soon...

I plan on doing an audio podcast of my time with Budd Hopkins. It might take a while because I actually spent quite a lot of time with him, and to share my memories in any meaningful way I'll need to share a lot, so it might end up being long.

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a pattern and the sense of being coaxed

I’ve been distracted an uninspired for the last few months. I haven’t put much energy into this blog, and that seems fine. No need to put pressure on myself about needing to write stuff.

But there has been a curious ongoing pattern. When I do feel inspired to write something (I have a few yet to be posted essays in the works) I’ll sit down, open up my word processing program and start typing. And within minutes, and sometime seconds, there will be an audible ping from my computer telling me that I’ve just received an email.

These emails will say something like this: I’ve been reading your blog, something about it inspired me to write you - and - I’ve had very similar experiences.

When I get letters like this, I’ll make the effort to connect, and the one-on-one conversations have been hugely gratifying for me. My energy seems low, but something out there is coaxing me further down the path.

This happened just this morning, as I was starting a post about my memories, and friendship, with Budd Hopkins. This pattern is unmistakable, and really curious. It feels like I’m being encouraged, or maybe even rewarded somehow.

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Budd Hopkins died peacefully today

Budd Hopkins

June 15, 1931 - August 21, 2011

I’m very sad to announce that Budd Hopkins died today, August 21, at 1:35 pm. Budd had been under hospice care for about three weeks, at his home in New York. The combination of liver cancer and pneumonia led to his death. His daughter Grace Hopkins-Lisle and I were with him almost continuously during these past weeks. He was not in any pain throughout any of the process, and he received the best possible care and loving support from those closest to him. Today he gradually slipped away, and simply quietly stopped breathing. He died peacefully and without any struggle, with Grace, Grace’s husband Andrew, and me by his side.

Thanks to all of you for being such strong supporters of this extraordinary man, who has contributed so much to our lives, in so many different ways.

- Leslie Kean

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I just received this sad email from my friend Peter Robbins, I have reprinted it (above) in it's entirety.

I had the honor of meeting Budd as I tried to make some sense out of my life experiences. My most cherished memory was the afternoon I alone with him in his home in New York. I was deeply impressed with his kindness and compassion. The world has lost a pioneering spirit, and a deeply caring soul.

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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similar thoughts from a reader

Below are a few sentences from an email I received yesterday, it came in as I was drawing the owl image for the post below.

I’m sharing this excerpt because it seems important, specifically because it so clearly and accurately describes MY thoughts on this! The author described it better than I ever could. The only difference for me is that instead of my teens, most of my more profound experiences took place in my 40's.

Excerpt from an email:

“I think that we’ve had some similar types of experiences... I can say that after some couple of undeniably weird and in-my-face contact experiences in my teenage years, there have followed a lifetime of liminal glimpses and suggestions of strange meta-presences just around existential corners, easily deniable and explained away if one is determined to do so, but to the other side of that coin, always hinting at some deeper or more vivid order of possibility.

I don’t know what it is, only that it seems to jump out to grab my notice, then once noticed, skip laughingly away again, disappearing under the curtain one is not supposed to look behind. I don’t have any problem accepting that these things are happening, nor that they have happened to me. It’s only frustrating that I can’t seem to get any closer to it; worse because I can’t quite trust myself, knowing how badly I want to connect with it, suspicious that I may have invented the whole thing.”

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!

Radio Mysterioso interview

Greg Bishop just posted an interview we did on March 7th of 2010, it's on his RADIO MYSERIOSO site.

My memory of those two hours were a blur, but I did remember that at the end Greg thanked me and said: "This was one of the most fun interviews I've done in a long while."

We started out with a report from and commentary on the Laughlin UFO conference. I had just returned from the 2010 meeting with a mixed bag of impressions and memories. While at the conference, I attended an abductee support meeting, which gets described in detail.

We also spoke about conversations with our late friend Mac Tonnies. His analogy of a cat chasing a laser pointer and the comparison of humans seeing UFOs occupied us for a good while. This led to a conversation about Mac’s last book The Cryptoterrestrials and how it might affect UFO research.

We went on to talk about the experience of the paranormal and how it changes lives.

Direct link to the interview HERE.

Lucretia Heart chimes in!

Lucretia Heart chimes in about my recent interview on THE STENCH OF TRUTH podcast series. Read it HERE. This woman ain't shy, and I appreciate her candor and insights more than words can say. Right on for her!

Just a few posts ago, I (again) linked to her site. And again, she goes thru an interview and then adds her own editorializing. That time it was with John Mack (linked HERE).

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Extra info added August 3rd 2011:

I posted a few comments on Lucretia's website, including the caffeine induced essay below. I liked the content of this comment, and I'm sharing it here.

~L

I really like going down the speculative paths concerning the inter-dimensional ideas.

Mostly - I like collecting the overtly mysterious stories, stories like my own, with synchronicities, odd coincidences and high strangeness. I feel like we are the rats in the maze, and it's only rarely that we can get a glimpse upward at the scientist with his clipboard looking down.

My sense is that they can tweak us in ways that we can barely comprehend. Stuff can manifest in ways the mimic divine religious apparitions and ancient folklore. Or, it can present itself as something utterly absurd.

When I am confronted with these stories, I have to scratch my head and try and fit these nonsensical events into a hypothesis that involves metal space ships carrying little pilots and an agenda. Why oh why would that agenda be goading us with experiences of such weirdness and high strangeness?

Your (Lucretia Heart) story and speculation about the UFO landing aways from your house as an act of courtesy by the tall super-model blonds really helps me wrap my mind around the ultra weirdness. You propose that if they just emerged through an inter-dimensional doorway inside your house, their visits would be followed up by an onslaught of poltergeist activity. You speculate that if that door gets opened, weird stuff will enter your home, including orbs, synchronicities and all manner of high strangeness.

This makes so much sense to me, and it helps me to factor in the outlying data, the really weird stuff - the stuff I gravitate toward. The seductive stuff (at least for me).

So, if I go down this path, the visitors have their origins on some far off planet, and (sometimes) they travel on physical craft to get here, and (sometimes) they open up multi-dimensional doorways to enter our homes (sometimes) and as a by-product of their technology - all manner of weirdness follows through.

I speculate that SOME of that weirdness that slips through those open doors gets molded in a way that is relevant and meaningful to the victim. Instead of just a bunch of chaotic orbs and slamming doors, the events manifest as profound synchronicities that somehow mold themselves to match the psyche of the receiver.

Don't ask me HOW this happens, I just sense that it does.

This avenue of speculation allows me to join the ETH with the Ultra-Terrestrial Hypothesis in a way that is tidy enough for me to comprehend without giving myself an aneurism.

Hows that?
Mike C!