Doug Dillon's Blog, page 178

Paranormal Events in Families: Children, Part 2

As I wrote in a previous post, somewhere between the ages of three and five, I saw mysterious blobs of patterned color every morning when I awoke. Those blobs looked solid but I was unable to touch them and they disappeared by entering the wall next to my bed. I mention those events because I now believe them to have been paranormal in nature and they lay a base for the next three short stories.

It seems to me, you see, some of my early childhood memories, like the one above, tell me that I had certain sensitivities. The next three stories support that notion and demonstrate how parents and society in general can force a child to abandon their natural abilities to perceive beyond the norm. I don’t blame my parents for their part in this but it is a fact that after the next three events, to my knowledge, I didn’t have another paranormal experience until my thirties.

To my younger readers, I suggest you hold onto your hats because we are now going way back in time to when I was six-years-old. To be specific, 1949. Yes, believe it or not, someone who lived in the mid twentieth century can still be alive–at this writing in 2012 anyway.

Little Doug with his faithful dog, BB gun and Bavarian hat--in front of his house in Germany

In early 1949, my dad was sent to Germany as part of the occupation forces stationed there after World War II. Once he got situated in his new job and found a house, he sent for my mother and me. The house he finally found was HUGE—three stories and a basement. It was fenced all around and had an electronic door that could only be unlocked for guests by a switch near our front door. It turned out that a former Nazi owned the place and we rented from him.

The following three events are things that happened to me shortly after our arrival:

Noises in the Night

My bedroom was right next to my parents’ bedroom on the second floor. Both rooms were connected by a door my folks often left partially open before going to bed. That first night at the house, I climbed into my new bed, early as usual. My parents left a small light on in their room so I wouldn’t be scared until it was time for them to retire as well.

I wasn’t frightened at all but I just couldn’t sleep. When my parents finally went to bed they turned out all the lights which made my room pitch dark. That was fine for a few minutes until I started hearing something in my room. It clearly sounded as if someone was walking around. There were rustlings, footsteps and the floorboards creaked. My parents heard none of this.

I called out to both my mom and dad, assuming it had to be one of them nearby but no such luck. From their room, they told me I was imagining things and to go to sleep.

That’s when I started getting scared. When all that walking around continued, I screamed for my parents. Here began a long period of time with me hearing those same sounds, my parents turning on lights and assuring me in person that no one else was in the house. Even so, I literally became terrified. I cried and screamed so much, my dad eventually came in and laid down the law. No more crying and screaming. Period. Understandable I say now looking back but it sure seemed unsympathetic at the time.

The only way I was finally able to shut the sounds out and get to sleep was to cover my head with sheets, a blanket and a pillow. I never heard those sounds again during the entire three years of our stay.

The Little City

Something else happened in my room soon after the event above, however, that once more scared the crap out me. As usual, I went to bed before my parents did. I was lying there in the semi darkness when I had the strongest urge to look over the side of my bed. I just knew something would be there and I was right.

As soon as I looked, an entire daytime scene had spread itself across my floor. I was looking down at a little city far below me. To this day, I even recall the tile roofing on some of those buildings. Totally startled and literally afraid of falling from such a great height, I screamed bloody murder.

My parents came running up from the first floor. I don’t remember how long it took them to calm me down so I could sleep but it was a while. Never had another vision of any kind in that house.

My Dad’s Death

This was a dream event, one that was so clear and so frightening, it scared me to think about it for years afterward.

I was sitting by the edge of a very large indoor swimming pool. No one was there but me. Kind of fun having a whole pool to myself, I thought, and then I turned around. There, lying on his back with his eyes wide-open, was my father.  He stared not at me but at the ceiling high above us. Suddenly, this weird tone began building all around me until it seemed to fill ever fiber of my being with terror. At that moment I realized my father was dead.

Of course I woke up screaming. Once again, my poor parents jumped out of bed to calm me down. Only when I saw my dad in person did I accept the fact that he was still alive. They convinced me it just an odd dream and nothing to be concerned about. But for a couple of years after that, I wondered if my dream meant my father would soon die.

Conclusions

First of all, that house was very old. I don’t doubt it contained something, some sort of residual energy and/or entities that activated my natural sensitivities. On my first night there, I think I must have immediately picked up on whatever existed there. In that light, my parents were probably in the right by forcing me to shut off my ability to connect with such things. Otherwise, I might have driven myself crazy with fear. Besides, they certainly were not prepared to help me understand it all.

Hmmm. Actually, we had a break-in a year or two after that. Some entered through our kitchen on the first floor and stole a bunch of thing. We all slept right through it. Maybe those noised I heard on that first night were from future events, or not.

Thankfully my father lived a lot longer than I thought he would as a child. Even so, he did die relatively early in life though at age 57 in 1975.  His final hour came at the old Orlando Naval Hospital, which was near a lake in those days. The pool from my dream? I wonder. Dad’s death, however, resulted in several paranormal events that forced my wife Barbara and me to change how we viewed life. In turn, those events led to the book we published with Prentice Hall in 1984 titled, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic.

My parents and me in Spain, high above the Mediterranean Sea

My little city. The only thing I can say about that is this. Later on during my stay in Germany, my parents took me traveling with them to several other European countries. Many of the small towns I saw looked very similar to my little city near the bed, tiled roofs and all—as seen from ground level, however.

 

Paranormal Newsletter+: From the Worlds of Doug Dillon

Welcome!

 

Hi there fellow Internet Traveler.

Come join me twice a month when I send out my newsletter via email. Love to have you along for the ride.

This is my opportunity to select key postings from my blog that focuses mainly on the paranormal, books and writing, and Florida History. Comments are always welcome.

Browse through my website so you can find out who I am and then click the bright orange rectangle in the sidebar to the right that says, “Subscribe.”

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Paranormal Events in Families – Children’s Visions, Part 1

I believe that some my earliest childhood memories are definitely paranormal in nature. In fact, as I try thinking back into the mists of my own history, those memories overshadow most other past events from ages three to five with an incredible potency. I think that’s because what happened was a repetition of the same type of event, possibly on a daily basis, and one which my parents continually told me wasn’t real.

My guess, not an exact memory, is that they told me it was a dream. Why? Because this repeating experience only happened while I was in bed, early in the morning. Makes sense, right? Kid thinks he wakes up but is actually still asleep. The thing is, even at that tender age, I knew better.

Little Dougie at 18 months

It always began right after I awakened, usually before my parents got up and when everything was still very quiet. Little objects would appear directly in front of me floating in the air. The first ones to show up were always toys of some kind, very familiar type of things. As more of them appeared, they began to slowly move in astraight line towards the wall next to my bed. Then the toys either morphed or disappeared entirely but were replaced by something else.

One of several attempts here to reproduce the colors, textures and designs of what I saw.

These new objects were very strange, like nothing else I had encountered in my short life. They were so weird that I couldn’t really describe them to my parents, nor can I adequately describe them to you now. All I can say is that they seemed to be very colorful, amorphous, circular blobs. I want to say that those colors and shapes changed as I watched but I can’t make such a statement with any certainty. What I am fairly sure of though, is that those objects were still there, at times, when my parents came to roust me out of bed. When I tried to show them what I was seeing, they told me nothing was there.

Like the floating toy objects, these blobs followed the same direct, straight-line path towards the wall next to my bed. When any of the objects reached the wall, they simply went into it and disappeared. Of course, that fascinated me no end. Although both toys and blobs looked solid, they could somehow penetrate another solid object. Knowing those objects had to be solid, I always tried to grab or pinch them but never succeeded.  My fingers just went right through toys and blobs alike. Very frustrating but after a while it became a fun game until my parents arose. As soon as I got out of bed and started my day, all the objects vanished.

Dreams? Imagination? Hallucinations? That’s what I thought well into my adulthood until I started studying the paranormal. For such a long time, I bought my parents’ explanations. But that all changed when other experiences and research helped me to understand how what we call reality can have many levels, usually unseen.

When my wife Barbara and I wrote our book, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the psychic many years ago, we created a chapter titled, “Children-Colleagues in Awareness.”  We did so hoping parents and other family members who read it might take children’s unusual experiences a little more seriously. If that happens, we think children will feel more validated and perhaps everyone will learn just a bit more about what is means to be alive in this reality. We raised our kids in such a way and are happy we did.

In closing, I want to mention one more thing. In thinking about writing this posting, it suddenly struck me that there might well be a connection between the little blobs I saw as a child and experiences much later in my adulthood.

While writing An Explosion of Being, I had numerous vivid dreams where beautiful molecular structures were somehow communicating with me without using words. Eventually, this led to extremely intense dream sequences where I became something like a bursting firework. This was followed by what I can only describe as a tremendous explosion that shook the house and started me awake. No one else awoke. It was as if the explosion was meant only for me. From that event came the title of our book, An Explosion of Being.

The point of that story is this. I now wonder if my little colorful, childhood blobs were related to those beautiful, communicating, geometric structures I encountered many decades later. Did they provide a mental construct over time that allowed for more in-depth communication to occur later in life? Interesting question isn’t it?

Your Natural Paranormal Heritage: Part 7, Out-of-Body Experiences

These are the initial helpful steps you can take right now if you wish to uncover your natural, paranormal birthright. Since you already have innate understandings, abilities, and connections in this arena, what you will read about here is nothing more than initial handholds leading you on a journey of self-rediscovery. In the end, YOU are your best teacher.

This information is adapted from the nonfiction book my wife Barbara and I wrote many years ago titled, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic. What you have here is just part of a series. The rest of the postings are located under the blog category titled, “Guidance”. Click here, however, if you would like to access ALL of the articles on this subject in one posting.

Hope you find this beneficial.

Out-of-body experiences are most likely the initial stages of an emergence into alternate realities during sleep. Again, as with other portions of your spiritual heritage, those occurrences are normal events happening nightly, but rarely remembered by the conscious mind.

In the preliminary conscious stages, a rigidity of body and a near paralysis can cause slight panic. It is much easier to say than to do, but if you find yourself in this condition, try to relax and flow with the experience. Fighting it causes that panic, but then again, perhaps the panic causes you to remember the experience.

Experiences, such as this, may not be of use to everyone equally. It may or may not be to your greater purpose to recall that kind of event. But giving yourself specific suggestions just before sleep such as, “I will become conscious during any out-of-body experiences tonight,” may, after a period of time, have the desired result. Then use those few precious moments after waking in the morning to recall any such nighttime adventures and record them in your notebook.

To reinforce your belief that a conscious memory of an out-of-body experience is possible, use your imagination at any available time during the day to visualize such a thing happening.

 

Go to the blog category titled, “Guidance” for additional postings like this one.

Click here for the ALL of the steps to Your Natural Paranormal Heritage on one posting.

Click on our book, An Explosion of Being, to find it online.

 

St. Augustine Historical Society: Research Library Photo Gallery

Carl Jung and the Paranormal, Part 2: The Split Table

This post is one of a series on the paranormal experiences of Carl Jung, founder of Analytic Psychology.

For the initial posting that began this series, click here.

One day during his teenage years, Jung was studying in his room. His door actually led to the dining room where his mother sat knitting. It was partly closed at the time.

Suddenly the sound of a large bang, like a gunshot, shattered the silence. It had come from the dining room. Immediately, Jung jumped up and ran to see what had made the noise. There he found his mother in an understandably startled condition, her knitting having fallen to the floor. “What happened?” She asked, then telling her son the sound had come from somewhere very near to her.

Looking around, her eyes and Jung’s came to rest on the dining room table. That’s when they both discovered it had split wide open. Astounded, Jung inspected the table and found that the fracture had occurred within the solid oak itself and not along any connecting joints.

This discovery led to quite a commotion in the family, obviously because no one could figure out how such a thing might happen. Having belonged to Jung’s grandmother when she was young, the table was anything but new. Green wood might split but certainly not oak that had aged so long. Besides, there were no fluctuations in the weather conditions that might cause such a thing. No one ever came up with a plausible explanation for the event.

Soon after the incident with the table, something else startling happened, again the dining room. These two events when taken together seem to be primary among the many in his youth that would propel Jung into investigations of the paranormal.

For other postings about Carl Jung’s supernatural journeys, go to the blog category titled, “Paranormal and Carl Jung.”

YA Paranormal/Historical Fiction Giveaway (Goodreads):Sliding Beneath the Surface

Like paranormal books with a slice of history on top?

Check out my new giveaway at Goodreads by clicking here.

10 books are available but time runs out on August 30.

Sliding Beneath the Surface is book I of The St. Augustine Trilogy.

Just as fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden is about to start classes at St. Augustine High, he finds himself up to his eyeballs in paranormal experiences that are rooted in one of Florida’s most important historical events. Scared out of his wits, he relies on his

friend, Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help. Despite this guidance, things get even worse, making Jeff realize he is in danger of losing his sanity and even his life. Finally, forces he doesn’t fully understand push him to leap headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. In doing so, though, Jeff risks something even more valuable to him than his own existence.

YA Fiction Giveaway at Goodreads:Sliding Beneath the Surface

Like paranormal books with a slice of history on top?

Check out my new giveaway at Goodreads by clicking here.

10 books are available but time runs out on August 30.

Sliding Beneath the Surface is book I of The St. Augustine Trilogy.

Just as fifteen-year-old Jeff Golden is about to start classes at St. Augustine High, he finds himself up to his eyeballs in paranormal experiences that are rooted in one of Florida’s most important historical events. Scared out of his wits, he relies on his

friend, Carla Rodriguez, and Lobo, an old Native American shaman, for help. Despite this guidance, things get even worse, making Jeff realize he is in danger of losing his sanity and even his life. Finally, forces he doesn’t fully understand push him to leap headlong into the unknown in order to save himself. In doing so, though, Jeff risks something even more valuable to him than his own existence.

Paranormal Experiences: The Noise in the Cellar

This post about one of his paranormal experiences is from my  French friend Patrick Delsaut.

Patrick Delsaut

In the early 1990s, a strange phenomenon occurred in the cellar of my home.

It was night and all was quiet. Suddenly my sister opened the cellar door for some reason and from its depths gushed a strange sound vaguely resembling a whirring electric motor. This amazed and frightened her because we kept no engines, boilers, motorbikes or any other kind of equipment down there that could produce such a sound.

I came running immediately when my sister called me to hear this weird, whirring noise. Sure enough, our usually silent cellar had somehow been invaded by a sound that shouldn’t be there. How surprising! In fact, I had never heard anything exactly like that before.

After some hesitation, I decided to go and investigate. With each step though, the noise increased in intensity and surrounded me.  Once I got all the way down, I looked around but could not find the source of all that racket.

I then asked my sister to come down so that she could also observe this phenomenon firsthand. After she joined me, we thoroughly inspected every corner of the cellar with our eyes, our ears and our hands. The pipes, walls and floor didn’t vibrate, nor did the gas and water meters. We could find nothing that might explain this loud and unpleasant noise.

We wondered if the sound could be coming from one of our neighbors on either side of us but we finally discovered its intensity increased slightly near the basement windows (vents) overlooking the street.

Thinking something may be going on outside our home, we charged up the stairs and out onto the street. Nothing. All was silent. As soon as we went back into the house and opened the cellar door, however, the same vibrating noise assaulted us again. It evidently had not stopped in our absence whatever its origins.

The next day, the sound was gone but as soon as night fell, the strange vibration came back! My sister and I continued our investigations but we discovered nothing new. It went on like that for several nights in succession, and then stopped for a while before resuming once again. A short time later though, the sound disappeared forever.

To this day, I have no explanation for what my sister and I experienced.

Click here for Patrick’s website.

 

Your Natural Paranormal Heritage: Part 6, Deep Connections

These are the initial helpful steps you can take right now if you wish to uncover your natural, paranormal birthright. Since you already have innate understandings, abilities, and connections in this arena, what you will read about here is nothing more than initial handholds leading you on a journey of self-rediscovery. In the end, YOU are your best teacher.

This information is adapted from the nonfiction book my wife Barbara and I wrote many years ago titled, An Explosion of Being: An American Family’s Journey into the Psychic. What you have here is just part of a series. The rest of the postings are located under the blog category titled, “Guidance”. Click here, however, if you would like to access ALL of the articles on this subject in one posting.

Hope you find this beneficial.

 

1. Sensing Other People’s Thoughts and Needs

Don’t force it, but gently become aware of those times when you “just knew” something about another person that you could not possibly have known through any physical means. It may be the “coincidental” knowledge that a ringing telephone has a certain relative or friend on the other end. It may be that “motherly” sensitivity that awakens you in the night to attend a sick child. It may be that instantaneous awareness of what someone is about to say, seconds before it is said. In daily living, many such events happen, but we often pass them off, much to the discredit of their origin. Keep as careful a record as you can of these events, and by so doing, you will reinforce the possibility of more such things occurring.

2. Auras, Lights and Colors

People and objects emanate the multidimensional aspects of their truer reality. Especially surrounding people, the emanations can be seen as distinct from physical reality, and may appear as bursts of light, patches of color, bands of light or color, misty clouds or heat wave type disruptions. In our experience, these sightings usually come at times of high relaxation, sleepiness or times of intense emotion. Psychological readiness and a philosophical acceptance seem generally to determine our accessibility to these perceptions. We suggest that a daily imagination exercise be conducted where you visualize yourself as able to see these things.

3. Misty Images and Ghosts

Communication between the physical world and other aspects of reality are commonplace occurrences, but it usually happens beyond conscious awareness. If this type of visual event occurs, it does so because, on some level of consciousness, you and “someone else” planned it for a specific purpose. The contact may be with an entity that has never taken part in physical existence; it may be with the spiritual essence of a physically. deceased person or it could be a portion of the spiritual essence of someone living, including yourself.

We cannot suggest ways to develop or enhance this ability, nor are we certain that it should be developed. However, the recording of any such events in your notebook might eventually show them to be a part of a pattern that, as yet, you may not fully understand.

 

Go to the blog category titled, “Guidance” for additional postings like this one.

Click here for the ALL of the steps to Your Natural Paranormal Heritage on one posting.

Click on our book, An Explosion of Being, to find it online.