Friday, June 16, 2023
audio excerpt from THE UNSEEN — read by the author
Saturday, June 10, 2023
The Unseen—In conversation with Sharon Hewitt Rawlette (audio podcast)
Monday, June 5, 2023
Deep strangeness with Kelly Chase, host of The UFO Rabbit Hole
Kelly Chase, host of The UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast, talks about my novel THE UNSEEN and lots more…
Sunday, June 4, 2023
The Unseen, in conversation with Sharon Hewitt Rawlette
Sharon and I explore the genesis and creative process of my new novel. We wrestle with the role of paranormal fiction, and the source of inspiration.
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Tuesday, May 23, 2023
I wrote a novel! Available NOW!
Thursday, May 4, 2023
music from THE UNSEEN
I wrote a novel.
Music was a big part of my creative process. Here are twelve songs that were vital to the book.
If you wanna jump past my introduction, the music starts at about 3:40 or so.
Lemme know if you want more!
(more soon)
Saturday, April 1, 2023
I wrote a novel
I wrote a novel!
I never imagined I would say that, but I’m saying it now. The plan is to have it available by mid-May.
Twelve years ago I had an idea to do a comic book (graphic novel might be the better term). I was pretty excited about it at the time. I wrote up a treatment, did some preliminary sketches, and then gave up. I put the thing on a shelf and forgot about it. Six years later I found the outline and reread it, and I thought write it up as a tidy little novella. I’d already published my first two owl books and figured, “How hard could it be?”
Well, that was five years, and a lot of lonely hours ago. The book should be right around 300 pages, and the title is The Unseen.
Also, I'll be creating an audio book, reading the thing myself, but I have no idea when that might be available.
Right now I’m working with a few close friends trying to tidy up the text, and that’s coming along nicely.
I plan on doing a set of youtube videos to promote the book. The thing is, this book evolved in a tumbling cloud synchronistic magic. I'm cautious to just blurt it out like that, but I don’t any other way to say it.
I don't want to say too much right now, but I can say this:
It’s a book about UFOs where I never use the word UFO.
It’s about abduction, and I never use that word.
And, it’s about aliens, and I never use that word either.
__________________________________________ This from the opening of my upcoming novel |
Thursday, January 12, 2023
an infinite vastness
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colorful swirling nebulas |
She said of course, and as the session ended she asked me. Below is an excerpt from the transcript made from an audio recording:
Yvonne: What sense do you get about your connection with owls?
Mike: I get that the owl isn’t important. The owl is like a symbol, or like a sign on a door. It’s just a sign on a door and what’s behind the door is what’s important…
For a few moments I mumbled and stammered. I was struggling to say something. I spoke in fragments about being an artist, and that I understood something—then I began speaking very clearly.
Mike: I understand how people take in a story, and how they need a symbol or a sign on the door. But the owl is meaningless to what is on the other side of the door. It’s just the doorway that’s important. The owl is the right symbol for the door. We are on this side, and EVERYTHING else is on that side of the door. There is a LOT more! We are in this little tight hallway here, and on the other side of the door is this vastness!
This excerpt stands alone within the overall hypnosis session. I speak clearly and with purpose, while nearly everything else is spoken softly, almost whispered. I asked Yvonne if I might have been channeling this reply, and she said that would be impossible to answer. What I can say is that it really surprised me, because it is such a bold poetic way to answer Yvonne’s question. I’ve retold this off-the-cuff in podcasts, personal conversations, and from the stage at UFO conferences. I’ve been re-quoting myself, and saying one part with two extra words.
I will say:
We are on this side of the door in a tight little claustrophobic hallway, and on the other side of the door is an infinite vastness!
Whereas in the recorded session I said:
We are in this little tight hallway, and on the other side of the door is this vastness!
The difference is minimal, and the words I added are claustrophobic and infinite. I need to say that the hypnosis had visuals; I could see a hallway, and I could see out the door. The imagery in my mind was vivid, and the hallway was tight and claustrophobic, it felt like the interior of a cramped old hotel. I saw the door open, and on the other side was a view out into space. It looked like a cheesy special effect from an old low-budget sci-fi movie. It was a bunch of swirling nebulas and colorful galaxies, all layered on on top of the other.
So, given the visuals, the words claustrophobic and infinite are entirely appropriate to what I saw and felt, though not exactly what I said under hypnosis.
more about owls as a symbol on a door linked HERE
the full hypnosis session linked HERE
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Friday, December 23, 2022
Earth: A Love Story
This is a true story.I’m not going to tell it the way it happened. I don’t have a high perch where I looked down from above and watched it all play out, noting this and that, keeping track of how that thing wove into this thing and seeing clearly what it all meant.No, I’m telling it the way I remember it. The way I experienced it down here, deep, deep down in and through my most intimate relationship to life. Looking out through my eyes.
~ ~ ~
I have been listening to a haunting and beautiful story. Author and experiencer Robin Lassiter is reading her book, one chapter at a time, on a podcast series. It’s a memoir of UFO contact and all the emotional and spiritual challenges that comes with these elusive experiences. There have been other books along this line, yet her's feels so different. Robin tells her story is told in a deeply moving and personal way, and it's impossible not to feel touched.
Monday, December 19, 2022
Owl and UFO together in a video
I've been waiting for photo that shows an owl and UFO together in the same frame—yet I never truly expected to find it. Well, here it is in video form!
The GIF above shows an owl passing directly over a moving dot of light in the sky. It takes place between time-count 8:52 and 9:00 inn the video below.
night video from John Martin
This video was captured by John Martin, a classically trained guitarist in Georgia. His youtube channel is titled: John Martin UFO and ET Intelligences, and it features a lot of video of the night sky.
The owl in the video crosses the frame just as he says: "Thank you."
Please understand, I cannot speak to what the UFO in the frame might be. It is nothing more that a dot moving across the sky. I realize the limitations of the video format, and how what one might see in the night looks much different than how the camera records it. Often, the video doesn't seem like much. Some of the other videos on his site seem much more intriguing.
He did an audio interview with Whitley in March of this year, linked HERE.
His guitar music is posted at John Martin Classical Guitarist.
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Tuesday, October 11, 2022
great-horned owl on the little league backstop
Also, owl and deer are far and away the most common screen memories reported by UFO abductees.
The deer lying below the owl is an odd detail. I approached the deer in almost complete darkness. I was walking straight for it, and got pretty close. I made a hard right turn when I saw it, I was surprised she let me get so close. She was sitting with her legs tucked under her body, like cats sometimes sit. (I’ve always equated this to how duck look when they float on a pond).
I walked around the deer, and asked: “Where are your babies?" There has been a Doe with two fawns at that baseball field a lot lately, and I assumed it was the mother deer (I’m calling it “she" for this post). I looked around but didn’t see the fawns.
I went through one gate (I’d propped it open a few days ago), then walked across the diamond, then out another gate. I was on my way home when I head a loud squawk. At first I thought it was a fox, but soon realized it was a female great horned owl. They make a “mournful squawk” and I went back onto the diamond and found the owl. I took a few pics, and tried to get closer. As I approached the owl flew away to another fence. I got a picture on the second fence, but it was further away and less cinematic. I had a little headlamp and tried to shine it on the owl, but it didn't doo much. When I pointed into the darkness below the owl, where the deer was sitting, I saw two eyes reflecting back at me in the darkness. It was cute!
The owl was first seen on the smaller “little league” backstop fence, and it flew to the next fence, and this was on the standard size field. Symbolically, this movement from one fence to another implied graduating or growing up—moving from the little kid’s diamond to the adult diamond. And the kid's field is where I’ve been seeing the fawns.
A few days ago I saw the mother deer in the little league field, and the two fawns were stuck outside, unable to get over the fence. I’ve seen the mother deer hop over the fence, and its very graceful. I opened a big gate (propping it open with a big rock, as I mentioned above) and after that I've seen the babies on the field with their mom.
I put up a post with this owl photo on Facebook within minutes of the sighting. The baseball diamonds are close to my home and my window was open, so I could hear her squawking as I typed up the post.
Also, iPhones do a weird thing when you take a photo in low light—it takes a long exposure and somehow stabilizes the picture. So, this bit of image trickery gave me a picture that looked like it was taken at noon on an overcast day. It didn’t look anything like what I saw that night. So, I did some photoshopping to get it to match the deep blue of the night sky.
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Raw image without any photoshop doctoring |
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Great-horned owl on the backstop for the standard sized diamond (2021) |
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Barred owl at twilight on the hiking path (2021) |
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From July 2022, along the same hiking path |
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
the corridor and the dying robin
the corridor |
Pretty much every day I walk in a little park across the street from my home. This is a lovely forested area right along the Puget Sound, and from the shoreline you can see Seattle and (if it’s clear) Mt. Rainier.
There’s one point where I need to walk though a series of little league baseball diamonds, and the path goes between the outfield fence of the biggest field, and a wall of thorny blackberry bushes. On the way back home on June 19th, I emerged from a dark section of forest and entered that long corridor between the fence and the bushes. Stepping into the sunlight I saw a robin on the path, and I knew something was wrong.
It was twitching on the grass as I approached. I stepped closer, and it awkwardly hopped toward me and laid down on my left foot. Her head was dangling down in a gruesome way. She must have flown into the fence and broken her neck. It was awful to see.
She lay still on my foot for maybe fifteen seconds, and then shuddered and hopped away. She couldn’t control anything, she was trying to hop and fly, but neither was working.
I spoke to this bird, and told her I could end her pain. I’ve had cats all my life, and there have been plenty of times I’ve needed to kill mice and small birds. I’ve done it a lot, but have never gotten used to it.
I hike here often and knew there was a spot nearby with some pallets and scraps of wood. I quickly walked there and found a flat section of wood with a sharp edge and a baseball sized rock.
I returned and spoke to the bird, “I can end this suffering if you want.”
It sat still and let me approach, but when I touched her she shuddered and hopped away, her head hanging upside down at her breast. This was awful for me.
At one point she stopped and sat on the grass. I got on my knees next to her with the piece of wood and the rock. I couldn’t do anything, her head was hidden under her body, and I tried to gently lift her, but she fluttered off a few feet and crashed into the ground. I spoke again, “If you you want me to end your pain I will, please let me know what I should do.”
With that she staggered into the dense blackberry bushes and I lost sight of her. This was terribly emotional, and part of me wished I hadn’t hesitated—that I’d just killed her.
I set the piece of wood and rock along the bottom of the fence and continued home.
The next day I went back on the same walk, and made my way down that corridor between the blackberries and the outfield fence. I slowed as I approached the area where I’d seen the robin. And I found her. She was lying dead on top of the rock and wood with her head hidden from view, tucked gently between them. Her pose was peaceful.
the robin as I found her, lying between the wood and stone |
This was about thirty feet from where I’d last seen her disappear into the bushes the day before. She was lying on the tools of death that I had been unable to use. What happened? Why did she seek out this spot to die?
how I set the wood and stone against the outfield fence |
* * *
This was an adult female robin, without the strong red coloring of the males. This is why I called her she.
Also, this happened in the final days of editing Joshua Cutchin’s powerful series of books, Ecology of Souls. This is a wide ranging study of the connection between death and the UFO lore. I had this powerful experience with a bird wile in the throes of a project entirely about death.
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Monday, July 4, 2022
I just saw three owls
text added Friday July 8th 2022
When I first wrote this, I used the word comrade twice. I was quoting Terry Lovelace (about me) and I was calling the two other owls "comrades," and I thought that was too much. I changed the line about the owls to "it flew away in the direction as the other owls." And now I just changed it back to what I'd initially written. This is just a blog post, and it feels right to use that perfect word twice.
Monday, June 27, 2022
Alaska glacier expedition
Huge terrain in the Wrangells Close-up view of the photo above. Our teammates on roped up glacier travel. |
The images below are of me and one of my co-instructors, Phil Schneider. I'm in the red parka. In whiteout conditions it's very easy to get disoriented, and it happens to birds too. A little goldfinch landed on my boot, seen in the close-up. He saw us and we must have been the only things visible to him in a frozen ocean of white.
A tiny visitor |
A little goldfinch needed a place to land, and chose my boot! |
Saturday, May 14, 2022
every episode of THE UNSEEN
I hosted over sixty interviews for Whitley Strieber on his site, UnknownCountry (from 2019 thru 2021). The podcast series was titled THE UNSEEN, and my focus was UFO contact. It was a lot of work adding them to this page and I was surprised there were so many! These shows are, in many ways, a continuation of my previous series Hidden Experience (from 2009 thru 2014)
Every episode is linked below. Some of the earlier episodes might require a membership for listening.
Debra Jordan-Kauble, a Life of Extraordinary Contact
July 28, 2021
Yvonne Smith Explores Hypnosis and Healing
June 9, 2021
Richard Dolan and The Alien Agendas
April 19, 2021
Joshua Cutchin and the Overlap of Experiences
March 15, 2021
Susan Demeter and the Role of the Cosmic Witch
February 21, 2021
Laura London, UFOs, and Carl Gustav Jung
January 19, 2021
Shanelle Schanz, granddaughter of Kenneth Arnold
October 28, 2020
James Fox, The Phenomenon, and the Tipping Point
October 21, 2020
Jennifer Sodini and the Role of the Healer
October 13, 2020
Audiobook Excerpt from THE MESSENGERS
October 7, 2020
Ron Johnson (Part 5) The Final Chapter
October 2, 2020
Ron Johnson (Part 4) A New Phase of Contact
September 23, 2020
Ron Johnson (Part 3) Dreams, Animal Encounters, and UFO Contact
September 17, 2020
Ron Johnson (Part 2) Bigfoot and UFO Contact
September 9, 2020
Ron Johnson and a Lifetime of Contact (Part One)
September 2, 2020
Mike Stevens and Stories from the Granite State
August 26, 2020
Andras Jones, Radio8Ball, and Synchromagic!
August 19, 2020
Terry Lovelace and Evidence of Contact
August 12, 2020
Christopher Knowles, Novelist and Synchromystic
August 5, 2020
Stuart Davis and Contact with Mantis Beings
June 30, 2020
Bert Janssen and The Organizing Principle
June 4, 2020
Red Pill Junkie and a Path with Heart
May 27, 2020
Onboard UFOs with Preston Dennett
April 29, 202
Aaron Gulyas and The Saucer Life
April 22, 2020
Mia Feroleto and the Role of the Artist
April 15, 2020
Facing the challenges of contact with Christopher Bledsoe
April 8, 2020
A Human Approach to UFO Research with Ryan Sprague
April 1, 2020
Ann Eller, Dr. J. Allen Hynek and UFO Contact
March 25, 2020
Zelia Edgar, High Strangeness and the Legacy of John Keel
March 18, 2020
Family Secrets with Jean Walker
March 11, 2020
Coming to terms with the ET presence with Nadine Lalich
March 4, 2020
Paul Hynek remembers his father, Dr. Allen J. Hynek
February 26, 2020
Talking to Extra-Dimensionals with Reuben Langdon
February 19, 2020
Life Between Lives with Peter Smith
February 12, 2020
Gordon White and Magic in Our Ancient Past
February 5, 2020
Denise Stoner and the mystery of contact
January 29, 2020
Encounters with The Other, Ben speaks about his life
January 22, 2020
Confessions of a Spooky Mind with Walter Bosley
January 15, 2020
Audio Book Excerpts from Hidden Experience (Part Three)
January 8, 2020
Greg Bishop and the challenge of understanding UFOs
January 1, 2020
Spirit Communication with Psychic Medium Marisa Ryan
December 13, 2019
The Source and Significance of Coincidences with Sharon Hewitt Rawlette
December 4, 2019
The Shamanic Journey of HUMANO
November 27, 2019
Audio Book Excerpts from Hidden Experience (Part Two)
November 20, 2019
Magical Thinking with Michael M. Hughes
November 13, 2019
The Synchromystical with Alan Abbadessa Green
November 6, 2019
Bigfoot, Folklore and Strange Familiars with Timothy Renner
October 30, 2019
Audio Book Excerpts from Hidden Experience (Part One)
October 23, 2019
The challenges of childhood contact experiences with William Konkolesky
October 16, 2019
Mysteries of the faerie realm with Joshua Cutchin
October 9, 2019
September 11, 2019
The Theory of WOW with Grant Cameron
September 4, 2019
Incident at Devils Den with Terry Lovelace
August 28, 2019
Healing, owls and UFOs with Laura Bruno
August 21, 2019
Miraculous UFO Healings and Schoolyard Experiences with Preston Dennett
August 14, 2019
Experiencer Suzanne Chancellor shares her truth
August 7, 2019
Cheryl Costa, Hard Data and Expanded Human Consciousness
August 2, 2019
The Amazing Power of Close Encounter with Witness Will Buche
July 24, 2019
Ghosts, Spirits and Near Death Experiences
July 17, 2019
Tangled, Complex Memoirs of an Abducted Childhood
July 10, 2019
Brad Abrahams and his documentary LOVE AND SAUCERS
June 24, 2019
Third Eye Spies with Lance Mangia
June 14, 2019
May 24, 2019
Robbie Graham on Saucers, the Silver Screen and Rock n’ Roll
May 15, 2019
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