Echoes in a Hollow Space

Greg and Dana Newkirk of the Haunted Objects Podcast and the Newkirk Museum of the Paranormal like to say that paranormal experiences are often initiatory experiences. They give you a peak at the Other, breakdown the dogma of consensus reality. If you run from these experiences in fear, the initiation fails. If you try to overcome your fear and accept what has happened it can completely change you and your worldview. They also point out that these initiations can lead to periods of great creativity and productivity. By that standard, I have had more than one initiatory experience, but the one I’m about to relate is perhaps the most profound.

I haven’t told this story in full here before because at the time it happened I foolishly told it to one of my materialist friends and he said, “What bullshit.” It was brutal and said in front of my other materialist friends and they all laughed. Maybe it was nervous laughter but whatever it was, I was humiliated and made damned sure I only spoke of these things with people who believed as I did. (I drifted away from that group soon after.) Now that I am a geezer, I want to own my truth. That’s part of why I’m telling these stories now. If people think they are bullshit, that’s their problem.

I have experienced high strangeness all my life, starting when I was about three or four. Except for one notable period in my early thirties. I had just successfully fought off thyroid cancer. So much weirdness led up to the diagnosis and treatment, so many wild swings of emotion that seemed beyond my control. Afterwards, after treatment and getting a proper dose of thyroid hormone, it was like someone flipped a switch and I had my equilibrium back. No weirdness for a long time after that.

It made me wonder if all of the strange things in my life had been induced by bad brain chemistry and/or pure illusion. Coupled with this, I had been working and hanging out with a bunch of diehard materialists and absorbed a lot of their worldview. It had me reassessing everything. I went from believer to agnostic to almost-declared materialist in a very short span of time. I said to myself one day, “I don’t think there’s anything beyond this reality except bad brain chemistry and illusion.” Well, the Universe decided to call my bet and raise me.

I had a cat I adored. Her name was Mocha, a brown and orange swirled tortoise shell. When we first met, I was living in a bungalow on the back end of a property in Venice, California. My landlords lived in the house on the front of the property and on either side of us were open fields where houses had been torn down. Idiots were constantly dumping cats in these fields which meant we often had to adopt them or otherwise find homes for them. One sunny afternoon I was sitting in my bungalow with the sliding glass doors open to catch a breeze and Mocha walked in bold as brass and said, “Hello. I live here now and you need to feed me.” So, of course, I did. (No, I didn’t really hear her say this but I got the message clearly.) I had two other cats and one of them, pure white angel Ollie, got so insulted that he moved in permanently with the landlords. (They were great fans of Ollie and were okay with this.)

I have adored all my cats over the years but my bond with Mocha was different. I can’t quite explain it except to say she was a soul cat for me. I knew it the minute she first walked in the door. Some years later I had moved to another part of L.A. on a busy street and about the time of my materialist reassessment of things Mocha was killed. From that point on, all my cats became indoor only cats but I was filled with guilt and shame that I’d been so careless with someone so precious.

Immediately after her death strange things started happening. The dog, who liked to play with Mocha around a swiveling chair in the living room, began to play this same game with something only she could see. She would also sit in front of the hall window, one of Mocha’s favorite perches, and whine in an excited but puzzled way. When I went over and put my hand in the spot the dog was staring at, the air would be noticeably colder than the rest of the room, even when the sun was shining through the window. These were events experienced by other people living in the house. But one night when I was alone in my bed and crying over Mocha I heard purring coming from the empty pillow next to me. It so startled me I jumped out of bed. I couldn’t hear the purring anymore until I leaned over close to the pillow and there it was again! I straightened up, no purring. I leaned over, purring. It was actually very comforting, so I calmed down and eventually got back in bed and listened to the purring beside me. Gradually, it faded away and then I was able to go to sleep.

But I am very talented at making myself feel guilty and sad and one night—again, lying in bed—I was indulging in this and really working myself up. Then something happened that words are inadequate to describe. A wave of pure, unadulterated, one-with-the-Universe bliss swept over me, starting at the top of my head and spreading through my entire body. I knew it was a taste of the numinous and I also knew it was sent to me by or through Mocha. These words on this page/screen cannot possibly do justice to that feeling. It was a privilege, a gift, and I was so profoundly grateful for it. For days my heart was lifted by it. But I got greedy because, wow, that feeling. One night maybe a few days later I wondered if I could cultivate it again and I started the ol’ chain of guilt-making but this time it was like I got a slap across the face—not physically, but mentally, psychically. Along with it came a clear message: “Knock it off. Get on with your life.” I kind of felt that message was from Mocha, too.

I was inundated for days afterward by a ton of small but meaningful incidents of high strangeness until I finally said to the Universe one day, “All right! I get it! I am not a materialist. I believe. You can send any weird thing to me and I will accept it but I only ask one thing. I don’t want to see anything because I think that would drive me crazy.” The deluge of weird stopped, but it has continued to be an occasional presence in my life ever since. For the most part, with one notable exception (a story for another day) I haven’t seen anything, but I have experienced intense synchronicities, odd things happening in the house, ghostly but unseen visitations from other deceased ones I’ve adored, etc., etc. Curiously, I never experienced anything with Mocha again except one dream, months later. She was sitting on the edge of the roof of the old bungalow where we first met, not really paying attention to me. I called out to her, “Mocha! I’ve missed you! Come here.” She looked at me and I got the clear message, “Can’t stay. I’ve got other things to do.” And she trotted over the peaked roof of the bungalow and disappeared over the other side.

The other thing that happened after I accepted my non-materialist pact with the Universe is that I entered into one of the most profoundly creative periods of my life. Art was pouring out of me for many years after. At the time, I didn’t think of these experiences as initiatory, but I do now. I have had other initiations in my life, but that was the most profound. And all due to the ghost of my soul cat.



All Weird Things Index

This post is long and a mixed bag of things. If you're only interested in Hellier, you can skip everything past the picture of The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies.

I did a marathon watching of all ten hours of Hellier Season 2 on Friday—as after cooking two large meals that week and housecleaning, I wasn’t up for much more than viewing and eating leftovers. It’s currently available for free on Amazon Prime (as is Season 1), and in a couple of weeks will also be available for free on YouTube.

I rather wish I had watched it at a more leisurely pace because I got rather tuckered out there at the end. I’m still trying to process it (and have been rewatching it slowly for the past few days) and I might have processed it better if it had been in smaller chunks. Or maybe not.

I did manage a brief Amazon review:

Season One of Hellier was a perfect little gem of high strangeness, evoking that tumbling feel of falling into a storm of the synchronicities. That storm continues in season 2, tumbling harder and stranger. It has the authentic feel of lived experience rather than staged paranormal TV. We ride along with the participants, feeling their puzzlement and insecurities, their disbelief and belief, and watching as things shift and shift again. If you are looking for pat answers and highly manipulated content, this may not be the series for you. But if you have realized that asking questions is the most important thing, Hellier will give you that thrill of late-night discussions with friends trying to figure out the mysteries of the Universe.

My head's so full of Major Stuff that I can't talk about because, spoilers. I may post again in a couple of weeks after people have had a chance to watch. For now, I'll just say that at the end of episode 9 I used some sweetgrass oil, just in case, and drew a protective sigil on my TV screen before watching episode 10. Also, as soon as those damned tones started I got nauseated. You’ll know the tones I mean if you watch it. The same thing happened with a recent “Haunted Salem Live” sigil experiment done by Greg and Dana Newkirk. So. Mass initiation or suggestibility? I'm still not sure. And that's in the true spirit of Hellier, I think. Questions are more important than answers.



There are very mild spoilers in the following. Skip to *** if you don’t want even that.

I will say this, and with all due respect to Tyler Strand, I do believe the carving he saw on the tree was not a green man but Odin. Which suggests an entirely different focus of worship in North Carolina than in...that other place. And does nothing, of course, to negate the strangeness he experienced. And speaking as a geezer, if some odd young man showed up at my door going on about strange things in the woods, I might also have called the police. It doesn’t mean abominable practices were going on there, just that whatever or Whoever they worship, they probably figured it was none of his gods damned business.



***Okay, it’s safe now.

After viewing Hellier 2 there were many books I wanted to read and reread. I already had, and had already read, many of the ones they recommend: Passport to Magonia by Jacques Vallee, The Trickster and the Paranormal by George P. Hansen, Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur, The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies by the Reverend Robert Kirk (written in the 17th c. and widely referred to in paranormal circles), and others. I thought it might be time to reread Kirk again, since it’s really just a tract, not a long book, and it fit in with some of the research I’ve been doing lately for my current novel. Somewhere in this house I have a 1991 reprint of Kirk edited by RJ Stewart but of course I couldn't find it. I once had a very neat filing system for my books, but that was before the chaos of the last house move and the caregiving years that followed, alas.



I notice that you can even buy this Andrew Lang edition as a Kindle book now. I love living in the digital age. But since I spent beaucoup $ in the 70s xeroxing this at the UCLA Research Library, I don't think I'll spend anymore money on it. I'd forgotten that I'd filled it up with pink highlighter. It was interesting to see that I didn’t find all those passages relevant anymore, although some overlapped.

Back in the ancient days when I was a student at UCLA, they had two original copies of The Secret Commonwealth, the original 1815 imprint from his 17th c. manuscript, and the 1893 Andrew Lang one, in the open stacks of the Research Library—a holdover from the days when Thelma Moss ran a paranormal research program there. Research libraries were the only places you could find these back then.

I've thought about those books since and wondered if anyone had the sense to put them in the restricted access area of the library or if, Rev. Kirk-like, they have subsequently been kidnapped by the fairies. Or other beings of more malicious intent. Somebody I know may have mentioned their rarity to one of the librarians, who didn't seem that interested. Probably thought that someone a pedantic busybody or just another arsehole student trying to tell her what to do. I appreciated having easy access to them, but also know it's a very sharp 2-edged sword: not even the Library of Congress can protect against theft, individuals deciding their wants are more important than access to that cultural heritage for the rest of us.

Ah well.

Below are some notes and quoted passages from the current reread. Some are relevant to Hellier 2, some relevant to my current research, but I thought someone might find them interesting.

• The Rev. Kirk says that females rarely have the second sight. That's a 17th century male elite conceit, I believe. If women spoke of having second sight back in that day they would likely be burned.