Perhaps everybody has their own small store of X-Files moments. Mine really happened. A surprising thing, though, is that the ones that sound weirder now felt perfectly natural at the time, while the one that really gave me the Heebie Jeebies at the time seems pretty ordinary in retrospect.
So, come with me now and remember four short moments...
This was odd, not only because I had no reason to think about her, but also because (although I was vaguely aware of her existence) I don't think that I'd ever met our neighbor and had no reason to think that she was anything other than alive, happy and well. Was she old? I don't know -- everybody who no longer attended school was uniformly old, and some of those high-schoolers were getting long in the tooth. I had never spoken or heard of her other than in the most general terms.
But there it was, the thought had come without warning or context, and there was no arguing with it. I went back to concentrating on not stepping on the cracks.
I don't remember exactly what my mother told me when I arrived at home. It was something along the lines of "We had a shock today. Do you know Mrs. Pick next door? Well, she's dead". I don't think that she even noticed when I said "Yes, I know". And it was only later that I began to wonder... How did I know?
I still wonder, sometimes.
The dowser (or diviner) holds some sort of device – traditionally a forked twig – and movement of this device indicates the presence of what is being searched for. It’s pretty clear that this can’t work, and the only real problem with this conclusion is that it's wrong. Not only does dowsing work, and not only was I surprised to find that I can do it, but it may be that lots of people can do it.
Here’s what happened: I was in my senior year at high school, and for some reason the subject of dowsing came up with a couple of friends. I was pretty sure that the whole thing was nonsense, but made a pair of divining rods by bending welding rods into an L-shape, with the short end to be held in the outstretched fist and the long end held out horizontally. This is a standard modern design, and the idea is that involuntary muscular movements of the dowser cause the rods to cross when you make a find of whatever you're concentrating on.
To my great surprise, it worked! I could find water, earthenware and metal underground. It also worked looking for moderately small objects in the shell game if I knew what I was looking for. It most certainly did not work for Find The Lady, probably because one playing card is much like another.
The next surprise came when somebody else tried, and they could do it too. So we tried it with my whole high school class (around twenty people) and found that about a third of them could do it to some degree, and there were a couple who showed it as strongly as I did. Nobody had the faintest idea why or how it worked, but after the initial surprise nobody thought that it was particularly strange, either.
I was taught to meditate by a group that did teach the spiritual stuff, and for a while I attended occasional retreats with them. Pleasant weekends, for the most part, and extremely relaxing. The time I have in mind was at a conference center attached to a monastery in the North of England. It was autumn, and the weather was gloomy and wet (well, there's a surprise!). I think that there were about ten of us, and late in the afternoon we were in a comfortable lounge to meditate.
I don’t know how long this lasted. Subjectively it felt like a few minutes. Awareness of The Egg faded and I returned to my head.
Call it what you like, but I’m absolutely certain that it happened as I describe.
I was in Madrid, and trying to get my apartment in a more orderly state. The closet that I wanted empty was occupied by two very large (for the time) and very dead black & white TV sets. The owner said that she’d had them for years, and would appreciate it if I would get rid of them. The trash pickup wouldn’t take them, and I had small two-seater car that would only have space for them if I put them in the blender first. So they stayed there until I had a rental hatchback that did have space for them. It turned out, though, that this little Renault 5 had room for only one TV, which was an annoyance because the dump where I planned to take them was about 10Km away, and I wanted to return the car first thing the next morning. It was late on Sunday night, dark and cold. I really wanted the space in the closet, though, so I loaded up the first one and set off for the dump.
Madrid was an odd city, at that time (it may still be) because for the most part it had no suburbs. It was heavily built up with various types of “urbanizations” until it suddenly stopped, and the land became rocky, brown, scrubby, arid -- and very empty. My home was near the edge, close to the airport. I headed out on a small country road as the city lights fell behind me, and turned off onto a dirt road at the sign for the municipal dump. The road quickly became rutted and bumpy, and although a rental car is often considered to be the ideal off-road vehicle I began to be worried about getting stuck as various parts of the car grounded. The road slowly became worse, and I considered that I’d seen no buildings – not one – since leaving the city, no vehicles or lights since I turned off onto the dirt road, and precious few vehicles since the city. Unfortunately, by this time I was committed because there was no way that I could turn the car around without getting stuck in the ruts from the trash trucks.
And then I saw a small flat area at the side of the road and pulled off onto it. I thought for a moment: Although the only lights were several miles away, in the city I knew that the dump couldn’t be much further down the road, but I really, really didn’t want to get stuck late at night and a long walk from anywhere. On the other hand, I really, really wanted that closet to be empty. So I did a bad thing: I got out, opened the hatch and pulled out the TV. Pulling it out, I lost my grip and it fell onto the hard ground. It stayed mostly in one piece, but the plastic trim around the screen broke off. I felt bad about just leaving it there, but reasoned that the trash trucks would start coming by in the morning, and surely somebody would stop and throw the TV in the back. I put the plastic trim on top so that it would be easier to pick it all up.
Those lights really were far away. As I looked around the horizon it was astonishing how lonely it was out there. And silent as the grave. I shivered, got back in, turned round extremely carefully and drove home.
The other TV was waiting for me. I really didn’t want to go back, but in it went and back I went. Down the country road, still no other vehicles. About twenty minutes after I’d left it, I turned back onto the dirt road and lurched back into the ruts, holes and bumps. The underside of the Renault was scraping away again and it seemed even worse this time. I was watching carefully for my turnaround but eventually realized that I must have passed the flat area in the profound darkness, even though I’d been looking for it. I was seriously worried by the time I saw a similar place where I could turn round and get rid of my burden. Actually, it looked just like where I’d turned round the first time, except that there was definitely no TV set lying beside the track. Never mind, this would do.
I got out, and shivered. Silent as the grave here, too. Still no lights for miles around. I opened the hatch and pulled out the second TV. As it came out, the light from inside fell on the ground, where I was shocked to see the plastic trim that I had laid on the first one not half an hour before.
The darkness suddenly became full of unseen eyes. The silence suddenly became full of unheard breathing. I got back into the car rather fast and locked the doors before turning round rather quickly.