Childhood memory of a past life?

cross posted at my blog The Orange Orb.

Robert McLuhan at Paranormalia writes on some reincarnation research of children's accounts of their past lives:

Paranormalia: Some Reflections on Children’s Memories: I’ve spent the past few weeks working on Ian Stevenson’s case studies of children who remember a past life. Specifically his four collections of ten or twelve cases each from India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Burma, and Lebanon and Turkey. These case reports are much more detailed, but also less well known than those in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Since they’re in the SPR library here in London I thought I’d get them out and write short summaries of as many as I can. ~ McLuhan

Very interesting. His article (very much worth reading) inspired me to comment on my own childhood experience. Regarding reincarnation -- as a literal event, or how most of us Westerners tend to perceive the concept --  has always seemed a little shaky to me. This is not to say I don't accept that reincarnation is real; I do believe that many souls reincarnate. I'm just not sure on all the particulars; how it works, how much of what we remember and experience as real is literally solid and how much is … something else. Regardless of those nuances, I do not dismiss reincarnation as being actual, I simply think I have a lot to learn, which would include the deep study of esoteric systems that I doubt I'll ever have the time to fully explore.

When I was ten or eleven, I had the following experience. (I don't know if the fact that I did a lot of sleep walking as a child, and had many UFO and "alien" experiences as well as generally odd Fortean and paranormal experiences has anything to do with the following experience. I think there's a connection in there somewhere.)

 I'm standing in the our kitchen, making peanut butter sandwiches for our lunches. Just standing there, by myself, spreading the peanut butter on the bread. I remember the kitchen is a little dim; it's quiet for once around here.    

Suddenly, I am literally plucked from the kitchen by what feels like a giant, invisible hand, and plopped down on a floor covered with straw. I am terrified -- what the hell just happened? I am suddenly two people -- me, the eleven year old from 1965, and someone else. Still me, but someone else. I "know" just know, that I am 15 years old, and this is where I work. I also just know that I work here, and live not far from here, and that it's in the 1600s. I can feel the heavy weight of the clothes I'm wearing, how hot they are! And itchy. A cream colored tight top and heavy brown skirt. I can smell everything! Feel the fire in the huge fireplace, smell the beer and straw and people . . . I am carrying a heavy wood tray full of  plates and drinks. These plates and cups are heavy and crudely made.  I'm hot and a little scared and everything is so heavy! 

This is all real, this is really happening. It's like the present day me from 1965 Los Angeles is inside of the 1600s 15 year old in England. Then, just as abruptly as before, I am "thrown back" into my kitchen in California, making sandwiches.
I was terrified! I remember thinking I had gone insane, or …I don't know, it was so damn strange and real! I left the kitchen, shaking, and just feeling so disoriented. 

True memory of a past life? All these decades later I remember this experience and it is still a very weird, vivid memory.  I have no idea if it was a true glimpse into a past life. It's possible, yes. I don't doubt it. But I can't say for sure. I don't know. (I do have a heavy dose of Celtic ancestry on both sides of my family: Scottish, English, Irish.)

Silver Suited Aliens

I have an article in the current issue of UFO Magazine about Silver Suited Aliens. Here's an oil pastel drawing I did a few years ago of a being I saw in California when I was about four years old. And here's a link to my recent item on Aliens vs. Bigfoot on my blog Frame 352: The Stranger Side of Sasquatch.

Multi-Layered Sleep Walking?

Category: dreams, astral plane, altered state, limbo, missing time
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: 1965

This incident happened when I was eleven. I woke up for school, got dressed, ate,never once realizing how weird it was no one else was up yet. I go into my mother's bedroom, where she's still asleep. I woke her up to tell her it was time to go to school. She was both very irritated and surprised. She said to me "What are you talking about?! It's four o'clock in the morning!" I insisted it wasn't; I remember looking at the clock and seeing it as 8:30, but she had to tell me a few times the real time before a shift happened in my head, and then I saw that it was the real time.

I remember this very clearly; getting up, getting dressed by the heater. We set out our uniforms the night before in front of the heater, to stay warm while we dressed. Our house was a two bedroom, one bath house, with at least five people living in it, sometimes more, depending. (other relatives, etc.) I remember getting dressed and going about everything very matter of factly, never once thinking how weird it was that no one else was up.

Sleepwalkers don't remember their excursions. I'm not sure this was sleepwalking, since I didn't have a sleepwalking problem, and I remember the whole thing quite clearly, awake the whole time. Yet looking at the clock and seeing "my" time not the real time, not at all concerned no one else was up, etc.

One Hell of a Heavy Dream About Aliens

Category: Dream
Location: Eugene, Oregon
Date: February 2009

Last night I had a very intense and vivid dream; a lucid dream (waking up during the dream commenting that I had to be sure to write it down and tell it to others when I awoke) and I even woke up during the dream, went back to sleep, and continued the dream.

BEHIND THE SHED
I'm talking with my mother, who tells me she ran into the woman who lived next door to us when we were kids.(we lived in Los Angeles, time frame would be the early 1960s.) The woman "Mrs. Smith" told my mom she had reclaimed a patch of yard from behind our shed.

At first, I didn't know what mom was talking about. My mother was insistent: "Remember, you and grandma would go back there and do stuff, plant things." No, I didn't remember. It wouldn't make sense for us to go back there and "plant things" since it was dark and overgrown, and not much room.

(In real life, we did have a neighbor, we did have a long narrow shed that we rarely used or went in back of. There were some overgrown bushes completely covering a fence; a house in back of that, and Mrs. Smith's on one side, an alley or walkway on the other and the alley behind that.)

After a lot of pressing on my mother's part, I did remember. And I became unglued. For yes, I did remember: going back there with my grandmother all right. I remembered the abuse; the sexual abuse that went on back there.

I couldn't believe it. I was devastated. In the dream, I was crying, all these memories just came flooding in. I was screaming at my mother: "All these years, all these years! And why now, at this late age? Why now, after so much time, do I finally remember this horrible past?!"

I am just so ... angry, and sad. And yet somehow I'm not surprised. In the dream, I say that I have to tell others, and deal with this.

SPONTANEOUS DRAWINGS
A few days go by. My mom and I are in the house we grew up in (the one where, in "real life" she saw a UFO, and where I had my interactions with the "puppet wolves" and my "invisible aliens.") I tell her I have something extremely important to tell her -- to show her. I am agitated. Scared. I have a sense of urgency.

She asks me if it's about my grandmother, and what happened behind the shed. Yes, I say, but. . .

I remembered, a sort of dream within the dream that, yes, my grandmother and I did go behind the shed, but it wasn't abuse. She did not abuse me.

She and I had interactions with aliens. We'd go back there to meet with them.

Then I showed my mother drawings I made of what they looked like. Oddly enough, not of their faces -- it seems even in dreams I can't remember their faces -- but drawings of their hands, which were sort of claw like, semi-webbed hands, and their clothing, wide, red sleeves stopping just short of their wrists. I show her these drawings I've made, in colored pencil, that I've scanned into the computer. I'm scrolling through on the laptop, showing her drawing after drawing.

I am shocked that I remember this in such detail and it all comes back to me, after all these years, and in such a spontaneous way. I am not happy; this isn't a good thing and it's scary. I realize I have to tell people. In fact, in the dream I speak with one UFO researcher who tells me it's unusual to have "spontaneous recall" in such detail. He's surprised I remember this without being hypnotized.

I keep saying to my mother things like: "This shit really happened! It really happened! That's what was going on back there!"

I don't like this at all. Not at all.

Well, dreams are strange. Relating dreams are always tricky, for one thing, most people (at least in this culture) think they're boring, unless they're your own. And it's impossible to convey the emotional strength, the intensity of a dream. In this dream, the emotions were just overwhelming, along with the fear.

The Synchronicity of Fuzzy Puppet Wolves

Category: Dreams, shared experiences, entities
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: 1950s - 1960s

This was originally published on Tim Binnall's Binnall of America website for my Trickster's Realm column, July, 2007.

The Synchronicity of Fuzzy Puppet Wolves

When I was a child, I’d intentionally wait for “them.” “They” didn’t come until I was ready; until I had gone through all the little steps. Going through the little steps, the delicious wait, and then the floating through the bedroom door, the hall door, the front door and outside and up into the starry sky, was a happy time.

I had to be in bed, flat on my back. Concentrate on the warm yellow light shining under the bedroom door. Then “they” came, several of them, oh, at least four, and somewhere I was levitated, floating through the doors.

I don’t remember what they looked like, or if I ever knew. I do “know” they were small, about my size. Skinny too, not human, like us.

Sometime around age thirteen or so these episodes became less frequent. As I wrote recently on my blog, it was rare when I could intentionally cause these episodes, and when they happened spontaneously, they became scary. I’d often shut down before I could leave my body.

Another event that happened frequently was the “puppet wolves,” visitations, as I called them. These events were connected somehow with the above, but also different. They weren’t the same creatures, for example. It wasn’t quite as pleasant either. And I remember some events happening during the day; still in bed, but daytime.

The fuzzy puppet wolves were very small, not more than about twenty-four inches tall. They were fuzzy/furry, gray, and reminded me of puppets. They weren’t exactly malevolent, but they were quick to be extremely mischievous, pushy, and just not as “nice” as the others. I could see these guys, and remember to this day what they looked like. The other guys, I don’t remember at all, except that they were small. The puppet wolves would gather around my bed, several of them, and they were insistent. They didn’t take no for an answer, and I’d have to go with them. I don’t remember anything other than that.

Not long ago, my husband “Joe” and I were talking about our childhood “weird” experiences; memories of the paranormal, or whatever word you want to use. Before I said anything, he began to tell me of something that happened to him sometimes when he was a kid. While he was in bed, furry gray “things” would gather around the edges of the bed, and tug at him, taking him away. (Neither of us remember where we went.)

I asked him if they reminded him in a way, of wolves; he said yes. Small nasty little wolf puppet, or stuffed animal-toy beings. He had never heard my story before.

Another synchronicity between us. When faced with all these parallel experiences, going back deep into childhood, I find that I can't ignore things like karma, or metaphysical connections, or reincarnation, or. . . something. I’m not sure what it means, but to say it doesn’t mean anything is supremely incorrect.

The Wolf as Totem
I refer to these nasty little beings as “wolves” yet they didn’t hold the wolf spirit. In fact, the wolf is my totem, and the Wolf Clan is one of the clans of the Lenepe, my grandfather’s tribe. (So I’m told.) I’ve had amazing dreams of wolves; often in connection with white wolves and teachers. I call upon Wolf often and he is my friend and guide.

But at the time, a child unfamiliar with the gift of Wolf and all its meanings, I tended to think of these persistent unpleasant creatures as wolves.

Puppet Symbolism and Invisibility
It’s interesting that I thought of these beings as puppets; that is, puppets without any people operating them. They were just empty moving “skins.” They were footless, too, no legs. A screen memory, a false impression to cover whatever was “really” there? Puppet implies that something else is behind it; that the puppet isn’t doing the thing, the person operating the puppet is in control. Whatever was behind the wolf puppets was not revealed. Or, remembered.

Invisible Aliens
In looking back over a lot of what I’ve written about aliens and odd experiences, I realize I use the term “invisible alien” a lot. I don’t recall what they looked like, these beings that came to float me out doors at night. I don’t remember parts of UFO sightings I've had; missing time. Whether these are connected or not I don’t know.

There are many layers to these kind of experiences, and I suspect symbols replace symbols that replace yet other symbols, all to make us more comfortable, to protect us, -- or us to protect ourselves -- as we try to exist in the mundane world. Our journeys into the astral/other worlds remain submerged in our subconscious. It’s been so for a very long time, as has our need to go down and retrieve these memories. Retrieve the correct memories. With each “dive” into our subconscious, we move closer to some kind of understanding.

(for example, I wrote that I had to concentrate on the yellow light underneath the bedroom door. I told my mother about these experiences, and she insisted that there was never a light on in the hall after we went to bed. I asked her, then, what light was it that I was seeing? she had no idea.)

Was my memory of the light a true one of the hall light, and it is my mother that is incorrect? Or is my mother right, and my memory of the hall light a cover memory for a very different kind of light, from a very different source?

I wonder if I’ll ever know.

"Don't Worry, They'll Be Back . . ."

Category:UFO Sighting
Location:Los Angeles, California, Sherbourne Dr.
Date: approximately 1964

My mother liked to sit out on the front porch after the dinner dishes were done, and just have a few minutes to herself. When she did that, we knew not to go out there or bug her. One evening she calls out to us, excitedly, to come out and look at the "flying saucer." I remember everyone just teasing her, "Sure, mom," and they wouldn't even go out, but I did.

My mom was pointing to the sky, to the two story apartment building kitty corner from us. "It was right there! RIGHT there!" she said, and described it. Round, colored lights, hovering, then just disappeared. She was very disappointed, and worried she wouldn't be believed. She insisted it wasn't a plane, getting impatient with the idea she wouldn't know what a plane or helicopter looked like.

I told her: "Don't worry mom, they'll be back." I remember this incident very well, and remember saying that to her. What I don't remember saying, and my mother to this day insists I did say, was "They always come back."