the number 123 and the Laughlin UFO conference

A page from my notebook, complete with tiny cartoon of exit 123, and four cats. I wrote this down the morning after the event. Double click on the image for a HI-rez view.

Here are a few more curious anecdotes from the 2010 Laughlin conference. Both involve the number 123, something that I’ve been seeing a lot lately.

We drove from Sedona to the ugly casino on the night of February 20th. In the car with me was Natascha and Joseph Mark. We went north to Flagstaff, and then headed west, and the driving was sort of miserable because it was snowing sideways, and interstate 40 was a parade of huge trucks.

Exit 123 near the Nevada Arizona border.

As we got closer to the Nevada border, the weather eased up, and Joseph asked for a bathroom break, so I said I would pull off at the next exit. Well, the next exit was marked 123. We pulled into the lonely gas station, and there was a car parked next to us and Natascha noticed it first, but there were four cats in the car! For some reason, this struck me as so funny. The window was down just enough that I could put my hand in and pet them. We never saw the driver of the car, but there was a guy with a U-Haul truck who said that it was his wife’s car, and he didn’t seem at all bothered that I would stick my hand in her car.

Nothing beyond that - I just thought it was funny. (I’ll add that Natascha doesn’t think this story is nearly as funny as I do)
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Laughlin and the number 123

The Aquarius Casino on the dreary strip in Laughlin Nevada

Natascha and I shared a hotel room in the tacky Casino for the 2010 Laughlin UFO conference.

Here's one more weird story; in the middle of the night we were both jolted awake by a very loud pounding on the door. The way I remember it, it sounded like a big strong guy hit the door twice, as hard as he could. I was instantly awake and my heart was pounding.

My instantaneous thought was: IT'S THEM!

I rolled over and looked at the clock, and it was 1:23 AM. Let me add that I before rolling over that I knew what time it would be. I never got up to answer the door, I felt like I knew there was nobody there. I’ll also add that this hotel wasn’t filled with rowdy kids, in fact, we were in a section that didn’t allow children at all. And the clientele in Laughlin is mostly senior citizens. No good explanation about why anyone would pound on our door like that.

Okay, now let’s jump to the next morning.

I was in line at the Starbucks in the lobby, and right in front of me was Paola Harris, she saw me and said, “This is so weird, but Natascha was in my hotel room last night.”

I didn’t know what she meant, and I asked her to tell me more.

She explained that she was woken out of a sound sleep (she didn’t say what time) and she heard someone with a German accent say: “Paola!” Right away, she knew it was Natascha, who she had met previously in Barcelona. We both knew full well that Natascha wasn’t in her room, but it was an odd way to start the day.

Also, I heard from a few other people at the conference had subtle (but odd) experiences that same night.

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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.

report from Laughlin Nevada

Presently, I'm sitting in the convention hall at the annual UFO conference. A mixed bag of very interesting and the absurd. More to come - soon.

I plan on doing a series of short (easy to digest) posts, rather than one monster report.

UFO Disclosure Implications

The intricacies of a quandary in under four minutes.

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the shiny red balloon

The shiny red balloon, 14 months later. It lives safely in my sock drawer.

I met a woman at a Starbucks in the lobby of a tacky casino in Laughlin Nevada. We sat together and drank coffee on one of the first mornings of an eight day UFO conference. She is from Germany and her name is Natascha. We got along wonderfully and talked about the strange scene here at the conference. This happened a few mornings in a row, and soon we were sitting together during the presentations, and by the end of the conference, we were spending almost all of our time together.

Up until this conference, Natascha had almost no interest in the UFO phenomenon. How she ended up in Nevada is a curious story, she was told by an astrologer to travel from Germany all the way to Las Vegas to attend this eight day event, so she did. It proved to be the start of new chapter of her life. She realized that, somehow, this subject was important.

On the final day, after the conference had officially ended, she was planning to take a shuttle van to the Las Vegas airport for her flight home. I said I would drive her, it was no problem. We spent our final time in the casino at the same Starbucks, saying goodbye to friends we had met. It was late in the morning when morning we got in my little Subaru and started the drive North.

The highway out of Laughlin is though the desert, and it’s bleak and empty. This created a surreal mood after being cooped up in the casino for over a week. Natascha had her iPod, and she played me some music from two of her friends in Germany. It was a haunting series of tones created by a man rubbing crystal bowls and a woman singing. Less than a year later I had dinner with this same couple - but that’s another story.

We talked and tried to make sense of the of our time together at the conference. It was about an hour drive before we arrived in Las Vegas. It was actually a sad time in the car, because we had become quite close.

We were both hungry, and there was plenty of time before the flight and we were eager to find someplace to eat. We are both rather health conscious vegetarians, and the food at the casino was dreadful, and now we were heading into the outskirts of Las Vegas, and I was doubtful we would find anything that would fit our needs.

But, we passed a WHOLE FOODS grocery store, I made a U-turn and we doubled back, and within a few minutes we were pulling into the parking lot of the strip mall. I found a space for my car, and eased in. Natascha was on the passenger side, and she got out and stood up. I was on the drivers side, and I got out.

I looked across the roof of the car and saw that Natascha was standing there, with a curious expression on her face, and she was holding a shiny red balloon. I walked around to her side of the car and she seemed a little perplexed. She handed me the balloon, it was heart shaped with the words I LOVE YOU on it. I was confused, she definitely did not have the balloon in the car during the drive, so I didn't understand where it came from.

I gently set it in the car, closed the door, and we went into the grocery store together.

We never mentioned the balloon.

Our lunch together was very nice, we ate salad and fruit in the deli. She also got some food for the flight home (mostly chocolate) and I got some food for my long drive back to Idaho (mostly chocolate).

We went to the airport, and I walked her up to the security gate and we said good-bye. It was an emotional farewell and there were some tears. I walked out of the airport feeling sad and confused.

And then I spent the next 16 hours driving, with a shiny red balloon on the passenger seat, with the words I LOVE YOU staring up at me.

I got home and with in the first day or so I called her on Skype. Early in the conversation I asked: “Natascha, where did that balloon come from?”

She paused and then said, “I don’t know.”

We were both perplexed, and I pressed her on it.

She finally said, “I’m not sure, but I think it was just there when I opened the door of the car and I picked it up.”

I met Natascha over a year ago, in February of 2008. Since she has been back in Germany, we have talked almost weekly (and sometimes daily) either on the phone or thru Skype. These conversations have a way of getting very deep, in a way that seems to help me - a lot. I don’t quite know what to make of our intense relationship.

I feel like I’ve met a true soul mate.