowded with people. The rest of the dream is a little bit frenetic in it’s imagery.

The dream seems to culminate with a meeting of some sort in a daylight street scene . I'm in among a crowd of people, and there is a discussion by a small team. They are carefully explaining that everything is alright, and that there will soon be a wonderful event where UFO occupants will join us here on earth. It sounds logical and nice, but it seems a little too perfect. I approach the woman sharing the story, and tell her that I don’t believe her, that my intuition senses some sort of deception. Suddenly her eyes get big and black, and the same happens with her teammates, and she stares at me in a very threatening way. She warns me NOT to tell anyone about my feelings.

Then I wake up.

The podcast is still playing on my laptop, and I was surprised that so little time had passed given the length and complexity of my dream. I was probably asleep for less than a half hour

The dream was so intensely vivid that I did something that surprises me as I type this. I got out of bed, went downstairs and found a little digital voice recorder, and carried it back up to my bed. I lay there, under the covers, and recorded the dream as best as I could. (audio from this recording posted here)

After, describing the weird narrative, I stopped the recorder and turned off the light. In the dark I saw a small blue orb, about the size of a grapefruit floating, centered in the ceiling above my bed. I could see it for probably less than 20 seconds, and then it was gone. It disappeared quickly and smoothly. Right after it faded away, I rolled over and promptly went to sleep, an unusual reaction to seeing something so strange.

The orb was a soft focus sphere, not the flat looking image that show up on digital flash photos. It was three dimensional and glowing softly. It gave off light, but it didn't seem to light up the ceiling the way, say, a glow stick might. Could it have been something in my retina from my bedside light? Maybe, but I've slept in that room for over 16 years and I've never seen anything like that before. In the follow up to the experience, I tried to recreate the experience by looking into lights in the room (including the tiny red light on the voice recorder) and then shut the lights off, these attempts didn't come close to what I saw that night. 

This orb image is from a the homepage of a person I met during the final hours of the Laughlin conference. Her name is Jill and she is a channel. I found it on her web page, minutes after posting this essay.

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NOTE: This post has an accompanying audio file, found HERE.

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the highway to Sedona (Laughlin 3)

A map showing the route between Flagstaff and Sedona There are meadows shown on the satellite image, and these are less than 2 miles from the forested area that reminded me of the dream. Click on this map for a HI-rez image.

I picked up a friend from Germany at the Las Vegas airport on the afternoon of Thursday February 18th. While still in the airport I told her about my weirdly colorful dream. We were planning to visit Sedona Arizona for two nights before heading to the conference in Laughlin Nevada. The reason we are going to Sedona is because Natascha had a channelled reading from Anya Briggs, where she was told (quite directly) that she MUST visit Sedona Arizona.

To get to Sedona, we got off of I-17 and onto US Highway 89 just a few miles south of Flagstaff.

It was a delight to be off the busy interstate and onto the tiny mountain road. At a certain point I needed to stop the car, and get out to pee. I pulled over in a pretty stand of trees, got out, walked into the forest a few steps and did my business. As I stood there, I was immediately aware that this scene almost exactly matched the forest in my intensely vivid dream from two nights before.

When I got back in the car, I told Natascha that this spot was eerily similar to the forest in my dream.

We arrive in Sedona a little while later, and we didn’t keep track of the time. But, everything seemed perfectly normal.

Now, lets jump forward to the Laughlin conference. I had the chance to visit with “John Smith” (a pseudonym), who I’ve met a few times now at two different conferences. This guy has quite a rich set of experiences. I tell him about my dream in the forest, and the eerie section of woods on the way to Sedona.

Then John tells me a very strange story.

He was with his wife staying at a hotel in Flagstaff, and at 9 o’clock at night, his wife says that they need to drive to Sedona, right now. John recognizes how odd this is, and says he has a bad feeling about it. But she is absolutely adamant that they leave right at that moment. So, they get in the car and begin the drive. They drive south on I-17 and then turn onto US Highway 89 just a few miles outside of Flagstaff. They get to an open meadow, and then his wife says, “I don’t think we need to go to Sedona, let’s turn around.” So, they turn the car around and head back to their hotel in Flagstaff. John notes that there is about 15 minutes of missing time.

In the months that follow, both of them are, for reasons unknown, increasing agitated about that night. Later, John gets hypnotically regressed and a set of memories emerge where he pulls off the road and parks next to that open meadow, and his wife is somehow pulled up out of her car seat and through the roof of their rental car (he even explained that she rose up through her seat belt). John sat in the drivers seat for about 15 minutes, and then she was returned. They began driving and his wife said, “I don’t think we need to go to Sedona, let’s turn around.”

John and I talked about that stretch of highway 89. He explained where that meadow was in comparison to the spot in the forest where Natascha and I got out of the car. I don’t know exactly, but the two spots are probably no more than 3 miles apart.

When I shared this story with Natascha, she pointed out that in both situations it was the woman who insisted that they go to Sedona.

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Text and Photo added on March 6th 2010:

John Smith sent me a series of photos showing the meadow along Arizona Highway 89a. After the event he went back during daylight and found the location and took photos. Here is one of them. Note the forest in the background, it has a similar look to my dream memory, thin pine trees without branches down low. This meadow is located on the map above.

meeting Joseph Mark (Laughlin 2)

Joseph Mark Cohen and myself during a rare rainy day in Sedona Arizona. Photo by Natascha.

While in Sedona on Friday February 19th, Natascha and I went for coffee in the morning. We were in a typical american strip mall, with (what looked like) a nice health food store next to the coffee shop. Natascha strikes up a conversation with a rather eccentric looking gentleman named Joseph Mark Cohen. He was looking for a ride to the Laughlin UFO conference, and we told him that he could join us because we were planning on leaving later in the day.

It turns out that Joseph is a guide in the Sedona area, and we had a wonderful day as he showed us around. This day could be it’s own blog posting, but for now all I can say is that the silly caricature that I have of Sedona is real. (and I say that in a nice way!) Joseph is a quite the mystical fellow, and he does astrological readings and he had just completed an oracle deck of cards with high quality crop circle images.

We ate dinner together at an absolutely amazing vegetarian restaurant called The ChocolaTree. While at the table, Joseph did some oracle readings using his deck. Joseph seemed well versed in mythology, hebrew mysticism, astronomy and number codes. It was delightful and interesting.

While at the table I drew the curious puzzle piece from my dream on a napkin. I asked Joseph if he knew anything about this shape. He looked at the funny “W” shape, and he turned the napkin upside down and said, “Well, it’s my initials!”

True enough, when the image was upside down, it made a very tidy JM.

This image was drawn the morning right after I woke up from my vivid dream. The top sketch is the way I saw it in the dream, and the one below is the same thing, but turned upside-down.

Mike Lewis sends me a smile (Laughlin 1)

On Wednesday February 17th, I started my drive to the Laughlin Nevada UFO conference. On that same day I received this on my Facebook page from Mike Lewis (a pseudonym). It's a lighthearted "smile" showing a winking cat. If you have followed this blog at all, this is a little bit curious, it seems like Mike Lewis is winking at me from afar.

I'll also add that the only time Mike Lewis and I had any kind of a "chat" on Facebook, was the evening of Wednesday October 14th, right before I began my drive to the Dreamland UFO conference in California.

It's tricky to read too much into this, but it is interesting, at least to me. It's strange how facebook seems to play a role in this ongoing weirdness.

Also, I used photoshop to alter the name and image in the above photo of my computer screen.

one year old

As of today, this blog is one year old.

Something has happened to me since the first post. I’ve changed.

This is the 82nd post. The first posting went up on March 3rd 2009, and it was a short essay about my cat and how she plays with string, and the very first comment was from Mac Tonnies.

A lot has happened in the last year. Before writing this I carefully (and slowly) scrolled through the entire archive, something I’ve never done before. I have been extremely careful not to add anything extraneous or off-topic to this site (except this). Believe me, I’ve found plenty of really interesting on-line articles that I could have shared, but I chose not to. This blog, whatever it is, seems to want to remain focused on my own experiences, and I really care about the content. True to the title of the blog, something seems hidden from me, but I can’t quite define what that might be.

When I re-read my earlier writings, it’s obvious I was awash in an anxious set of emotions. It’s not easy looking at some of that stuff, but that urgency has subsided, but it hasn’t entirely disappeared. That earnest feeling has it’s own energy and it pushes me forward, like a detective in a mystery story.

I’ve met some wonderful new friends as a result of this blog, and that means more to me than I could possibly share in just words. My email in-box is now loaded with correspondence from people directly affected by the same curious affliction that seems to be interacting with me. This communication is profoundly rewarding. I’m also receiving emails from people who are eager to share their stories (often eerily similar), they are reaching out to me and it feels good that maybe my writing can be helpful to them.

There is a posting from March 25th of last year titled: Deep Feelings and Blogging. This was a good one for me to re-read on this baby’s first birthday.

I have no idea where this strange path may lead. Maybe all this weirdness will come to a screeching halt, but I don’t think so. All I can say for sure is that I will be as honest as I can be as I proceed forward.

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