Consciousness Journal: Ghosts & Astral Projection
It was during a pretty lengthy spanking when I was 10 or so that I learned my consciousness was really just a clip-on tie. Like most folks, perhaps, I had never really considered that it was a separate thing from my body. Perhaps it was more like a willing passenger in the meat suit I had been driving around for a decade or so. But before I start getting ‘philoso-fickle’, lets return to the narrative.
One second, I’m laying on the ground crying and the next I am seeing the scene from an external point of view akin to that proverbial fly. This fly was on the ceiling though. From my new vantage point, there was no pain. There was no fear. In fact, there was no emotion at all. It was a strange, but fascinating, experience that I would try to recreate when the next storm came. Unfortunately, I would have ample opportunities to practice my new skill. Fortunately, on occasion, it worked.
At that moment, in this incarnation, I still believed in coincidence. And about two years after I discovered my skill I was riding my bike through my new neighborhood and came across a garage sale. I loved garage sales!
I grew up a welfare kid for a time. I knew other people had different lives and a garage sale was the akin to snooping through a medicine cabinet or sneaking a look at someone’s diary. I had to investigate.
What made them successful? What unloved possessions did they have that I would consider treasure? My Scorpio nature was already encouraging me to glean information from atypical sources and a garage sale was fine by me. I ended up with a box of books for three bucks: Far Journeys by Robert Monroe, Illusions by Richard Bach, Theories of Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, Silva Mind Control by Jose Silva, The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris and Motivation and Personality by Abraham Maslow. Each would become an oasis as I navigated my adolescent and young adult life. I was fourteen years old and my life was about to be forever changed. The least of which was a nearly tantric feeling wash over me when I smell old books. Mmm…
Did anyone else change the lyrics to the Beatles song to Maslow’s Silver Hammer or was it just me?
Without the lexicon of Transpersonal Psychology (TP), I referred to my out of body experiences (OBEs) as ‘bouncing’. I bounced over to my grandmother’s home to see what she was up to as she lived about 40 minutes away. I bounced over to my friend’s house when I was punished and sent to my room. I would bounce over to another friend’s house to see where his dad hid the Playboy magazines.
I did not consider myself even marginally successful in my adventures until I opened up to Robert Monroe. His book was the instruction manual I had been looking for without even knowing it. By the end of the summer, my OBE success rate was about fifty percent. And like the commercial says — telling your friends things they didn’t know I knew? Priceless. An example would be my friend’s fascination with a pair of his mom’s silk panties.
Can someone page Dr. Eddie Pull? He’s in the complex.
Jumping forward seven years in the real world, I was now about 22 and thoroughly enjoying my freedom from my father’s towering eye. I was also enjoying my college classes learning about music theory, basic language skills in German, Italian, and French as I was studying opera, and early English literature like Beowulf and Chaucer. Running across The Knight’s Tale, I was again reminded of TP and the Knight a fully actualized person. The musician in me wondered if the three B’s (Bach, Beethoven and Brahams) were fully actualized.
I loved tying together threads that were seemingly incongruous. Later, I would be told it was ADD. I did not appreciate my creativity being labeled as illness.
My first vocal recital was on the horizon. I mean this literally as I was a professional procrastinator. (I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.) It was nearing 10 p.m. in the music building and I was a young baritone / bass attempting Wagner years before I was ready. It wasn’t pretty. I decided to pack it in for the night. As I was locking up the music building, I heard the old wooden parquet floor creaking upstairs but I knew I was alone in the building. My first thought? A ghost. My second thought? One of my fellow music major classmates has slipped in while I was shouting German lyrics because… German.
Now, I had heard there was a haint or two in the building. It was also well documented history in the Indianapolis News that the original owner of Stokley Mansion had killed himself with one of his shotguns. I pretended I didn’t hear anything, locked the door, and went home. This is where the story really begins so grab your popcorn.
I was in my parent’s home, in the basement where my bedroom was sequestered, and began to consider the consequences of going to the mansion as a consciousness… in my astral body. You can’t hurt an astral body, right?
In the seven years I had been practicing my OBEs, I was never seen by an adult. Children and animals would usually give me a glance though. My confidence grew as I thought that by being surrounded by Mother Earth, I could project out of my body and return safely. Emboldened by my ignorance I drifted off to sleep and set my intention to go to the mansion. And it was so.
For those of you not familiar with OBEs, they come in a couple of flavors:
Remote Viewing is where you’re feeling kinda groggy but you are aware of your room’s surroundings. You also will have a scribe or handler helping to direct your focus and writing down your observations.
One more step down the ladder of consciousness is Astral Projection. You look and sound like you are asleep to anyone in the room. You, however, are not aware of the room or what’s in it. Occasionally, I have received instructions while in this state but who or what is directing me is a story for another time.
Lucid Dreaming is a tricky distinction and I’ll tell you why. Time / Distance / our current timeline are very fluid when you are practicing an OBE. Example — I asked to see the pyramids. I was shown Egyptian pyramids here and now. I asked for more. I saw the same desert ocean surrounding a pyramid complex. Most were broken and looked to have been blasted from the inside. Like a drone (which I had never heard of in 1988), I was able to swoop in and out of the rubble. Occasionally, I would become lost and have to fly through the walls to get outside again. During one of those times, I saw the night sky and was mesmerized by the blue spot about forty degrees above the horizon. It was Earth.
I had a flash of fear followed by a wave of curiosity. Later, I would wonder — when you are observing life on other planets — observing life on Earth that doesn’t look like us — sitting in a cantina where you know Han drew his weapon first — is that dreaming, astral projection to another timeline, or ten thousand years before or after our now? Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, a hammer is just a hammer, and a dream is just a dream.
Nearly immediately after falling asleep, I found myself in the foyer of the mansion. The first thing I noticed was how crisp and clean the wooden parquet floors were. The floors I knew were coated in thirty years of polyurethane with the patina of hundreds of college students creasing, cracking and generally abusing the floor. Everything was crisp and new — the mirror-like, brass plates for the push button light switches. The switches themselves has a small circle of inlayed pearl.
Regal oriental rugs, robust barrister bookcases, overstuffed leather chairs which would have made Gustav Stickley blush were strategically placed in the study. A few Tiffany floor lamps with their ropy power cords slithered to feed at the new household luxury of electricity. Neo-Italianate style could be seen everywhere right down to the hand carved rosebuds in the corner of each cabinet. The blocky and linear look of the Arts and Crafts movement could also be seen.
“I’m SO glad you finally made it!”, I heard in my head.
Spinning around and looking in the opposite direction I saw the receiving room, and my host, Mr. Stokley, was waiting for me. He reminded me of former US President Teddy Roosevelt in both bearing and composition. Stokley was born from sturdy German stock and wore a tailored woolen suit — three piece, of course — with a gold watch chain appearing to support his girth. Pince-nez glasses casually hung from another chain around his neck. A bright and gregarious smile welcomed me in as we shook hands.
He wanted to thank me for keeping the building cleaned and for judiciously locking up after hours. He also commended me on my German pronunciation while politely ignoring my Wagner. I felt relaxed in his presence.
He asked if he may show me his home from his perspective which I willingly agreed. In hindsight, it was probably not the best idea to submit to an idea proposed to me by an unsettled ghost. Some aspect of him was not at peace.
We glided from room to room with him telling me about certain rooms for which he held a certain pride — even after death. Something we don’t see anymore in modern society are sleeping patios now that we have air conditioning.
There was also a linen room with hand-joined cedar drawers. The cabinets themselves had their own ventilation with tins of scented powders. Little touches revealed this as the home of a millionaire with hand cast tiles for the fireplaces in every room. Cabinet corners with their hand carved roses continued throughout with marble tops and pulls. Interestingly, he completely bypassed his own bed chamber and the adjoining bathroom where he had committed suicide nearly 50 years earlier.
We did stop briefly in his office off the bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, this one was devoid of any ornamentation. I think there was a psychology to this as he has an almost child-like grin as he revealed the safe he had secreted in a closet behind a fireplace. This would be an important fact later.
We headed down to the basement where he wanted to show me the heart of the home. In the basement, he essentially made a bunker within a bunker. The innermost room housed a boiler about the size of a Yugo. If it were ever to explode, it would blow out the side of one room and leave the rest of the mansion intact. A pump room stood next to the boiler ready to redirect the spring water into the boiler should the need arise. Navigating the basement was difficult as the duct work from the boiler to the rooms was challenging to navigate. Now, knowing what I know, that may have been deliberate.
We finally made our way to the cold storage — another concrete room within a room. The massive wooden door strained to open, but once inside, it felt like standing in a cave. A single industrial light revealed long shadows cast by sides of beef and pork displayed from menacing hooks. Small and medium woven baskets held potatoes, onions, beets, rutabagas, turnips, and a few other hardy garden options. That was when I heard a small child’s whimper.
Obscured by the poor lighting and imposing shadows of deceased and curing animals, a young, emaciated boy shivered in the corner. He was naked. I could not even guess how long he had been down there but judging from his white toes and fingers it had been a while. I looked to Stokely for an explanation.
What I got was a horrible smile with teeth shining like custom knives. A burst of information came through and his intention was quite clear. I was in the heart of his kingdom. He was going to take over my soul, sodomize and murder the child, and then take over my physical body so that he could resume his monstrous ways.
I was momentarily stunned by this burst of information and the disorientation was his moment. I watched as he grabbed both of my arms; they slowly melted into my own. This was years before I would come to know the character Neo but this is the sensation I had… the feeling of my personal identity fading.
Two things happened simultaneously.
Perhaps his lust got the better of him and his own focus shifted. What happened? I began to get an erection. The next instant, I was filled with a power / force that I cannot accurately describe in human words. The best I can do is say I was filled with sacred rage. Would this be like Jesus laying the smack down on money lenders? Would this be the violence that is encoded in my DNA from my familial ties to French royalty and Knights Templar? Nearly thirty years later, I am still unsure. But with so much power surging through me, I screamed NO! at the top of my voice.
It had the effect of a flash bang. There was a flash of searing light and then darkness. I was free from possession but not from my circumstances.
I ran out the door and turned to shoulder it into place with a resounding boom. I ran through the duct work which a physical body could not do. Up the stairs and onto the landing I ran. I found myself between the mansion proper and the kitchen that trailed behind the building. Below me there arose a truly demonic shriek that sounded like a hundred screaming people, a score of air horns, and maybe a Tyrannosaurous rex — all bellowing in unbridled rage. All wanting a piece of me.
At this point, I was reacting. Maybe I was being possessed by something equally strong — but positive? Again, I am unsure after all these years. No matter the impetus, I slammed the door to the landing and locked it. Unbidden, I opened my disproportionately large hands, splayed my fingers out as wide as possible, and felt another surge run through my body and into the door. If Reiki fire is a flood light, this was a magnesium fire.
When the light subsided, I saw that the door was gone! Somehow I changed the reality of that environment and removed a door from existence. Just in the nick of time too as something rather large crashed into the newborn wall and then tumbled down the stairs. Again… that unholy roar.
Like the rubber bands on my braces, I snapped back into my bed at home so hard that I had a startle reflex. I even felt a couple vertebrae pop with my re-entry. I learned the hard way that ghosts can interact with you while out of body.
As you might imagine, I did not try astral projection for a while. Even longer when visiting a place that was haunted. Again, one of the tricky things about consciousness is that you can’t be sure if this was a dream or if it was being part of another reality. What researchers like to get is verifiable proof. Years would pass but some interesting information did make it back to me.
A few years after my encounter, the mansion was recognized as being on the Indiana List of Historic Homes. As part of a fund raiser, rooms were decorated, memorabilia from the previous owners displayed, and other surprises would be revealed. I bought a ticket and had an interesting compendium of memories that I’m sure no one else had that day.
I found myself drawn to a small and isolated display. It turn out that the safe in the upstairs office had been opened and the contents displayed. There were two sets of cuff links, a couple of ledger books, and a small tuft of hair that had been woven into a small ring. It gave me chills. The last thing I looked at that day was the only photograph in the case. It showed a couple — a man who looked like Teddy Roosevelt with a broad inviting smile.
It also showed a familiar child.
The little boy had a victim’s eyes and was about ten years old. Apparently, he had no reason to smile. The dapper clothes he wore appeared to be cut from the same cloth the man who stood over him. There was no question that this child belonged to him.
