Coming ‘Round Again
As proof of how isolated we’ve gotten during the Lockdown, I learned just a few days ago that one of my oldest friends in fandom – Chuck Cady – died in August, and I discovered it only by accident. Damn, damn, damn. I know none of the details except that he died “of natural causes”, and was in a nursing home at the time. Oh, the endless regrets that I hadn’t kept closer track of him, and his family, this whole past year!
The last time I talked to him was back in early December, when he called me out of the blue to ask how I was doing. I was a little preoccupied with Rasty’s upcoming eye surgery, so I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. Chuck mentioned that he was staying in a nursing home, and I didn’t even think to ask why. He had an idea about me coming there to put on a concert for the patients and staff, and I thought it was a great idea; I’d even bring some albums to sell and some books to give away. The major problem was transportation, since his place was more than 50 miles east across the valley, and I had no idea how to get there. We chewed over that for awhile, and I promised I’d call him back when I got something solid planned. …How I wish now that I had.
Just before he rang off, he asked me an odd question: “Les, what’s your opinion on reincarnation?”
That knocked me a little off-balance, since I had a lot to say about the subject. Not knowing what his opinion was, and not wanting to start a long argument, I only said: “I’ve done it.”
That seemed to satisfy him, because he said only: “Thanks. Stay well.” and hung up.
That was the last I ever heard from him, and I was soon distracted with my own household’s health problems and the upcoming holiday season and scattered relatives coming to visit. Looking back now, I dearly wish I’d bothered to talk longer. There was so much I could have said that I think he would have wanted to hear. Never mind the two authentic hauntings I’ve seen; I have good evidence that reincarnation is real.
First, the best book on the subject is “Soul Survivor, The Reincarnation of a World War Two Fighter Pilot”, by Andrea and Bruce Leininger. It’s the most detailed and documented case in modern (published in 2009) times, and there are just too many confirmed details in the story for it to be anything but an ironclad case for reincarnation. Start there.
# # #
And then there’s my own case.
Two more of my oldest friends in fandom, call them Keith and Nancy, I met shortly after I came out to California and started working for Off Centaur Publications. I mentioned that I’d worked with a psychic research group back in Chicago, and they showed interest in what Nancy called “esoteric studies”, so I taught them what I’d learned.
First and most basic, of course, was practice in meditation: getting oneself deliberately into the Alpha-brainwave state, wherein psychic phenomena begin to occur. Next came grounding and centering: studying, while in Alpha-state, one’s exact position in local time and space, and then scanning one’s own body to check for conditions and possible health problems. Then there’s going deeper: using breath control and heartbeat-timing to get deeper into Alpha state, and even into light Theta state, which normally we can reach only when asleep and dreaming. After that comes projecting: while in that state, projecting one’s consciousness out into the surrounding local territory.
Nancy became good enough at this skill that, coming home from a convention one time, she accurately guided us down the freeway – predicting knots of traffic ahead and the distance to a much-needed rest-stop – while blindfolded.
Then we got into controlled dreaming, and that’s when the weird stuff started happening.
The technique I’d learned for controlled dreaming is, when you go to sleep, first meditate down as far into Theta state as you can get; then visualize what you want to explore in your dreams. Hold that image in mind as you slip further down into deep Theta, and then sleep. If successful, you’ll have vivid dreams which you’ll remember clearly when you wake up. Take notes, and see if you can confirm them by research later.
Keith wanted to explore the possibility of past lives, so I taught him the technique for that: get as deep into Theta as you can while still conscious, then visualize time like a river – a translucent river of calendar pages, with successive days, months, and years like beads on a string – and “feel” yourself as a bird-like form soaring over the river, flying upstream, looking down at the “water” for anything interesting. He tried it, and reported success; he had vivid dreams, which he remembered clearly on waking, and took notes. What he reported to me was only: “Making progress. See if you can do the same and confirm. Check the Civil War era. Let’s keep separate notes for awhile.” So indeed I did, and got results. We didn’t compare notes until we met next, some three months later.
What Keith remembered was being a young infantry captain from Ohio, in Meade’s army during the Civil War. While there, he met and began falling for a young nurse in the nursing corps attached to the army’s medical office. At one point he rescued her from the unwanted attentions of a drunken soldier, after which he loaned her his pistol for protection. They were both present at Gettysburg; he was stuck, with a leg-wound, in the medical tent behind the ridge where Meade had set his cannons. At one point, when the cannons began firing a steady fusillade, she had to threaten him with that same pistol to make him stay put and recover, while she promised to go see what the noise was about and come report to him. After the battle, the head of the medical unit was replaced by a male doctor who had “no truck with the females”, dismissed the women and sent them home. The war ended a few months later and then-Keith, having gained the nurse’s name and address, came looking for her. He found her, gave her a whirlwind courtship, married her, and took her out west with him to California. They lived there happily until they died, though she became somewhat notorious for driving her one-horse light carriage at high speeds on the public roads and carrying a pistol in public.
What I remembered was being an unmarried daughter, named Arabella Bishop, of a horse-broker in Annapolis who became wealthy dealing horses to the Union army during the Civil War. I was a fervent Abolitionist, impatient with doing nothing but waiting to get married while such momentous events were happening all around us, and when Clara Barton came to town and gave a lecture about the importance of sending qualified nurses to the troops, I was inspired to join her volunteer corps. I persuaded Papa to loan me a wagon and two good horses, and took my maid – a Black freedwoman named Odessa – with me to transport goods to the front lines. Once we caught up with the army we stayed there, tending the wounded, while I wrote excuses to Papa (and long letters to the rest of the family) and we both fell in love: Odessa with a Black corporal named Cato and I with a young captain from Ohio, named Hollings – who looked nothing like now-Keith but had the distinct “feel” of his personality. Odessa and I learned to be quite competent at picking up wounded men, her at the head, me at the feet, and hoisting them into the wagon or out of it. The doctors and other nurses were impressed.
I also remembered Gettysburg: the slightly-swampy hollow behind the ridge where we set up the medical tents, the intermittent inflow of the wounded, the sporadic bark of the cannons and the almost-constant crackle of gunfire. And then Meade’s cannons started pounding hard and fast. I didn’t remember threatening my wounded captain to make him stay put, but I remembered promising to find out what was happening, so Odessa and I drove the wagon up to the ridge between the cannons and looked down at the flat meadow below. At first all we saw was a boiling gray fog of gunsmoke at the far end of the field. Then Odessa was killed by a stray bullet that struck her in the head. As I bent over her I saw a vast motion in the meadow below, and realized it was a huge mass of Confederate soldiers coming toward us at a walk.
It was Pickett’s Charge. I watched, frozen in disbelief, as fifteen thousand men walked across more than half a mile of open field, while cannon and rifle-fire chewed into them like rain washing away dust. I’d never heard of nor imagined such a vast, almost mechanical, slaughter. I watched until the charge ended, the firing ceased, and the cloud of smoke lifted -- revealing the meadow carpeted with bodies -- thinking that the world had changed forever if mass-killing like this was now possible.
I remembered driving back to the medical tent in something of a daze, hearing Cato wailing over Odessa’s body, and going into the medical tent to report to my nearly-frantic captain: “They’re all dead. Thousands of them.” He wanted to see it for himself, but I assured him that no, he didn’t. He rubbed a thumb across my cheek and commented that my face was gray with gunsmoke, and I began to cry.
Shortly after that our chief doctor retired because of his own failing health and a younger doctor was sent out from Washington. He disapproved of any females working so close to combat, and especially disapproved of “tender young ladies” being exposed to such hardships, so he dissolved our volunteer corps and sent us home. I remembered a tearful farewell to my young captain, and him promising to come and see me in Annapolis. He also insisted I keep his pistol, and a small bag of bullets, to keep me safe on the ride home. I drove away, sure that the war would sweep him away from me, and I’d never see him again.
I don’t remember the long drive back to Annapolis, but I remember arriving at our front door and everyone but Papa exploding out the door to welcome me home. I found it amusing that Mama sent the butler to drive the wagon around to the stable-yard, when I’d been driving that wagon myself for months. At first it was wonderful to have hot baths and clean clothes and good food every day, and very flattering to be the center of attention at luncheons and parties, where I told my war-stories and preached for improving the nursing corps, but after awhile I noticed that none of the local young bachelors came courting me the way they used to. In fact, the local menfolk – including Papa – seemed a little afraid of me. Perhaps it was the “mannish habits” I’d picked up in combat, or perhaps it was my custom of always wearing a cloth drawstring purse that contained my captain’s pistol and spare bullets. In any case, I had little to do but take up the old round of home and church and visiting – and I began to grow bored. The news that the war was over, and the ferocious celebrations that swept the city for days afterward, didn’t change my life much.
Then one morning I was working in the kitchen, helping the cook construct pies, when the butler came running in dithering that there was a “Captain Hollings at the door, asking for Miss Arabella.” I dropped everything I was doing and ran to the door, in my working apron, to meet him. Yes, it was my Ohio captain, wearing a new dress uniform – walking with a cane and still limping a little – with a fancy two-horse carriage parked at the front door for all the neighbors to see. I shamelessly threw my arms around him, and he returned the gesture, bumping his hand into the drawstring purse and its contents. We had a fine laugh about that, and then I pulled him into the house to meet Papa – who was quite impressed. So was the rest of the family, who couldn’t get enough of him, especially when he announced: “I’ve come to Annapolis to marry your daughter.” When Mama asked, “How soon?” He replied, “As quickly as possible.”
The next few days were a whirlwind of activity. I used the excitement as excuse to get Hollings to take me to a rather famous restaurant in town, and even to the bar in the basement where unaccompanied ladies never set foot and accompanied ones only rarely. I remember sitting at the bar (shocking!) with an offset fireplace at my back, ordering a cordial for myself while he ordered a Scotch, and the two of us trading sips of each other’s drinks. I admitted that I was showing him off, and he didn’t mind a bit.
We were married in our family church, where the yard was sadly filled with fresh graves. If it wasn’t the social event of the season, it came close.
# # #
So I and Keith and Nancy had these notes of vivid dreams that interlocked. I asked Nancy if she was perturbed that I’d been married to her husband in a former life, but she only laughed and said: “You had him then; I’ve got him now.”
The next step was to try and verify the dreams/memories, so we planned our next vacation-times and arranged to spend a week or so exploring. First we went to Gettysburg, checked into a motel, and then went to tour the battlefield. I’d visited it once before (in this life!) as a little kid, along with my parents. What I chiefly remembered then were the big round tower with the huge painting all around the inside, and the cannons looking like dinosaurs in the mist. This time the weather was bright and sunny, and of course everything looked smaller. The cannons were only sleepy monuments. The painting in the round tower looked dusty and dim, as if it needed cleaning and perhaps retouching.
We walked slowly over the battlefield, quickly identifying the ridge where Meade’s cannons had stood and the hollow behind it where the medical tents had been. Back then it had been an open meadow; now it was studded with foot-thick trees, but we both could still recognize the spot.
As we walked back to the car, Keith and I both slid on a patch of slippery grass and took a slight tumble, earning a wrenched knee and a sprained ankle respectively. When we limped up to the car Nancy asked us what had happened, and Keith quipped, “We were wounded on the battlefield at Gettysburg,” and we played off that joke until our respective injuries healed.
The next stop was Annapolis, and there things got weirder yet. As we drove into the city I was startled at how clear the air was; somehow I’d expected to see a gray haze of smoke hanging low over the town. Keith likewise noticed that the town didn’t “smell right”; he’d expected a pervasive smell of fish, smoke and horse manure. We both noticed a sense of what I could only call “time pressure”, an almost physical weight of time that had passed and human events that had happened since the last time we’d come by this way.
We had two known physical targets to explore: that famous old restaurant and the old church where Hollings and Arabella had married, both now historical sites mentioned in the tourist guidebooks. We went first to the restaurant to eat lunch, where we didn’t recognize anything in particular, but the feeling of time pressure was worse. Keith, whose knee was now hurting seriously, elected to stay at the table while I and Nancy went exploring.
We asked our waiter and found that, yes, there was a basement with a bar in it, that had been operational since before the Civil War. Nancy leading, we headed for the stairs, which were quite narrow, and the steps somewhat small. I remembered that people had been a bit smaller a century ago, so that made sense. I also knew, and told Nancy as she went down the stairs ahead of me, that when she opened the door at the bottom she’d see the bar along the wall to the right and a small offset fireplace to the left. Well, she reached the bottom of the stairs and opened the door, and sure enough, there was the bar to the right and a small offset fireplace – with a small wood-fire burning in it – to the left. We ordered a drink apiece and added up the “confirmations” while Nancy took elaborate notes.
Next we went to the church, where the old grave-stones in the yard were now backed up by newer stones that faithfully copied the names and dates of the originals. As we headed into the church, I knew that from the inside we’d find a stained-glass window showing the Good Shepherd with a badly-drawn lamb. I also knewthat there were internal columns partly blocking the ends of the pews – because that’s where Arabella had sat on so many Sundays, at the far end of the pew, perched behind the column and glancing sideways at that window. Likewise Keith knew that, at the other end of the pew, the top of the newel-post would squeak noisily if twisted a little.
Into the church we went, and promptly saw the internal columns. I went to the far end of the pew and sat down, but saw that the window nearby was of a Victorian design and depicted a delicate angel; obviously the old window had been replaced. Keith went to the other end of the pew and cautiously twisted the top of the newel-post. Sure enough, it squeaked -- loudly. Nancy and I strolled through the rest of the church, looking for anything that would confirm the old memories, and we found an old office-space in the back. Sure enough, the window there was old stained glass – and it depicted the Good Shepherd, carrying a badly-drawn lamb. That window had been shifted to a less publicly-seen position when the new, artistic, Victorian window had been put in.
I was surprised at how bright the window looked, and how very red the Shepherd’s robe was; I remembered the window being darker and that robe being more of a purplish-maroon color. Then another memory clicked, and I knew that back then people heated their homes and wash-water and cooked their meals over wood fires – either in fireplaces or, among the better-off families (like Arabella’s), iron wood-stoves. This meant that the air was constantly full of smoke, the cloud I’d been expecting and part of the smell Keith had expected when we came into town. That smoke constantly stained the outsides of houses – and windows. It would easily have dimmed the church’s window and darkened the color of the Shepherd’s robe. In fact, owning a white-painted house was something of a boast in those days, because it meant that the family had enough money to hire enough servants to wash all the windows and the walls of the house once a year.
We didn’t have the legal clout or resources to go look at the church’s records for any account of a wedding in 1865 of an Arabella Bishop to a Union army captain named Hollings. Neither could we easily look at the town’s antique tax records and see if there were entries for a horse-broker named Bishop during the Civil War years. Nonetheless, we found enough confirmation for the memories from those guided dreams to convince us. Psychic phenomena are real, and reincarnation is real.
I wish I’d told Chuck that before he died.
--Leslie <😉))><
