Vibrations From the Road

Listen and Obey

2011-10-22T15:35:00.003-04:00

So here I am, flying up I-75 north on my sweet Melissa.

In Florida on the Interstates there are three speed limits: In the right lane, the “slow” lane, you go 80 miles an hour; in the middle lane you go 90+; in the left lane all bets are off!

Today’s a beautiful day with plenty of blue sky and sunshine. I’m feeling good, Melissa’s running great, and it’s only around noon–I still have half the day left to ride. Aaahhhhh…down time. It feels so good! So I’m zipping along in the right lane, the “slow” lane, and I’m pissing some people off because I’m holding my speed down to around 70. It’s such a pretty day, and I’m in no hurry to be anywhere, and I just want to cruise along and enjoy the road and the sights. Let ‘em pass me…there are two other lanes.

So I’m enjoying the scenery and the feeling of motion and I’m thinking no thoughts in particular and suddenly my feel-good time is interrupted by a familiar voice in my head, and the voice says, “Move into the far left lane.”

Hmm…I don’t want to move over into the far left lane: I’m comfortably situated in traffic with plenty of room to maneuver if something goes wrong, and after assessing traffic conditions I’ll have to do some mighty tall riding to wiggle through this speeding traffic and get into the left lane where the crazy people are holding an unsanctioned road race!

But the voice speaks again, with a solemn insistence, and now it uses my name:

“John; move into the far left lane.”

I sigh. I should know better than to argue with the Powers That Be. I downshift, grab a handful of throttle, and throw my heavy iron beast to the left. I have to do some intricate up-shifting/downshifting/throttle on/throttle off/brakes on/brakes off lean-and-weave skillful riding to get into the left lane, but I manage to do so without incurring too much road rage from my fellow travelers.

So now I’m zooming along in the left lane wondering: What in the world was that all about? I ask my guys why their insistence that I suddenly change lanes but they give me no response. I keep checking my rearview mirrors and looking around me at the traffic; everything seems to be safe and sound, and then, suddenly, I’m rolling through the remnants of a wreck so fresh that stuff is still rolling and bouncing around the highway! I glance over and I catch a glimpse of a man’s face as he wrestles with the steering wheel of his car, which has spun around and is now facing in the wrong direction on this high-speed Interstate!

Drivers in all three lanes begin to slam on their brakes and begin their own evasive maneuvers, trying to avoid the car that is now pointing the wrong way; trying to avoid the bits and pieces of cars that are rolling and bouncing on the highway; and trying to avoid each other. It’s a real white knuckle, hold your breath experience!

I slow down just slightly to see if I need to stop and render assistance, but other cars are already doing so.

I sail through this horrific accident totally unaffected, but I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t listened to, and obeyed, the voice that told me to move into the far left lane, away from the right lane where I had been, in which the wreck occurred only moments later! Thank You, Spirit!

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If we will train ourselves to listen to the voice of Spirit we can hear instructions that will literally save our lives!

That voice may speak when our minds are on other things, when we find ourselves preoccupied. It’s vital to learn to recognize those little prompts that indicate that Spirit has a message for us. We may get a tingle up and down our spines; a sick to the stomach feeling; a slight headache or a pain somewhere in our bodies; or just the sudden feeling that something is not quite right somehow. Or it could be unexpected delay after unexpected delay that prevents you from getting out of the house on time.

That’s the time for us to turn our attention to the Other Side, and to ask Spirit what the matter is…what message they have to give to us.

Or, if you’re as fortunate as I am, that voice may just break into your consciousness and speak directly to you.

When that happens…obey! Be obedient to that voice. It may be inconvenient, difficult, or even embarrassing for you to listen to and obey that command. You may have to make an excuse and leave a party. You may have to postpone a trip although you’ve already driven halfway there. You may have to cancel plans that you’ve looked forward to for weeks.

But the Other Side can see a lot farther down the road than we can, and if we entrust ourselves to that power and believe that it can help us and that it has our best interests at heart, then we owe it to that power, and to ourselves, to obey that voice when it issues a warning or a command.

For in so doing you may find yourself, as I have many times, thankful to the Other Side for having saved your life!

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright © 2011 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Welcome!

2010-07-13T08:24:00.004-04:00

Vibrations From the Road comprises 27 true stories of the paranormal. Begin with February, 2009 which contains an introduction to internationally known psychic John Russell, and enjoy the stories in sequence or at random, however you wish to choose.

In addition to amazing accounts of the paranormal John's stories will also offer insight into what these experiences mean and what the Other Side may be trying to teach us. John also includes some valuable lessons in personal psychic development so that you, too, may learn to successfully perform psychometry, record spirit voices, etc. You'll also get a little bit of an education in the world of motorcycling, for it is on John's iron horse, Melissa, that most of these adventures take place (Think Then Came Bronson with a psychic flavor added.).

Sprinkled with humor and bathed in pathos John's accounts will make you laugh, cry, and think, and hopefully will inspire you to pursue the deepening of your own spiritual growth so that your life is enriched and lived more fully and enjoyably.

So mount up and let's ride! We have lots of miles to cover before we rest our weary heads from the adventures discovered by examining the Vibrations From the Road. Enjoy!

The Two Old Crazy Hermit Brothers of Black Rock Forest

2009-10-05T07:19:00.004-04:00

I have a good friend back in upstate New York named Bill Yeoman. Bill’s a fellow photographer, and he also happened to be a volunteer patrol ranger for the Black Rock Forest.

Bill introduced me to Black Rock, and we would take Bill’s Jeep and make frequent trips into the forest to photograph some of the most beautiful nature I’ve ever experienced.

Every now and then a big, yellow school bus would bring a load of city kids, say from Manhattan, to experience the forest. Sound carries a great distance in the woods, and when these kids arrived and unloaded and began to chatter and laugh and yell you could hear them from a long way away.

One day Bill had parked his Jeep and we had walked some distance away from it, taking photographs as we went. We were anywhere from half a mile to a mile away from the area where Bill had parked when we suddenly heard the yells and squeals of kids coming from the parking area. Bill and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes–the quiet sanctuary of the forest had been invaded by noise.

We finished photographing the particular area we had hiked to and began the walk back to the Jeep. Bill and I had developed the habit of leaving the legs of our tripods fully extended, closing them together and hoisting them up onto our shoulders, like you sometimes will carry a rifle or a shotgun. That way if we saw something we wanted to stop and photograph we didn’t have to waste time by extending each section of the tripod’s legs.

We were carrying our tripods that way as we rounded a curve in the road, which lead uphill to the parking area, and we caught sight of the big yellow bus and the rowdy group of teenagers, who were making about as much noise as a busload of raucous chimps.

We closed about half the distance between us and the group when suddenly the kids caught sight of us and they instantly became totally quiet! I mean, you could have heard a pin drop in that forest!

Bill and I looked at each other, shrugged, and kept on walking uphill toward the parking area. As we got closer we noticed two very odd things: all of the kids were staring at us wide-eyed, and some had mouths agape; and their teacher was almost doubled over with laughter.

She began to approach us and she could hardly talk for laughing, and all the while the kids remained transfixed and silent.

When she got to us she explained that she had been telling the kids a tall tale about two old crazy hermit brothers that were reputed to live in the forest, hunting for game with their rifles and shotguns, fishing in the lakes, and either living in caves or some dilapidated shack deep within the woods. The old hermit brothers were shabby in appearance, sported scruffy beards, and were both a little whacko, and carried their guns with them wherever they went! Let’s hope we don’t run into them!

And about that time Bill and I emerged from the forest, both of us shabbily dressed, sporting scruffy beards, and carrying on our shoulders what could have been mistaken to be, from a short distance, rifles or shotguns!

The teacher resumed her laughter as she told us how the timing of our emergence from the woods couldn’t have been scripted to be any better. We joined in the laughter as well, bade her good day, and walked past the group of kids, who were still as quiet as church mice and were regarding us with distinctly wary expressions.

It’s an experience that I will treasure for all of the rest of my days, and it’s a story that I love to retell.

We all need a little break from the seriousness of life. I hope you’ve enjoyed this one.

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Biker tip: Two things a biker should never be without: A Leatherman multi-tool, and a Victorinox Swiss Army knife (I recommend the Super Tinker). They will pull your fat out of the fire many times, both when you’re on the road and when you’re not.

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Bloom Where You're Planted

2009-09-29T15:17:00.000-04:00

We frequently hear the admonition to “Bloom where you’re planted.” Well, sometimes that just isn’t possible…

…Back in Cornwall, New York, where the Old Lady and I lived together for about 6 years, I was known as “the rose man.” A typical conversation would go like this:

“Where do you live?” someone would ask me.

“Well,” I would say, “do you know where the traffic circle is? You come around the circle, and Canterbury Brook Restaurant is on your right hand side, and we’re directly across the street in the two-story–”

“Oh…The rose man!”

Yeah, that was my house. I grew a front yard full of some of the most gorgeous, fragrant roses that you have ever laid eyes on, and I became known as the rose man.

One of my rose bushes that I had planted by the front porch was not doing well. As a matter of fact it looked like it was dying. It was planted in the exact same soil conditions as the other roses were, and it had received the exact same fertilizer, the exact same application of pesticide, the exact same amount of sunlight, and the exact same amount of water as the other roses. And it had received the exact same amount of care and attention. But day after day I watched it dwindle away: not only was it not growing, it was shriveling!

Being a gardener for most of my life I had learned that some plants make it and some don’t, and the ones that don’t get pulled and replaced with a healthier plant that will thrive.

I bought a new rose bush for the spot where the sickly rose was planted, and then I had a thought: I wondered if, in spite of the identical treatment that this and the other roses had received, this rose couldn’t prosper because of some contaminant or disease in that particular area of my yard. If that were the case then I could plant new roses there until the cows came home and they would all die, succumbing to the same mysterious ailment. Hmmm.

I didn’t want to fool with having the soil tested, and I had already bought the new rose bush, so…out with the old, and in with the new. If this new bush failed to thrive I would have the soil tested and see what was wrong with that particular spot in my yard.

I planted the new rose in the same manner in which I had planted all of the others, including its predecessor. And I was about to throw the sickly rose bush into the trash when I received a flash of inspiration, and I realized that I was about to be taught another of life’s many lessons.

I was inspired to plant the sickly rose bush in a different spot in the yard, and so I did, and I watched and waited.

And lo and behold, the new rose bush–which I had planted in the exact same spot as the sickly one–grew like the proverbial weed and was vigorous, strong, and healthy and quickly flowered.

And amazingly enough the sickly rose bush, once transplanted to a different spot in the yard, recovered almost overnight and began to grow strong and healthy and it, too, began to flower!

And this is the lesson that I learned:

Sometimes you can’t bloom where you’re planted!

The exact same conditions that were killing one rose bush proved to be beneficial to another.

The rose bush that was dying received the exact same planting and care as before, but was simply moved to a different part of the yard, where it then recovered and flourished.

I kept track of both bushes until we moved to Florida, and they both continued to grow and flower and exhibit perfect health; they just had to be in the right part of the yard.

Just like us.

Sometimes you just can’t bloom where you’re planted!

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I was watching a music video the other day by the band Shine Down, for their song (which I love) called Second Chances. In the video’s story there’s a girl practicing ballet in the family garage, but holding onto higher aspirations: she wants a serious career as a dancer, and there’s going to be a tryout…in another city in her state (or maybe out of state).

This video serves to illustrate and amplify my point even further: There are no opportunities for this girl to bloom, as a ballerina, as a dancer, where she’s planted! The “soil” that would be perfect for another girl–that is, to continue to study dance locally, graduate from the local high school and college, and then open a dance studio in her hometown–would be poisoned soil for the girl with higher aspirations! She literally would not be able to bloom where she was planted, and indeed, might wither away through depression, loss of focus, loss of interest, abandonment of her dreams...

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And so you, my friend: Are you truly blooming where you’re planted, or are you slowly withering away in circumstances and surroundings and relationships that are not conducive to your health, growth, and well-being?

Are you able to achieve all of your hopes and goals and dreams right where you’re at, or do you need to pull up your roots and transplant yourself to soil more suitable for the growth and development of your goals?

Are you in a dangerous neighborhood where it’s risky to walk outside after dark, or maybe even sometimes during the day? Time to pull up roots, my friend!

Are you in a job that’s slowly killing your spirit in spite of your best efforts to make it work out for you? Time for some new soil!

Are you in a relationship, a marriage, a friendship, a religion, a club, a group, a school, a whatever that doesn’t contribute to your growth and your needs, or that maybe even discourages your growth and your needs? Time for a new environment!

One of the very most important lessons we can learn in life is that we sometimes CAN’T bloom where we’re planted, and that we need to transplant ourselves to a place that’s conducive to our health, prosperity, and overall well-being.

If you’re one of the lucky few who seem to be able to thrive in any environment into which they’re thrust, God bless you!

But, if you’re like the majority of us seem to be, maybe you can’t bloom where you’re planted, and you need a change–be it a large or a small change–in order for the flowers of your life to be able to achieve full, radiant bloom. Maybe you need to try some different soil until you find some that suits your needs; maybe you need to be in a different part of the yard.

And this old Earth is a mighty big yard…

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Biker tip: Try a “Fartlek” ride. Fartlek is a Swedish word and can be loosely translated as “speed play…” i.e. playing with speed. It’s a term runners are familiar with (and I am, since I used to run long distances) and in running the concept of Fartlek is not so much aligned with our familiar concept of interval training, which tends to be more regimented, as it is with the true idea of playing with speed. During a Fartlek training session, for example, you might run at an easy warm-up pace, walk awhile, decide to run up and down a hill multiple times, rest, run at a medium pace and then break into a top speed sprint for as long as you can hold it, jog to recover, sprint again, walk to recover, etc. The idea is to “run as you feel,” and not just how you feel physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. A Fartlek session should focus on having fun! Try the Fartlek concept for your next ride…rather than heading out the door with a specific destination in mind and a specific time to arrive there, instead head out the door with no destination at all in mind and ride where you “feel” like riding! Want to make a scenic loop? Go ahead. You’ve completed the scenic loop, but it was so beautiful and relaxing that you want to immediately ride it again…go ahead! Now you want to stop at a convenience store and refresh with a cool drink? Great. Now you feel the urge to get on the highway and just ride until it feels like time to do something different…you get the idea. Throw in some of these “Fartlek” rides every now and then and your rides won’t get stale or boring!

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Psychic tip: Life’s too short to drink bad wine.

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Psychic experiment: Ask G – d to show you how to have more fun!

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Next week’s post: The Two Old Crazy Hermit Brothers of Black Rock Forest

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Psychometry -- How to do it

2009-09-22T09:40:00.002-04:00

We welcome Autumn, 2009 today with this post!

Psychometry: the ability to obtain information about a person or event by touching an object related to that person or event.

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Does psychometry work? I can assure you that it does!

I was having drinks with a friend when I admired one of her rings and I asked her if she would remove it and allow me to hold it. She did, and I began to receive visions: I told her that she bought the ring on a bright, sunny day that was either cloudless all day or with very few clouds, which she confirmed as being correct. I told her that she did not buy the ring in a jewelry store but rather outside, from a vendor on the street, which she validated as also being true. I also told her that she did not buy the ring locally but in a city some distance away, possibly Austin, Texas, which she again was able to verify. I shared more visions with her, all of which she confirmed as being accurate and pertinent facts surrounding the circumstances of the purchase of her ring.

Another example follows, and I’ll let my friend give his testimonial in his own words:

“I've known John for about ten years. I have been his business associate and own some of his paintings, which are quite spiritual in their own fashion.
“Never, however, until recently, did I think he could tell me things about objects that I owned, the history of which he had no knowledge. But he was able to do this, in a way that was not simply good guessing.
“In one case he had a vision of a person and workplace that existed some twenty five years ago that was connected to a pocket knife which I serendipitously pulled out of my tool box. He told me some things that were very unsettling and which had been true at the time, most importantly about the relationship of two people at the workplace, one of which was my father and the other, a man I knew, and how they had had a falling-out over money. I had not thought about this in years and it astounded me that he would say this. Especially since I remained silent as he spoke about the knife and gave him no clue as to the accuracy of his remarks. I sat stolidly, as though playing a poker hand. But John had the straight flush and called, and I had to tell him he was on the mark…”

Okay, psychometry works for me, but will it work for you? I submit to you that it already does, on a nearly daily basis! Here’s how: You look at your whatnot shelves and a knickknack from a vacation you took years ago catches your eye. You take the knickknack off of the shelf and hold it in your hands, turning it this way and that as you look at it, perhaps gently stroking it or rubbing it with affection and as you do so memories from that vacation begin to flood your mind…in your mind’s eye you can “see” the hotel you stayed at; and oh, yes, there was this delightful little restaurant down the road that served the best steak you’ve ever eaten; and that’s right–the kids weren’t with you…they stayed with your parents and just you and your husband enjoyed this vacation together. It’s been so long ago, you think as you continue to caress and gaze at the little souvenir. More and more memories come back to you, including events and details of things that you had forgotten, and you find that your other senses begin to get involved: You can nearly smell and taste that delicious steak from the little restaurant! Warm feelings flood over you and your emotions rise as you remember the romantic canoe ride on the lake with your husband just as the sun came up. You can see the crowded little shop in which you bought the souvenir you’re holding in your hands now.

You’ve just performed psychometry!

You agree with me that yes, an object that you touched produced a flood of accurate images in your mind’s eye, but they were images of events that you had actually experienced; touching the object merely brought back your actual memories of those events, nothing more.

True; yes. But, the object itself acted as an agent to stimulate your memories– and consider this as a possibility: Maybe the “memory” of every event experienced by everything and everyone on this planet is still “out there” somewhere, and can be accessed if we know how to do it! It’s an astounding concept, I know, but bear with me and accept it as a possibility.

And I further submit to you that there may be several different “types” of “memories” out there for us to discover: There’re the memories of the person who owned the object; there’re the memories of events that played out around that person as they went through life, whether they were conscious of those events or not, but which nonetheless attached themselves to that object; and then, there’re the memories of the object itself! To accept that last statement of belief you will have to accept that an inanimate object can possess, or be possessed by, a type of intelligence.

But right now, let’s teach you how to perform psychometry!

You’re going to need a friend who possesses several necessary qualities, but the most important of these qualities is that your friend must be in control of a lengthy, detailed, and accurate memory; don’t choose one of your friends who is scatterbrained or forgetful. Choose someone who is intelligent, focused, and who pays attention to and remembers the events and details of their life and the lives of their loved ones. Why? Because it won’t do any good for you to receive accurate visions and impressions if your friend’s memory is so poor that they can’t validate what you’re receiving.

The next quality that your friend must possess is total honesty. If you are receiving visions and impressions that, after careful consideration, your friend cannot validate as accurate then they must tell you so without fear of hurting your feelings. Likewise you want someone who is not afraid to open up to you about anything that you may sense, see, or feel when you perform psychometry on their object: Many times when performing psychometry there are some rather surprisingly intimate details about a person’s life that may come up!

Your friend should also have an open mind about experimenting with psychometry, and should be willing to invest some time with you as you learn. Some people will show a talent for psychometry almost immediately while others may have to practice for several months and it’ll be helpful to you if your friend is as excited about this psychic experimentation as you are.

And maybe your friend would like to reciprocate and develop their ability at performing psychometry, too.

Here’s how to get started: Have your friend choose a personal object that they both know the history of (where it came from or where they bought it or who gave it to them as a gift, etc.) and that they have also carried frequently or handled frequently–it’ll be a little easier for you starting out if there is a substantial amount of personal energy invested in your friend’s object for you to discover.

But, and this is extremely important: To start with you should not know anything at all about your friend’s object! You don’t want to cheat, and you don’t want to perform guesses inspired by a little knowledge: “Well, my friend doesn’t know this, but I saw her at a restaurant one night when her husband was out of town and I know she received this locket as a gift from a very handsome brown-haired man!” Now taking a little knowledge about an object and then mistaking imagination for psychometric ability you could conceivably proceed to concoct the following scenario: “I see a handsome brown-haired man, and a restaurant. He gazes lovingly at you and gives you this locket while you’re having dinner together. Your husband was out of town. Oh my god! You had an affair with this man!”

Imagine how incredibly stupid you’ll feel when you find out that the handsome brown-haired man is your friend’s good looking brother, and that he presented her with this locket as a keepsake which holds a family portrait! So, the bottom line is: Don’t guess! Don’t concoct things from your own imagination. Let the images come to you without cheating, or you could not only make a complete fool out of yourself, as in our above example, but it could also cost you a friendship as well.

Okay, so you’ve selected the right friend to experiment with, and your friend has selected an object which he or she has an intimate knowledge and good memory of but which you don’t, and now you’re ready to begin.

If you’re going to take this seriously, turn off your TV, your cell phones, and other disturbances and experiment in a place of peace and quiet where you will not be interrupted.

Your friend should have a pen and paper handy to record your visions and impressions. Your friend should not make shocked facial expressions, suck in their breath sharply in surprise, or shake their head no or nod their head yes, and they also should not comment at all on what you’re saying until you announce that you’re through, that you don’t believe that you will receive any more visions or impressions, and then, and only then, you and your friend can sit down together and go through what you’ve said and assess your accuracy.

Take your friend’s object in your hands, take a few deep breaths, calm yourself, and calm your mind. If it helps you, close your eyes. Ask the object to reveal itself to you. You don’t have to speak those words aloud, but you may ask silently if you prefer to do so.

And then, wait for images, emotions, feelings, impressions, aromas, etc. to come to you, and when they do, simply tell them to your friend. Don’t censor yourself; don’t say: “This is going to sound really stupid;” don’t second-guess yourself or try and explain a vision that you don’t understand. And remember one thing: The more bizarre or seemingly incongruous the vision or feeling that comes to you, the more likely that it will be accurate! Just remember that you don’t know everything about your friend’s life, even if you think that you do, and a vision that you receive that you may think is out of character for your friend may indeed be correct.

For example let’s say that your friend has handed you a necklace with a large turquoise stone. You know that your friend loves to vacation in Arizona and New Mexico and that she many times purchases turquoise there, so the temptation is going to be to blurt out, “You bought this on a trip to Arizona!” Don’t. I’ve bought some gorgeous turquoise in New York City! Let the images, the impressions, the visions…come; don’t guess. Be patient.

Oh my! You suddenly feel cold! The piece of turquoise on the necklace feels like an ice cube in your hands! How strange! You know your friend goes to a warm climate to…nope, nope, nope! Get that out of your mind! Your friend may not have bought the necklace in Arizona or New Mexico!!! Focus on the feeling: What is it telling you?

“I don’t know why I’m getting this, but this necklace feels as cold as ice to me! I can’t explain it.” You don’t have to explain it. You’ve said enough. Wait and see if you get any more impressions while your friend writes down what you’ve said.

Suddenly an image of an old man presents itself to you! You don’t know anyone in your friend’s life who looks like…cut it out! Let the image speak to you! Let the image tell you its story!

“Okay, I’m seeing an old man with a really wrinkled, craggy face. I think he wears suspenders a lot?! Anyway, he’s smiling, and he seems to be smiling at you, like he’s really happy with you. And he stinks! He smells like tobacco, but it’s some kind of really odd tobacco smell.”

Good. Keep going. Maybe you only get a few more impressions; maybe you get twenty or thirty. And when you’re through you may just discover that your friend sits there wide-eyed and tells you how her father, before he died, who was a wrinkly, craggy-faced old man with an affinity for wearing suspenders surprised her with this necklace as a gift because of her love for turquoise, and he gave it to her by…hiding it in the freezer in the ice cube bin and then asking her to go and freshen up his drink with some ice! WOW! So that’s why the turquoise suddenly felt cold. (Now you also see why it’s important that you have a friend that remembers the minute details of life, rather than someone who says, “Yeah, I received this necklace as a gift, but I’m not sure I really remember from who.”)

And you also learn from your friend that your friend’s dad often smiled at her in a proud, affectionate way.

And that he also smoked a pipe, that he loved Prince Albert tobacco, and that he always mixed in a small piece of fresh apple with the tobacco, thus the odd aroma. (This bizarre example is from an actual reading I did for one of my clients!)

And that’s how you perform psychometry…it’s just that easy, and it’s just that hard. And, as with anything else, practice, practice, practice.

And pay attention to yourself as you’re practicing psychometry: there may be a particular feeling that comes over you when you’re “in the zone” and you just know that the information that you’re receiving is correct.

And as you get better and better then you may be able to someday tell one of your friends, as I did, “You bought this from an outside street vendor in Austin on a sunny day.”

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I instructed my wife, who has never before performed psychometry, just as I have instructed you, and I gave her a memento of mine that she was unfamiliar with. She received several bits of information from the object which she told me, and she was about 90% accurate!

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Here are some fun tidbits to ponder:

1. Our memories are a type of time machine.

2. When you become proficient you can perform “connective psychometry” (Connective psychometry is a term I’ve coined.) as I did with some items that I believe were replica items when I investigated the assassination of President Lincoln: If you’re skilled as a psychic you can utilize the replica object to connect with the memories, events, etc., that are associated with the original object, even if that object is lost, and the results you obtain will be as valid as if you were touching the original.

3. There is a problem inherent in all psychic work when viewing the past: People who don’t know that someone or something existed won’t be able to verify the details that you’re giving to them even if those details are accurate: If the corner grocery store used to be a house of ill repute several generations ago and no one is aware of that history and you happen to pick up on that bit of psychic information people will think that you’re inaccurate when in fact you have procured a highly accurate detail of history from the mists of time. And time and nature both conspire together to obliterate the evidence of a particular life: I can take you to places where there were houses, and the forest has reclaimed the land to such a degree that there’s no evidence left of any human occupation!

4. Can an object possess intelligence, or be possessed by intelligence? What do you think?

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BANANA, FL UPDATE: I have not been able to return to old Banana, Florida yet (Read my post titled, “Going Bananas”); but I did have an interesting experience which I believe to be related and which serves to keep this event in the forefront of my mind: while eating Chinese food my fortune cookie offered the opportunity to learn how to say a word in Chinese (Mandarin)…the word?…Banana!

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Biker tip: Tans are cool; sunburns aren’t, and on a bike you’ve got windburn to add to the sun’s attempt at turning you into a broiled lobster. If you’re fair-skinned and you spend a few hours in the Florida sun flying down the highway you can end up with such a bad sunburn that it requires medical attention. I am red-haired and fair skinned and freckled to boot, and on top of all of that for years I took a medication that made me photosensitive. I can highly recommend Coppertone Sport SPF 50 continuous spray sunblock. It’s a great product. I spray it on about ten to fifteen minutes before I want to hit the road, and I can stay out in the sun all day and not burn! And it stays on, even if you sweat heavily like I do. If you’re concerned about needing a reapplication later in the day then toss it in the saddlebag and take it along with you–better safe than sorry. Oh, and use a sunblock for your lips, too! ChapStick makes a good one. Trust me, use it: My lips were once so windburned and sunburned that they swelled up and oozed blood and lymph fluid for three days! Not fun, and not a pretty sight! Eventually you’ll have to get off the bike, and you may be at a lake or other recreation area where shade is not plentiful. Carry a wide-brimmed cloth hat with you that you can roll up and stash in your saddlebag, and when you arrive at your destination swap the hat for your helmet and you can continue to enjoy your time outdoors.

Now, what if you’ve already gotten a pretty bad sunburn but you still have to ride? Wear sunglasses, and a helmet to protect your face and head. Wear jeans, gloves, and a long sleeved T-shirt. Yeah, you may be a tad hotter than you’d like to be, but you’ll save your precious skin from suffering further damage. And don’t forget the wide-brimmed hat for when you get off the bike!

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Psychic tip: Never argue with a skeptic; it’s a waste of time.

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Psychic experiment: An easy way to find an object that you’ve misplaced: Take a plain drinking glass; it should be made of clear glass, and not made of plastic, acrylic, etc. Think of the object that you’ve misplaced. Visualize it in your mind’s eye. In your mind speak silently and tell this object to reveal its whereabouts to you. Do the above for a couple of minutes or so and then turn the glass upside down on the dinner table and say aloud (naming the lost object; let’s say for example that you’ve misplaced a favorite wrench and you’ve searched and searched throughout your house, your garage, and you’ve looked amongst your other tools and you still can’t find it): “My lost wrench, where are you? I need you! Reveal your whereabouts to me. Spirit, please help me to find my wrench.” Now leave the glass turned upside down on the dinner table until you find the lost object. Every time you walk through your kitchen and happen to gaze at the glass ask the lost object to reveal its whereabouts to you and again ask Spirit to help you find the lost object. You may find it in a matter of minutes, or it may take days or weeks. I tried this experiment when I couldn’t find one of the cable locks for my shotgun. (Some psychic I am, huh? J ) In about ten minutes from when I turned the glass upside down a clear voice inside my head asked me a simple question: “Where is your shotgun case?” Well, I knew where my shotgun case was…it wasn’t lost! So why was the Other Side asking me…oh, no…no way! But sure enough, when I went and opened up my shotgun case there inside was my lost cable lock! It works! Try it. (Update, September 22, 2009: I just successfully utilized this technique again to find another lost object!)

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Next week’s post: Bloom Where You’re Planted

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

No, We Can't

2009-09-15T09:40:00.001-04:00

President Barack Obama built a campaign platform on the slogan: “Yes we can!”

Nike frequently cajoles us: “Just do it!”

Nitwits from every arena of life try to convince us that if we want something bad enough, we can have it!

Well meaning but severely misguided individuals inform us that we can be anything that we want to be, and no doubt they will now point to President Obama as proof.

To those who say, “Yes we can!” I am here to offer a loud rejoinder: “No, we can’t!”

It’s about time that someone spoke up against the idiotic positive thinking and misplaced optimism that passes for true ambition and the recognition of genuine talent coupled with the proper tools to attain the desired goals.

Together we will confront the truth.

The fact of the matter is that a marathon (for those of you who are not into sports a marathon is a long-distance footrace) is 26.2 miles of hard running. The best runners in the world will achieve a victory in the marathon with a winning time of around 2 hours or less! This marathon winner will have a positive, “can do” mindset. Perhaps he or she will also practice meditation and visualization techniques, during which the runner will attempt to see, hear, taste, smell, and feel themselves running a particular race course in a particular winning time. Over and over again the runner will, in their imagination, hear the shot from the starting pistol, the sounds of their competitors’ running shoes striking the asphalt, and the rhythm of their own breathing. The runner will imagine the faces of the crowds lining the road, and will visualize him or herself as being at the front of the pack of runners and looking at the press vehicle that carries the camera that will televise the race.

Over and over again the runner will, in imagination, smell the aromas of nature, taste their own sweat as it runs down their face into their mouth, and feel how strong their stride is as they burn up mile after mile in their quest for victory.

The runner will have coaches and health experts and access to the finest training methods on the planet, and perhaps access to biofeedback techniques, “success coaches,” and medical testing that will tell the runner exactly how his or her body is performing.

All of these people together will tell the runner, in effect, that, “Yes, you can!” The runner will tell him or herself, “Yes, I can!”

And for all of this optimism, for all of this positive input and positive thinking, and in spite of all the many other methods employed to ensure the runner’s success, more than likely the runner will not win, or will not win consistently. There have been a few marathon runners in history that were consistent winners: Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar; but time and distance took its toll on them, too.

Now let’s further examine the facts of this example. These people who run in the marathons have been running for most of their lives; in fact, most of them have run seriously and maybe even competitively since they were kids. They were built to run: they have lean frames, lungs that utilize oxygen efficiently, strong and efficient hearts, and leg muscles that can propel them at fast speeds for long distances.

So when it comes to utilizing mental/spiritual techniques as a part of their training regimen they are indeed thinking positively and optimistically, but that optimistic thought is built on the very real and solid foundation of a physical body that is inherently able to run long distances competitively to begin with!

In other words, their faith is not misplaced.

It’s vitally important that we understand this, because for too long we’ve managed to convince unqualified people that they can indeed succeed in accomplishing the goal that they desire, even if that goal is totally unrealistic for them to desire in the first place.

Picture this:

A male baby is born. As he grows up he is beset with health problems: he has inherited the family’s trait of severe asthma, and even with the best medication available he still wheezes after walking up a couple of flights of stairs. He has a mild case of early onset rheumatoid arthritis, which makes his joints painful and therefore it’s difficult for him to exercise regularly. His feet have hurt him from an early age and he has difficulty walking any significant distance, or sometimes he even has difficulty just standing for any length of time. On top of all of these very real health problems he is also chronically overweight and has a dickens of a time losing even a few pounds.

Now folks, this man can pray to every god in the universe, and he can think all of the positive, optimistic, “can do” thoughts that he will, and he can visualize himself as healthy and athletic and his emotions can soar as he watches the Nike commercials and he can read every self-help book available, but the reality is that he will never be the winner of the Boston Marathon! He can have all of the faith in the world that he can achieve this, but his faith will be sorely misplaced, for the reality of the foundation that is his body will not allow his fantasy to be built upon it!

This man, were he to fulfill his dream of being the winner of the Boston Marathon, would first and foremost have to be the recipient of a Miracle. This Miracle would have to arrive in the form of a complete healing of the man’s body so that he was not only no longer asthmatic, but now his lungs functioned at above average capacity and efficiency, as distance runners’ lungs tend to do. His rheumatoid arthritis and its subsequent bone and joint damage would have to disappear and he would now have to have the capacity for regular, sustained, highly vigorous exercise and training. His aching feet would have to be suitably transformed into platforms capable of supporting his body mass through hundreds and thousands of miles of training runs. And he would have to go, overnight, from El Gordo to El Flaco!

If this Miracle were to transpire and our man is now possessed of the stereotypical runner’s body he still will not win the Boston Marathon by simply lying in bed at night and visualizing himself as the greatest runner ever known. No, he will have to lift weights, stretch, be coached, run hundreds of miles in training, experiment with diet and supplements, be analyzed during physicals and also undergo other medical procedures to determine if the training efforts utilized are producing the optimal results needed to turn our man into the victor.

And then, and only then, he will also need to employ the techniques of visualization and affirmation, the optimism and positive thinking that are but one leg of this Stool of Training.

And even then his victory in Boston would not be assured: Every competitor in the race is hungry; every competitor wants to win; every competitor has availed themselves of the same techniques as our man, and yet only one will cross the finish line a winner. The rest of our runners, for all of the effort, training, positive thinking, optimism, and faith that they have utilized…will be also-rans.

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What is this mysterious “It” that allows one man to win again and again, while others who are just as desirous of the victory seem to be denied the right to cross the finish line in first place?

Best as I can determine it seems that there are some lucky few who are born with the right combinations of everything necessary for long-term success in their chosen field, and until they’re out of the picture their competitors will be known as also-rans.

It doesn’t seem fair, but it’s true, and history is full of such examples in sports, business, the arts, etc.

No, it’s not fair, but it’s life.

So the bottom line is that we actually do others a tremendous disservice by massaging their egos with the lie that they can do, become, achieve, have, or be anything that they desire, because the simple truth is: They can’t.

There are lots of young black boys who will think that just because Barack Obama grew up to be President, that they can too, and they will be wrong: Some of them won’t be smart enough; some of them won’t be able to acquire political acumen; some of them will piss off the wrong people, or fail to impress the right people, and thus be denied entry into the halls of power.

We have become negligent in our widespread proclamation that anyone can be anything that they want to be, if they want it badly enough.

Think of how cruel it would be to proclaim to a cripple in a wheelchair that they could get up and walk if they only wanted it badly enough.

Think of how painfully erroneous it is to state to a young child dying in a cancer ward that they can be healed if only they want it badly enough.

Think of how absurd it would be to tell a man with a withered, barely functioning leg that if he wanted it badly enough he could be the next winner of the Boston Marathon.

Most times wanting a thing badly enough isn’t enough to get you the thing that you desire…

If we’re going to embrace reality there are times that instead of proclaiming “Yes I can!” we need to quit deluding ourselves and realize, “No, I can’t.”

Divorce yourself from your unrealistic expectations, and instead realize that you stand a better chance of experiencing success when you desire things that are reasonably built upon your particular foundation of life, and ask for help from the Other Side to achieve your attainable level of fame and fortune, however low or high that may be.

Do that and you will experience a much more satisfactory life. Continue to delude yourself with the belief that you can do or be anything that you want to and you will set yourself up for a life of failure, misery, depression, and frustration.

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By the way: There is a huge misconception and misunderstanding about the power of our minds. You may have heard it said that we only utilize ten percent of our brain power, and that “quote” is often followed by this statement: “Just think what we could accomplish, what we could do and become and achieve if we tapped into that other ninety percent!” The implication is that we would be walking Supermen!

The problem is that this oft-quoted statement has been wrested out of context, misunderstood, and misapplied.

The statement comes from psychology, and it has nothing at all to do with supernatural mind power. It’s part of a hypothesis that states that we are consumed ninety percent of the time with sheer survival: paying the bills, buying the groceries so that we can eat and continue to live, working our jobs, mowing our lawns, doing housework, etc., etc. If we’re lucky we wind up with a measly ten percent of our time left over for ourselves…to indulge in favorite hobbies, relax, learn a musical instrument, learn to paint, etc.

The hypothesis basically states that if we did not have to worry about economic and literal survival and therefore had one hundred percent of our time available to our selves that we could be more self-fulfilled because we could then learn how to paint, we could learn to play a musical instrument, we could have the ability to travel and see the sights, etc.

Ah, there’s nothing like owning ones’ own time…unfortunately it’s a luxury few of us will ever know, and that’s why we’re given the injunction to find something to do to pay our bills that we will enjoy doing so much that we can’t wait to hop out of bed in the morning and go perform that job…“Find a job that you love and you will never have to work again.” Indeed, we can enjoy our jobs so much that they don’t feel like work to us. But for those of you who are not that lucky, and who crave to own at least a little of your own time, sit down and realistically assess your strengths and skills, as well as your weaknesses. And then see what foundation you have to build on that can take you to a better life.

Just don’t be suckered into the belief that affirming “Yes I can!” will take you there, because it won’t!

If you determine, after much truthful self-examination, that you would be a lousy business owner and would probably go broke in six months then say a realistic, “No, I can’t,” and stick with your present job until you can find a better one that’s in line with your skills and abilities.

You’ll be happier, and you won’t be guilty of spreading a false gospel.

It’s okay to say, “No, we can’t.” As a matter of fact, sometimes it’s downright necessary!

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Biker tip: Take a Thermos® along with you. They make several sizes and one’s sure to fit your saddlebag or rollbag comfortably. I invested in a metal one that’s unbreakable inside and out so that it will stand up to the miles and vibration (and the occasional drop) that it will be exposed to. Nothing like a drink of cold water in the heat of summer, and it’s really comforting to confront winter’s miles knowing that you’ve got some hot chocolate or hot coffee or tea to help keep you warm.

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Psychic tip: Now’s the time to sit down and take stock of your life: What are you truly good at? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What foundation do you have on which to build your realistic hopes and dreams so that you can live a happier life? Are you in a situation where you should throw in the towel and say, “No, I can’t,” instead of continuing to waste time and effort in an endeavor that you know is going nowhere? Maybe it’s time to realize that your marriage has failed and that you need to move on. Maybe it’s time to realize that your boss doesn’t appreciate you, that you’re never going to get that promised raise that you so desperately need, and that it’s time to acknowledge that you can’t make the living that you need to in your current job, much less be happy. Maybe it’s time to move on. Just be realistic about what you say, “Yes I can” to.

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Psychic experiment: Ask the Higher Power to reveal to you a path that is suitable for your skills and abilities, and be receptive to the vision or the answer when it comes to you. Be willing to walk through the newly opened door and change your life for the better.

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Next week’s post: Psychometry

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Understanding G - d

2009-09-08T04:41:00.000-04:00

Understanding “G – d.”

I like the way some of our Jewish brethren spell “God” and omit the “o,” signifying to me, among other things, that we should realize that God is, after all, the Great Unknown; spelling the term, the designation, the description “G – d” in that way reminds us to stand back a little bit, to reserve a little extra awe and respect for this deity with whom we tend to cadge a little bit too much familiarity: “Jesus is my friend!” Is he really? Then what color are his eyes? What’s his favorite hobby? What’s his ultimate fantasy? Is he gay, straight, or bi? And in the dating realm, what’s his “type?” Has Jesus ever ridden a motorcycle, or climbed Mount Everest? If he truly is your friend, you should know these things about him; you do about your other friends…

…anyway, over the years I have gained some small, but highly useful, insight into how a person may begin to understand G – d, and I would like to pass that along to you today, using first a rough analogy based on something with which I’m intimately familiar (as you already know by now): that of the world of motorcycling.

Like most people you have probably learned to drive a car, but like a lot of people you probably don’t know the first thing about how to drive a motorcycle (Here’s the first bit of knowledge you should learn: Motorcyclists see themselves as “riders,” and we always describe ourselves as “riding,” rather than “driving,” a motorcycle.).

Now, pay close attention here, please, because what I’m about to tell you bears great significance when we get to the discussion of how to begin to understand G – d, but first, let’s understand something a little simpler: a motorcycle. (And most real bikers will tell you that a motorcycle is anything but simple: Just when you think you’ve figured it all out it will show you a new trick or two! And most bikers that I know, myself included, describe their relationships with their two-wheeled machines in such convoluted, complex terms that a normal male/female relationship pales in comparison. Okay, let me be politically correct: or a normal male/male or a normal female/female relationship, too.)

I presume that most people tend to approach their first motorcycle experience using their knowledge of automobiles as their frame of reference, and that is a huge mistake; just because you can drive a car doesn’t automatically qualify you to ride a motorcycle.

You will approach the motorcycle using your car driver’s knowledge base: I’ll make sure the bike’s in park, and then I’ll insert the ignition key, turn the bike on, and get ready to shift into gear.

First off you will probably spend some time looking over the machine before you even find the ignition; on many bikes it’s not plainly accessible from the dashboard or the steering wheel column like most cars, and the ignition’s location tends to vary from bike to bike. My bike, for example, has 3 separate keyholes located at the front, the middle, and the rear. One locks the forks; one is a helmet lock; and one is the ignition.

So you find the ignition keyhole, insert the key, turn it, and nothing happens; oh, some lights on the bike’s instrument display may come on, and the headlight will probably come on, but the motor will not start.

Before all of that can take place, again using my bike as an example, you must first unlock the forks or you won’t be able to do anything but ride in a circle once you finally get the bike started; next you must locate the fuel petcock and turn it to the “on” position; otherwise the engine will not get any gas. Now you must locate the choke knob (my bike is carbureted) and pull it out. Make sure the kill switch, which sits on the handlebars and allows you to instantly shut the motor off in an emergency, is in the “run” position. Now turn the key on. If the bike’s in neutral, you can go ahead and press the start switch; if the bike’s in gear you’ll have to hold in the clutch lever first.

Now you’re ready to roll, right? Wrong. While driving a car you use mostly your feet for the brake and gas pedals, and with your hands you mostly steer except for the occasional use of a quick flick of the hand to hit the turn signal lever.

On my bike, you’ll use your feet, alright–your left foot shifts through the gears up and down and raises and lowers the kickstand, and your right foot applies the rear brake, and both feet go to the ground when you’re stopped to keep you upright–but your hands are going to be a little bit busier: with your left hand you’ll pull in the clutch lever, operate the turn signal and horn switches and the switch for the high beam; with your right hand you will operate the throttle, pull in the front brake lever, utilize the start switch to start the engine, and utilize the kill switch in an emergency.

Now you’re ready to roll, right? Wrong. The first thing that you will discover about a motorcycle is that it’s basically a big bicycle with a very powerful engine attached. It takes a good deal of balance to learn to operate one of these machines and to learn to keep it upright at low speeds. Unlike being in a car which supports you and keeps you balanced with four wheels, your motorcycle relies solely on you to keep it upright at low speeds, and the heavier the motorcycle the more of a challenge it is to learn how to stay upright when maneuvering through slow turns, for example.

Okay, so you’ve ridden around the parking lot a few times without falling down, and now you’re ready to roll, right? Wrong again: What you’ll discover now is that at speed the handlebars no longer work correctly! In the parking lot, at very low speed, if you wanted to make a right hand turn you simply simultaneously pushed and pulled the handlebars to the right, et voilà: a successful right hand turn! When you’re traveling say, 30 miles per hour, and you want to make a right turn and you push and pull the handlebars to the right you will find, alarmingly, that the bike both tilts to the left and actually drifts to the left! You’ve been made aware of a phenomenon known as “counter steering.” (Google it; there are long, complicated, highly involved reasons as to why this occurs, and although I understand it in practice I dare not try to explain it in theory.)

And I could go on and on and on…but you get the idea, and the point of this philosophical exercise is that: If you approach a motorcycle with preconceived ideas of how that motorcycle is going to work, and if you also approach a motorcycle with knowledge gleaned from some book (In this case maybe from your automobile driver’s ed manual?) and try to impose those notions onto the motorcycle and try to ride it that way, you will probably be dead before day’s end, because the knowledge of the car doesn’t translate itself to the bike.

What works for a car doesn’t work for a bike. The previous driver’s knowledge that you’ve learned and have applied successfully with automobiles won’t work with motorcycles.

And taking that as our starting point maybe it’s the same with G – d.

Every group of people on this planet has their very own “god book:” their holy scriptures that tell them how and when and why to worship and serve their very own particular god, and who it is that may be accepted into their religion and who it is that must be excluded from their religion. They have, in effect, their “automobile owner’s manuals.”

And if people don’t use a religious approach then they will use a philosophical approach, or a metaphysical approach, or…you understand where this is going.

The point is that all of us tend to be car drivers who are approaching the motorcycle, the motorcycle being a rough metaphor for G – d, and we have our preconceived notions and we have our little instruction manuals and we have our “driver’s ed,” i.e. our religious or philosophical or metaphysical training, and we assert ourselves with grand authority as we approach G – d and we slam in a “key” of some sort–positive thinking, prayers, supplications, demands, meditations, sacrifices, good deeds–and we expect the Grand Engine to rumble to life and to grant us our demands and to make our lives healthy, wealthy, and wise. And happy! Don’t forget the happy!

And then, just like the car driver who can’t start the motorcycle, we think and pray and supplicate and demand and meditate and sacrifice and do good deeds more and harder, and when the engine still refuses to start–we’re still sick and can’t get healed; instead of finding prosperity our poverty increases; we work and scheme and learn and try so hard only to watch someone else waltz away with what should have been our success, our joy, our happiness–we shake our heads and walk away blaming G – d…for our failures.

And maybe the problem is…that we’ve approached this Great Unknown Force in the wrong ways and with the wrong tools and techniques. We’ve “approached the motorcycle with automobile knowledge,” and we haven’t learned a damn thing because we’ve been too busy turning and turning and turning our useless ignition keys, shouting our particular knowledge at G – d and demanding that he/she/it work on our behalf to grant us all of our wishes, like unto a genie let loose from a bottle.

What do you suppose would happen if you approached this Great Power in the same way that a person willing to learn how to ride a motorcycle approaches it?

What if you threw away your owner’s manual and your driver’s ed book and you forgot all about all of the things that you’ve been taught as fact about this Great Power since you were young.

And then, what if you approached this Great Power with humility, reverence, awe, and respect, and then what if you spoke reverently to this Power and asked it to reveal itself to you and to show you, in a way that you can relate to and understand, just what it wants from you on a day to day basis; and what if you also beseeched this Power to share with you, inasmuch as you are able to comprehend, just what Its desires are for Its creation?

And then, what if you got still and quiet and respectful and you waited and listened for the answers to come to you…

And then, when you received those answers, what if you acted on them to the good of not only yourself, but for the good of your fellow man everywhere?

What if you “let the motorcycle teach you how to ride it?” Our present “owner’s manuals,”–i.e. our “holy” scriptures, our philosophies, our metaphysics, and our religions–don’t appear to be doing too satisfactory a job of meeting our real world needs, do they? So what if you sought out an instruction manual that would really work and that would help you and aid you and guide you in solving your life’s problems? And what if that instruction manual came to you from the Source Itself, tailored to meet your own particular makeup, personality, needs, desires, etc?

What if you began to understand…?

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Biker tip: Thought you’d take a lesson from your old automobile days and apply a little ArmorAll® to your motorcycle’s leather seat to shine it up and protect it from the sun’s damaging rays, right? Then when you went to lean into a tight turn your ass nearly slid off the bike and took the rest of you with it! Here’s a tip: On a bike, you want, in general, for things to be sticky, not slippery or slick. Handlebar grips, footpegs, and seats are things you need to be able to hold on to and stay connected to! They all get slippery enough when it’s raining, remember? So they don’t need any extra lubricant that can cause you to receive a nasty spill (or worse) because you couldn’t hold on to or stay on your bike! So, shine the paint and the chrome and the hoses and the cables, and leave the rest alone! And if you simply cannot stand the thought of your expensive leather seat deteriorating from the sun’s damaging rays, then carry a small towel with you and when you stop put the towel on the seat and tuck it in to keep the wind from blowing it away. It’ll keep the sun from damaging the leather, and in the summer, after you’ve removed the towel when you’re ready to ride again, you won’t burn your butt when you get back on your bike after it’s been sitting in the sun for a couple of hours. (Unless your Old Lady’s really hardcore, she’ll be a lot happier about replanting her booty, too!) Me? I like a good hot ass! J

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Psychic tip: Now that you think about it all of the spiritual tools and techniques that you’ve been using haven’t made much of a difference, if any, in your life, have they? Ask G – d to reveal to you what you should be doing to take charge and control of your future within G – d’s design and purpose for your life, and then put 100% of your effort and energies into those things that have been revealed to you, and don’t give up, and you should begin to see the success you crave. But make sure that you are in tune with what is reality for your life: Be sure to read my upcoming post titled, “No, We Can’t!” And try the tools and techniques in this book: How to Get Everything You’ve Ever Wanted, by Adrian Calabrese, available at Amazon.com.

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Psychic experiment: Ask G – d for a needed sign this week! Pay attention. When you receive your sign act on it and thank G – d for it.

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Next week’s post: No We Can’t

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Going Bananas

2009-09-01T06:03:00.005-04:00

Hi, everybody! Welcome back!

I took the summer off to gain a little rest from my self-imposed deadlines, and my original intention was to begin my posts again on the day that autumn begins, in honor of the new season.

However, such a dramatic event has just occurred that I feel that I must share it with you now, so saddle up and return to the road with me as the psychic vibrations ramp up a notch to a level that astonishes even me.

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I have my own share of vivid and/or weird dreams just like everyone else. And sometimes I think my dreams are just the same malarkey everyone else experiences in their dreams: stuff that just doesn’t seem to make any sense or have any rhyme or reason no matter how much you think about it or analyze it. Some dreams just seem to escape a reasonable interpretation.

Then there are dreams that I’m reasonably sure might have some meaning for me if I took the time to really delve into them and analyze them for myself; but I’m a human being with the same foibles as everyone else: I don’t always do what I know I should do. So, by neglecting to analyze and interpret some of my own dreams don’t I lose some valuable information along the way that might be of some practical help to me? Probably; but just as you do, I have my days too where I wake up sick, tired, disgusted, or sick and tired and disgusted and the last thing I want to do is dig around in my own psychic gift for answers to a dream.

And then there are dreams like the one which occurred last night: Friday, August 28, 2009.

In my dream I am riding Melissa, my beloved motorcycle, down a two lane Florida road when I see a city limit sign up ahead. I slow down to read the sign; the sign reads, “Banana.”

In my dream I recognize how silly this town’s name is! This is ridiculous, I think to myself in my dream: Banana, Florida. Banana, indeed! Yeah, okay, I’m thinking to myself, where I live is subtropical and the deep south of Florida is tropical, and banana trees do grow where I live, although they succumb to freezes and die back in the winter whereas in the south part of Florida they…and in my dream I bring my rambling thoughts up short to think again about what a ridiculous cliché the name Banana is for a town in Florida. Talk about stereotypical! If you wrote that as the name of a town in a novel to convey that the protagonist lived in a tropical setting it would never make it past the editor!

It’s while I’m having these thoughts in my dream that I see tombstones on the side of the road and I slow Melissa down even more. There are big tombstones, and little tombstones, and medium size tombstones, and they stretch for a good distance down the highway. What strikes me in my dream is how old they all are. I bring Melissa to a stop, dismount, and walk along to inspect some of these old grave markers. The dates go back into the 1800s and I think to myself that if the town of Banana, Florida indeed ever existed that it must have long ago faded away, because it looks like to me that all of its residents are dead!

I mount up and ride Melissa farther down the road and I encounter a small town, and this small town somehow seems to be either the remnants of Banana or a latter day version thereof, perhaps a community that grew up out of Banana’s demise. While I’m there I meet an old friend from Texas, and shortly thereafter the dream comes to an end, and I pop up wide awake.

I shake my head, mutter “Banana” to myself, and go back to sleep.

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Dateline: The next morning, Saturday, August 29, 2009

I’m awake, and I tell my old lady about my dream. “Wouldn’t it be something,” I say, “if there was a town in Florida called Banana?” We both agree that it would be pretty phenomenal. “Know what,” I say, “I think I’m gonna look on the Internet and see if anything pops up.”

First rattle out of the box up pops two links…for…Banana, Florida! OMG!

There is a very brief reference on Wikipedia which really doesn’t tell me a lot, but then I find a map of old Banana which is now Melrose; that’s about an hour away. I’m going! Right now!

Something, someone from the realm of spirit has given me concrete, verifiable information in my dream last night, and I feel obligated to check this out. Besides, it’s an excuse to get out on my bike. I tell the Powers That Be that I’m on my way and I fire Melissa up and we head out.

Melissa is now five years old. She sat for a year in the dealership, not a mile on her, just waiting for me to come along. It was love at first sight for us both. I’ve had her for four years now and we’ve traveled over 70,000 miles together. We know each other pretty well.

She’ll still shine up like a brand new dime, and she runs like a scalded ass ape, and there’s not too much, if anything, that I can think of that I enjoy as much as riding her. And one of the awesome side effects of riding her is that at some point during the trip all of the cobwebs in my brain just blow away with the wind and I’m totally relaxed and clearheaded, completely at one with the ride. Forty-five miles down the road this morning that effect occurs and I don’t even think about Banana anymore…I just tune into the marvelous feeling of speed experienced on two wheels as Melissa’s powerful v-twin motor pulls me along effortlessly. I don’t think a choir singing is as beautiful as the hum of that engine at speed and the windblast ripping at my helmeted ears as it competes for attention. I sure hope they have motorcycles on the Other Side.

A pleasant journey and I have arrived in Melrose, née Banana. I cruise through the Historic District hoping for a hint of Banana’s past…and is there really a cemetery like in my dream, situated so close to a two lane road?

Melrose’s Historic District is all of a few blocks long, and before I know it I’m heading out of town! Hmm. Well, what to do now? My psychic inspiration kicks in and I take a county road and I immediately feel like I’m heading in the right direction but that I’m too far over. Before long I feel compelled to turn off on another county road which leads me away from where I should want to be going, but I’m glad I do: There’s a fantastic photo opportunity along the practically deserted road, an old building of some kind long burned down with a tall chimney among the charred remains. I pull Melissa over and take a few shots, then continue onward, and before I know it I’m back on the main road which will take me back into Melrose, but coming in from the opposite direction from which I originally traveled, and I’ll make another brief trek through the Historic District. There’s a historical marker in front of a bank, and I brake and turn into the driveway going the wrong way, against the exit, but there’s no traffic in the parking lot and I stop to read the sign, hoping it’ll tell me about Banana; nope, nothing.

I go down to another road and I feel like I should turn right, so I do, and I’m heading in the direction that I felt was correct earlier, except now I’m several blocks over, and it turns out that I’m exactly where I should be, for on this two lane road is a cemetery which sits close to the road! The tombstones at the front of the cemetery are even about the same distance away from the road as they were in my dream. My lord.

I pull into the small parking lot and there’s another historical marker which begins: Melrose Cemetery, Formerly known as the “Banana Burying Grounds,” and then it goes on to tell a brief history of the farming community of…Banana, Florida!

All I can do is sit there on my idling bike, staring at the marker and re-reading it again and again, occasionally moving my gaze out into the cemetery to look at the old, old tombstones, some of which are big, some of which are small, and some of which are medium sized.

I am sitting face-to-face with the reality which was conveyed to me in last night’s dream, the reality of which was totally and completely unbeknownst to me…until now.

Something, someone, has chosen to convey true and verifiable information to me in a dream, making me aware of a time and a place that I never knew existed, and has enabled me to find this place today. Here I sit, staring at its reality. I’m flabbergasted.

Now I just have to figure out who has called me to this place, and why, but as I explore the cemetery today I’m not given the answer…not yet. I am told that I will have to return again, and again, before the reason becomes clear, but I do verify another bit of information that I was given in my dream when I saw the dates on the tombstones going back into the 1800s. The dates on many of the tombstones read: “Born 1818;” “Died 1871 at 95 years old;” “Born 1868.” There are veterans of eight wars interred here from as far back as the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. Some of the inscriptions and dates in some of these old stones are scratched into the tombstones by hand. As I write this for you now it still gives me pleasant shivers.

As I return to find out who has called me here and why I will tell you all that I know, but for now clouds are building fast and to get home safe and sound I have to outrace the storm, but truly, vibrations have come to me from the road.

Until next time, from Banana, Florida.

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To see pictures from the cemetery click on this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/motorpsiclist/sets/72157622062749045/

The link will take you to my Flickr site and the Banana, FL set of photos. Clicking on each photo will bring up the larger version of it, and most of them I have added explanatory captions to.

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Biker tip: Tie down items to your bike with two bungee cords, not just one, especially if the item is of sufficient size as to cause an accident if it comes loose from your bike. Why? One bungee cord may snap, but if you have two holding the item then you’re covered. I carry a small cooler filled with ice and beverages to sustain me in the Florida heat. One bungee cord secures it to my luggage rack so tightly that it literally becomes part of the bike, but what if that cord snaps and the cooler falls in front of the car behind me while we’re all flying down the Interstate? I’m liable for that accident I’ve just caused through my negligence. So be safe, and strap items down securely with two cords just in case.

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Psychic tip: Never doubt the power of the Other Side to communicate. Those on the Other Side can reach out to us from the archives and memories of the past.

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Psychic experiment: Ask who it is on the Other Side that needs to convey some information to you, and for what reasons. That information may come to you in a dream, as mine did, or a vision, an intuition…be receptive.

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Next week’s post: Understanding G – d

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Take Time to Listen

2009-06-30T14:42:00.002-04:00

I spend a lot of time on my motorcycle, and one of the luxuries I enjoy because of that is visiting several of Florida’s beautiful state parks. There are occasions when I will spend hours either hiking or just sitting and gazing at the splendor of nature’s grandeur. And naturally I encounter other visitors to the parks. I’m amazed at the manner in which some of these folks “enjoy” the parks: I have seen people park, exit their car, briskly walk fifty or a hundred feet and spend maybe thirty seconds looking at something and then repeat that action several more times, and then return to their car and leave; and all of this has taken place in the space of time of fifteen minutes or less!

Think of the events that these people who are in such a rush might not miss out on if they would just slow down and take a little time: I remember reclining on a bench in a state park that overlooks the Matanzas River. I had sat there gazing out at the water for maybe half an hour or more when a fin and part of a body made an arcing roll out of and back into the water! I sat up straight and focused my attention on that section of the river and watched this Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin break the surface of the water a few more times and then, suddenly, it launched itself completely out of the water and high into the air in an arcing dive, and my heart leapt at the spectacle!

I watched it until it swam downriver and out of sight and about then a young couple entered the particular area of the park where I was sitting, chatting to each other as they walked briskly and occasionally turning their heads slightly to catch a glimpse of some particular bit of scenery as they continued to walk. Soon they were out of sight, and I yearned to call out to them: “Come back! You folks stop, sit here on the bench beside me, gaze out at the water with me, and take the time to truly see and enjoy the beauties of nature.” And they were not gone but a few minutes when a small school of four or five dolphins swam by! If the couple had only stopped and waited for a few moments think of the sight that would have rewarded their patience. I’ve talked to people who have lived in Florida for years and they have never seen a dolphin in the wild, but these same people also don’t take the time to go and look.

Over the years I’ve carefully studied our obsession with rushing and it seems to me that neither Nature nor anything else rewards haste.

Oh, I know, it’s a hurry up world (We impatiently pat our foots or impatiently drum our fingers on the counter while we wait for that incredibly slow microwave oven to cook our popcorn in two minutes or so–“Hurry up, hurry up!”), and most of us are besotted with deadlines to the point that most of us have also forgotten how to relax. We’re also used to “instant results:” I press a key and send an e-mail to a friend in Norway and it arrives there immediately; when was the last time that any of us sat down and wrote a letter longhand and put it into the mail?

And that’s a real problem: When we don’t take the time to relax we miss a lot, such as the young couple who didn’t take the time to slow down and rest on a bench and missed, as a result, would could have been for them the display of a lifetime. (And I can almost guarantee you that if you were to talk to them that they’d tell you: “We go to that park all the time and yet we never see any dolphins in the river!”)

But most importantly what all the haste and hurry causes us to miss is the voice of Spirit which would speak to us and lead us and guide us and help us; if only we would slow down long enough and get quiet enough to listen. Listening takes time. But time isn’t the only requisite step: How can we hear if we can’t listen? How many manmade noises are going on around you right now? TV; radio; phones ringing; ceiling fans; traffic noise; clocks ticking; construction machinery; fax machines; copiers; the staccato click of keys being struck on a computer’s keyboard; doors opening and closing; water running; people vocalizing…

And even if you live alone and you’re at home and in a room which you perceive to be quiet, it isn’t. Listen, really listen, and see how much noise you can identify!

So the first step to truly learning how to listen is to learn what quietness really is: turn off your TV, your music devices (I Pods, etc.), your cell phone, your computer (Listen closely and you’ll hear the whir of the hard drive.), and unplug or take the batteries out of any noisily ticking clocks. Eradicate all of the manmade noise that you can.

Now, you’re ready to listen.

Talk to God, the Other Side, Spirit…whatever you perceive the Higher Power to be or whatever you choose to call it.

Ask for help, ask for guidance, and for whatever it is that you truly need. And then, shut up. Shut up and listen. Really listen. Listen for fifteen minutes. Listen for half an hour. Listen until your gut instinct tells you that you’ve listened enough.

If you receive the answer to your problem, terrific! Though it is more than likely that you will have to continue to listen, off and on, for days, or maybe for weeks or maybe even for months. But if you continue to make time to listen, to really listen, you will be rewarded with hearing the answer!

When you hear the answer you must do two things: First, you must say, “Thank you,” to the Higher Power that provided you with the answer; second, you must act on the information that you’ve received–it doesn’t do any good to ask for help and then to refuse it when it comes.

And then I have one more lesson to offer you: Go outside somewhere where you will feel and be safe. You can go out into your own back yard, or you can go to a park. It doesn’t matter, just so long as you’re out in nature. But when you go, turn off your cell phone; don’t take any music along, or any other noises or distractions.

Sit down and make yourself comfortable, and then spend at least half an hour allowing the sights and sounds of nature to wash over you. Do this as often as possible and you’ll be a happier person.

“Nature is not a place to visit, it is home–” Gary Snyder, American poet, writing in The Practice of the Wild.

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Biker tip: Take time to get off the highway and enjoy a diversion for an hour or two. Spend time at a tourist trap, a scenic overlook, a historic landmark, or gazing at a body of water. You’ll be refreshed to continue your journey, and you’ll have gained an enjoyable experience to relate to friends and family.

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Psychic tip: Never assume that just because you haven’t received an immediate answer to your prayer that the answer isn’t coming. Sometimes the answer is, “Wait a while; be patient.” Sometimes we have Life Lessons to learn on the way to achieving our hopes and dreams, and sometimes one of those Life Lessons is that we learn that we really didn’t want, or need, the thing that we thought we did. You know the old saying, but its truth is relevant here: “Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it!”

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Psychic experiment: Ask the Higher Power for something in your life that you truly need, and then take the time to listen until you receive the answer.

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Next week’s post: I am taking a short break from writing Vibrations; I will be off for the summer, and regular weekly posts will resume beginning September 22, 2009. Have a great summer, and I’ll see you in the fall!

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

EVP

2009-06-25T06:55:00.001-04:00

EVP, Electronic Voice Phenomenon, is the technique of capturing spirit voices with a recorder.

My motorcycle, Melissa, has enabled me to roam far and wide and to be able to explore many of Florida’s beautiful state parks. In addition to the vibrations I receive from my bike and the road I receive psychic vibrations, and I receive vibrations from the Other Side which are in the form of spirit voices, or EVP. Florida’s state parks have been a rich resource for capturing many of these voices on my recorders!

If you Google electronic voice phenomenon you will be able to find plenty of information that will enlighten you as to the history of the phenomenon, its early pioneers, books available on the subject, current research, and much more; my purpose today is to teach you how to do it for yourself!

In my own experience it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not you use a conventional tape recorder or a digital recorder; I have recorded spirit voices using both. Cassette recorders are inexpensive and come in a wide range of models with a wide variety of features, but there are also inexpensive digital recorders available now that are of good quality and also have a wide variety of features. Let your personal preference be your guide, because, as I said, I don’t believe that tape will yield superior results over digital, or vice versa.

A good way to research both tape and digital recorders is to go online and Google voice recorders, tape recorders, cassette recorders, and digital voice recorders. A plethora of choices will come up for you to investigate.

Pick a recorder that has the features that you desire, and if you so choose you can enjoy the convenience of ordering your recorder online or you may choose to see if a particular model that you like is available locally at one of the larger electronics outlets or at one of the larger department stores.

But before you buy your recorder think about how you intend to use it, and how serious you intend to become about EVP research. If you only have a casual interest in the phenomenon and you think that it’d be a pretty neat thing to prove to yourself that you can indeed capture a spirit’s voice on your recorder and maybe play that recording for friends or family members, but that’s about as far as your interest goes, then you might be better off choosing an inexpensive recorder for around thirty dollars or so.

But if this EVP thing has really captured your imagination and you intend to devote some serious time to it then you might want to spend fifty to a hundred dollars or more and get a good digital recorder that enables you to edit your sound files and upload them to your computer. Then you can choose to e-mail the sound files to friends and family, or post them on the internet for others to listen to.

So you’ve figured out what your level of interest is in the EVP phenomenon and you’ve bought a recorder that feels right for you. Now what?

Well, it’s not as complicated as it seems. I’m going to tell you step-by-step how to successfully record spirit voices, but first a word of caution: don’t be impatient! We all want instant results, especially when we take up something new, but you may realistically attempt to capture EVP for a month or two before you get anything at all! Conversely you might be one of those lucky few who get a voice on their second or third attempt! There’s no hard and fast rule as to when you will get a voice, and, like everything else in life, it seems to differ from person to person as to when they first begin to experience their success.

Now, here’s how to do it: First, pick a location that “speaks” to you, a location that you are drawn to or that you have a particular feeling about. This location could be a local cemetery; an abandoned building; a local restaurant or store; on the banks of a lake or a river; at a historic battlefield site; or in your own home or back yard!

WARNING! If you trespass in an attempt to record EVP you will be subject to fines and/or arrest! The property owner will not give a hoot that you have captured a voice from the Other Side, nor will the police! If you have a keen desire to record in an area that is private property then you make sure that you obtain the property owner’s permission first! It’s a good idea to get their permission in writing with their signature and then carry that piece of paper with you when you enter the private property for which you’ve been granted permission, because a police officer might notice you wandering around and wonder what you’re doing, and if all you have is verbal permission to enter an area and the officer can’t reach the property owner to verify that they did indeed grant you permission to be there then more than likely you’ll be asked to leave, and you could possibly be arrested. DON’T TAKE THE CHANCE!

And when you ask permission to gain access to a property be upfront, open, and honest about what you’re doing and what you hope to achieve. If the property owner thinks that you’re a kook and they ask you to leave, do so politely and graciously and then write that property off of your search list.

If the owner thinks that you’ve got a really neat idea and grants you permission to try to obtain EVP recordings on their private land you must still be aware that you will be liable for any damage that you do, whether accidentally or not, to that person’s property! Also, the property owner may be reluctant to grant you permission to enter, especially an old abandoned building for example, because they will have a legitimate worry about you getting hurt and then suing them!

If you’re going to really get serious about researching EVP then it might be in your best interest to consult with an attorney and explain to them what you want to do and then have them draw up a simple contract which both you and the property owner must sign. If the property owner won’t sign the contract, then don’t proceed with your investigation!

Alternately you may simply investigate publicly available sites such as parks, rivers and streams, historic battlefields, etc.

Okay, so you’ve got your recorder, and you’ve picked a suitable location to record.

Before you begin recording make sure that no people are around you! Today’s recorders are highly sensitive and can pick up soft voices from a far distance! Imagine how it would be to get home and begin to listen to your recordings and how excited you would feel to hear actual voices on your recordings and how deflated and disappointed you would feel when you realized that the voices are not spirit voices at all but are only the voices of uncle Joe and aunt Minnie who were talking quietly several feet away from you while you were recording! So make sure that you’re either truly alone when you begin to record, or make absolutely sure that anyone who is with you remains totally quiet while you’re recording. Now, let’s begin.

Here’s where you will have to experiment a little to determine which, if either, of the following methods work best for you: Start your recorder and then ask, “Is there anyone here that wishes to speak to me?” Then remain quiet and record for fifteen to twenty seconds and then stop your recorder. Other times just start your recorder when you feel like it and record for fifteen to twenty seconds and then stop. See if talking to the spirits produces better results for you than just beginning to record without asking a question first. I have had success both ways, and sometimes I have had the spirit voices respond directly to a request I have made, or they have given me an answer to a question that I have asked.

Some person might get all excited and decide to leave their recorder running all night long in their uncle Charley’s haunted barn. Just remember one thing: If you record for twelve hours, you will have to sit and listen to twelve recorded hours hoping to hear maybe one or two words from a spirit voice! Do you have the time and inclination to sit for hours on end listening to your recorder? I don’t.

Try this instead: Record for fifteen seconds to a minute, and make several short recordings like that, say ten or twenty recordings total. Then you only have to listen to ten or twenty minutes of recordings, or even less if you only record for fifteen or twenty seconds. I have had great success using this technique. It seems that for me if a spirit is going to speak to me and allow me to record their voice then they are going to speak to me within the first few seconds of the recording.

When you play your recordings back, do so at home. Go into a quiet room and plug a quality pair of headsets into your recorder and listen to the recordings one at a time, listening to them through the headsets. Listen to a recording maybe ten or fifteen times before you decide that it doesn’t contain a spirit voice. You are listening for a voice that most times will sound like a loud whisper, and the voice will more than likely be heard mingled in amongst the background noises and hiss that you will inadvertently record. If you have ten or twenty recordings of a minute each and you’re pressed for time, listen to the first recording ten times before you rule out that it doesn’t contain a spirit’s voice. That’s ten minutes of your time. Next day make time to listen to recording number two: Replay it ten times, and so on until you’ve listened to all of your recordings. Of course if you have the time you may certainly listen to all of the recordings during one session.

Some voices will speak so clearly that it will make your hide crawl! Other times you will discern that a voice is saying something but you will have to replay the recording several times before you can figure it out. Sometimes you will definitely hear a voice but you may never be able to figure out what the voice is saying.

Pretty exciting, isn’t it, to realize that you are recording a spirit voice in real time as that person speaks to you from the Other Side! Think about that!

When you start to get voices on your recordings I think that it’s a good idea to back them up somehow. If you have a digital recorder that won’t allow you to upload the sound files to your computer then transfer the files to a cassette recorder. Most digital recorders will connect, plug to plug, to a cassette recorder. If your digital recorder allows you to upload the files to your computer then it might be a good idea to burn the files onto a CD so that those files are backed up in case your computer crashes and you lose them. I also like to make a written record of what the voices have said to me.

I’ve had what sounds to me like the voice of a young child say, “Peek-a-boo” to me! I’ve had other voices call me by my name, or tell me their names. When I was highly upset I had a ghost ask me, “Are you angry?” I’ve requested that the spirits say something specific to me and they’ve obliged!

EVP is a fascinating way for us to prove to ourselves that life does indeed continue beyond the deaths of our physical bodies!

With patience and practice you too will be able to capture these fascinating voices from the realm of Spirit on your own recorder!

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Biker tip: Make a conscious effort to enjoy life as much as possible today!

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Psychic tip: Make a conscious effort to enjoy life as much as possible today!

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Next week’s post: Take Time to Listen

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Whose Voice

2009-06-17T17:30:00.001-04:00

I’m young: I’m in my late teens or maybe my early twenties, and I’m full of platitudes. I guess most people are, and especially those who hold out offers of hope and help to their fellow man: teachers; preachers; psychologists; psychics.

I’m also burning with the fires and passions of youth: Although I’ve lived a life of sickness and pain I am still young enough and foolish enough to believe that I am immortal; Death, though an inescapable fact of life for others, can’t run fast enough to reap me with his scythe! This makes me cocky in the face of suffering; I am, I fear, a little cavalier when it comes to others’ pain. (Life, in the course of years to come, will knock that particular wind out of me and replace it with some heavy doses of humility, empathy, and respect.)

But man, oh man–I am already performing psychic readings as a professional, and my insights into peoples’ lives and my predictions for their futures are remarkably accurate! In addition I have experienced an inordinate number of paranormal experiences, so I’ve been around the block a time or two with the Other Side. I probably have more practical experience with the paranormal, the spiritual, than any ten preachers or psychics put together.

So people from all faiths and all belief systems and all walks of life call upon me: What do I see for them? What can I tell them about their lives? How can they solve their problems? And, via my mother, a family calls upon me to help them, and unbeknownst to me at the time, this call for help will change my life forever. It will forever alter the ways in which I view my psychic gifts; my understanding of religious dogma; and the spiritual traditions to which we cling.

You see, there is a family–a single mom (although I don’t think we used that nomenclature back then) with two beautiful teenage daughters–who has become the talk of the town, and the reason for their notoriety is this: One of the beautiful young girls has brain cancer (Hell of a thing to become well-known for, isn’t it?) and she has become the talk of the town because people have been having visions about her.

I know this because I’ve heard, both directly, and indirectly through the grapevine, the things that people are saying, and what they’re saying is that God has spoken to them and told them that He is going to heal this young girl!

Now, for those of you who don’t know, there is a divide between the church and those who practice paranormal belief systems. The church worships the right god the right way, and the rest of us are going to hell. Wait, I have to capitalize that: Hell is a proper place name, after all. One group is usually at odds with the other over doctrinal differences, but an amazing thing has happened because of this young girl: I hear from churches all around town that people have had visions in which this young girl is healed by God, or they have had dreams in which her healing is shown or foretold. People are praying together in agreement and invoking the promise of Scripture that God will provide the desired answer when two or more come together in agreement in His name. People are prophesying and saying that God has spoken directly to them and through them, and that His intent is to heal this girl for His glory, and that this healing will astound the entire town and provoke it to revival!

The groups of folks who consult crystal balls and Tarot cards and go into trance and such aren’t as dramatic in their ultimate assessment that the girls healing will lead to such a revival as the church folk envision, but the folks who are involved in paranormal belief systems are saying much the same thing, that is, that whatever source of a Higher Power or whatever concept of a God or Supreme Being that they worship it too has communicated to them that this girl is going to be healed!

So here is something virtually unprecedented as far as I know, and that is that two disparate groups of belief systems are coming together in dramatic agreement about the future well-being of this young girl! And everyone, without exception, is saying the same thing: That she will be totally, completely, dramatically, supernaturally healed!

It doesn’t feel right to me. It’s too pat, too cocksure; too “I’ve got God in my hip pocket.” I want to believe it, but I can’t.

Anyway, this desperate family has heard about my gifts, and, being friendly with my mother, has called her and asked if she will talk to me about coming to visit with them and to see what God might tell them through me. No pressure there, huh?

I have always sincerely loved to be of service to others when I can, and I have, throughout my entire life, continued to devote a significant amount of my time and money to charity work, so I’m delighted to get the call to go to this family, but I’m very uncertain about what encouragement, if any, I will be able to deliver to them, for I just can’t get it out of my mind and heart that this Grand Agreement amongst the townspeople just isn’t right, and I fear that there’s more to this story than mass optimism dictates.

So on a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon I drive to this family’s home, and I park my car and say a little prayer to the Powers That Be to help me to help them, and I walk slowly up the sidewalk to their front door.

I ring the doorbell and Mom opens the door and the energy inside of the home oozes outside like molasses to flood the sunlight with gloom and doom and darkness. And it’s not just the darkness of disease: Because of the sick girl’s hideous headaches they must keep the house darkened to try and help alleviate some of her distress and pain; light makes it worse. Wow! This is beyond my expectation. I’m unsure as to how to proceed, unsure, even, as to what I should say. I introduce myself and Mom invites me in. A close look at her face reveals the weight of many sorrows: Heavy dark bags hang under her eyes; grief lines her face; she moves as if she’s carrying an invisible burden of immense weight on her back and shoulders. Life has slapped her; whipped her; stooped her; and it isn’t finished with her yet.

She calls for the girls to come into the living room and meet me. Her two daughters are absolutely beautiful! My heart leaps into my throat! And then I look closely at the one girl who is ill. The disease is slowly ravaging her beauty, but she’s still gorgeous!

And as I’m introduced to her, I hear a voice. I hear a voice so clearly that to this day all these many years later I can recall it more accurately than I can my own. I hear the voice audibly, but I don’t. I know, but that’s the best explanation I can give to you.

And the voice says, very distinctly and very calmly, “She is mine. She will be with me within two weeks time.”

In milliseconds everything that I know about this family and everything that I’ve heard concerning the many prophecies that have been made claiming that God will supposedly provide a miraculous, dramatic healing for this girl flash through my mind. And I know that it’s all a lie. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that these people haven’t heard the voice of God; I have.

And the voice of God tells me that she isn’t going to live.

I’m so stunned that I can barely remain conscious of my surroundings.

The poor angel of a girl is tormented with monstrous headaches that sicken her beyond belief, and she’s suffering this way now, and I’ve just learned, as I stand here talking to Mom, that they’re virtually on the way out the door to return to the cancer center, a trip of many hours distance, but before they leave they’ve turned to me and I’m one of their last hopes for some type of help, for some encouraging word; my god.

I look into their faces, and I know that I cannot tell them what the Voice has just spoken to me.

With haunted, fearful eyes Mom looks into mine and with desperation in her voice that clings to me still she begs me, “What does God tell you? Can you give us any word, any hope, any help?”

I mumble a platitude that God, in His wisdom, is greater and grander and higher than we will ever be or can understand, and that we have to trust that there is some higher purpose in all of this pain and suffering and that He will ultimately work it out for the good of us all! Hallelujah!

I can see the crushing disappointment in Mom’s eyes; she looks at me with a look that I interpret to mean “I know you’re lying.” I offer to pray for the girl and transfer healing energy to her. They accept my offer, and I do, but I know in my heart that it’s a useless task I perform.

They politely say their goodbyes to me and rush through the darkened house to finish last-minute packing for their mad dash out the door to drive to a land far away, a land where they’ve also been promised healing and yet have been denied it. Medical science will fail them, too.

I exit their house and the sunshine is blinding in comparison to the gloom of their home.

And within two weeks the beautiful young girl is dead.

* * *

Whose voice did I hear? Obviously it was a voice of supreme power and authority, because what the voice proclaimed came true in spite of all predictions to the contrary.

Did I hear the voice of “God?” This question sets me on edge, for the following reasons: First, I’m just an average human being; I’m no one special. A friend even tells me that maybe what we consider supernatural is just natural after all. In other words, in the natural scheme of things, some people can play a piano so beautifully that it brings us to tears; some people can throw a small ball at incredible speeds and with incredible accuracy over home plate; and me, well, I can predict the future. Maybe all of that is normal, not supernormal.

Second, I don’t proclaim to know who, or what, “God” is. I believe in some type of Higher Power, a Supreme Being, or a Great Eternal Spirit. But exactly who or what He/She/It is, I don’t pretend to know. I like how some Jews spell the word god when they mean for it to refer specifically to the Supreme Being: they leave the “o” out, rendering it thus: “G–d.” Simplified, my interpretation of their spelling is this: How can a man fathom God, or know God as intimately as we pretend to know one another? And by leaving out the central letter when they spell the name it’s an acknowledgement that we haven’t got a handle on this Supreme Being thing, so therefore we can’t be so arrogant as to spell it out all commonplace like we’re bosom buddies with the Almighty. “J-o-h-n;” John, and that’s intimate enough to imply that you know me well. But: “J–h-n?” Well now, that’s another matter entirely, isn’t it? Who is this person who cannot be known well enough to even spell their name completely? The implication is that there is a lot that’s not known about this being who goes by this name! It rules out over-familiarity, and instills a certain kind of mystery and respect, doesn’t it?

Third, if I state that yes, I heard the voice of God, aren’t I kind of setting myself up as one arrogant son-of-a-bitch? I think so. The pretty-boy preachers have proclaimed themselves as having heard the voice of God, and we have seen in the news headlines the results of that haven’t we? I sure don’t want to be in their company. If I want to have sex with a hooker I’ll just be open about it and go buy me one, not preach the Gospel that forbids such behavior but then sneak around behind my congregation’s backs and do it anyway!

So, if we can define me as one plain old country boy who ain’t a bit better or any more special than anybody else on this planet, and if we can define the voice of god as a voice that spoke with absolute authority to the situation at hand in spite of all proclamations to the contrary, then yes, I heard the voice of “God” that day.

Let’s leave the doctrinal wrangling at that, and realize that there is some Higher Power “out there” that does indeed make a mighty difference in the lives of mankind, if not always in the ways in which we hope, pray, or proclaim, and let us set out to find out how we may live in harmony with that power without regard to the divisiveness of race, creed, dogma, tradition, or religion.

And if we can do that, then I think that we will all hear the “voice of god” more often, and life on this planet can become more of a paradise for all instead of more of a hell for some, for if we listen closely enough to the voice maybe it can tell us how to achieve more healing, more prosperity, and more love and respect for all of life.

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As for the young girl and what she may have “done” to invoke such hideous suffering and such a horrible fate, we can bandy about armchair quarterback theories about karma, past lives, contracts we made for our present incarnation, sin, and the ever-reliable, “It’s an attack of the Devil!” Trouble is none of these arguments make any sense if you extrapolate them with any reasonableness at all.

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There’s Scripture that says, “Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is heaven. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18: 19, 20–KJV)

A young girl’s tragic premature death proves that those verses of Scripture simply aren’t true.

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Biker tip: Don’t be a brand snob! We’re all brothers on two wheels who are trying to have some fun, and the road doesn’t care what name you call the motorcycle that’s traveling it. I understand: We, as Americans, want to support our homeland by buying American made products, and that argument may have been valid when we were at war with certain countries and we wanted to boost our own economy, morale, and sense of patriotism. And when Americans still owned most of America. But now, guess what folks: The venerable institutions at whose altars we’ve worshipped aren’t American owned and in some cases aren’t even American made anymore! Wild Turkey bourbon was purchased by the French liquor giant Pernod-Ricard some time ago. Still American made, but not American owned. The Belgium concern In-Bev has bought Anheuser-Busch, makers of my beloved Budweiser beer! It takes very little research to see how much of New York City is owned by foreigners. We routinely ship jobs of every sort overseas, so how can we say any of these items are “American made?” They’re not! American icons are bought and sold and traded routinely, and that’s not being done by Americans! And I read in a motorcycle magazine a letter from a reader, and a news article; the letter from the reader stated that, What the f^@k?!, he went to work on his Harley and needed metric wrenches, too, and the news article stated that Harley is now manufacturing some parts for some models overseas and then shipping them back to America, so how can we say that that piece of machinery is 100% American made? I also find it ironic that those who boast that they’ll only ride “American made motorcycles” wear a Seiko watch, shoot photos with a Nikon camera, and come home to watch a TV with Sony on the front of it! Go get your boots in the wind, and be respectful of all our brothers who are doing the same thing. It doesn’t matter what brand your horse wears.

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Psychic tip: Just because a majority of people say a thing is so doesn’t make it so. None of us have an exact, never-fail handle on this trip called Life, nor can we predict with 100% accuracy exactly how the higher powers are going to react, or not, to any given situation in our lives.

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Next week: EVP

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

UFOs and Bears in the Woods

2009-06-11T18:08:00.002-04:00

I’ve ridden my bike to a state park this morning, and now I’m sitting in the forest, alone, and I’m contemplating something.

I’m thinking about the main argument that skeptics produce to debunk the idea that UFOs are real, and their main argument is that there is no physical evidence from a UFO to prove their existence. Stanton Friedman, famed nuclear physicist, UFO researcher, and lecturer, says otherwise; he states that there is actually such an abundance of physical evidence to prove that UFOs exist that you have to willfully turn away from the proof! And I have heard other UFO researchers say the same thing.

But here’s an interesting thought: If we accept the skeptics main argument that there is no physical evidence to prove the existence of UFOs, then we may also use that same logic to doubt the existence of…bears.

I have spent a large majority of my life outdoors. I have hunted; I have hiked; I have camped; I have fished; I have explored; and I have visited many forests and woods.

I have never seen a bear in the wild. Oh, I know I know I know; I’ve had hunting buddies tell me all about their supposed bear encounters; I’ve read about these alleged bear encounters in the pages of outdoor magazines; I’ve even seen the grainy films presented on the Outdoor Channel on TV where it appears that a man is hunting a bear that is actually in the wild. I don’t believe it! Because I’ve never seen a bear in the wild!

So I’m going to adopt the skeptics’ stance and state for the record that I no longer believe in wild bears, because I have spent years of my life in the wild and I’ve never seen one stinking bear. I am now officially a bear skeptic!

Not only have I never seen a bear in the wild, I’ve never seen any evidence to convince me that bears exist in the wild! Now remember, I have been in many woods and many forests, and I have been in locales where bears were rumored to be plentiful. I’ve never, in all my experience as an outdoorsman, seen a bear track. I’ve never, in all of nature that I’ve explored, seen any claw marks or scratching on any trees to indicate that a wild bear had marked his territory in that manner. In all of my hikes I’ve never run across anything that I could reliably identify as bear scat. If these alleged wild bears really exist then they must somehow procreate to continue the survival of their species, and yet I’ve never seen a bear cub in the wild. And, if these bears supposedly live in the wild, then surely they don’t come into town to the local Wal-Mart to die do they, and yet, I have never ever seen a dead bear in the woods!

When I lived in Cornwall, New York, the supposed wild bears were allegedly so plentiful as to make a nuisance of themselves to the citizenry, and it was frequently reported in the local newspapers about this or that bear sighting in town, or that someone had had a bear tear up their garbage cans or raid their bird feeder. Bears eating bird seed! What a preposterous concept! The paper even quoted the chief of police as saying that he was concerned about the bear problem, and that the citizens should be concerned, too! I believe that I recall that the chief had made this bizarre statement after these “bears” had supposedly chased a couple of kids who were waiting at a school bus stop. And yet, in all the time that I lived in Cornwall, I never saw a wild bear, much less the evidence that they exist! And to think that we all presumed the chief to be a well-balanced man!

And then it was reported in the paper that a gentleman was on his front porch and a wild bear ran up onto his porch and literally knocked him off of the chair on which he was sitting! Now, come on! What are we supposed to believe next, that wild bears are beginning to wear tutus and that they are organizing dances on the lawns? Puh-leeze!

And then because a few people started to report wild bear sightings then there was suddenly an explosion of wild bear sightings! Even the state of New Jersey bought into this alleged bear hype and hysteria and reported that the bear population had exploded in New Jersey to the degree that the animals were becoming a dangerous nuisance and the state offered bear hunting permits so that hunters would help to reduce the out of control bear population. My word! Clearly a case of mass hallucination followed by a case of mass hysteria! I drove through New Jersey regularly and I never saw a bear!

Wild bears, indeed.

Everybody knows that there is not a trace of evidence that bears exist in the wild; the only place you will ever see a bear is at the zoo.

Just like everybody knows that there are no such things as UFOs. After all, there’s no physical evidence, is there?

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Biker tip: Check the air pressure in your tires at least once a week. I check mine daily, and if I see a drop of a few pounds in the pressure I know that I have a slow leak from a puncture, and usually the object is still embeded in the tire; don’t remove an object which is puncturing your tire, because when you do the tire will quickly go flat. Instead leave the object in if you’re only a few pounds low on air and ride slowly and carefully to the dealership and have the tire repaired or replaced. When I discover a slow leak I immediately ride to the dealership and replace the tire–plugging a motorcycle tire is not recommended if you ride frequently at highway speeds, which I do. Of course if you suffer a leak or a flat on the road you have no choice but to plug the tire so that you can continue your journey until you can get to a dealership and have the tire replaced; do that as soon as possible! If you’re on the road a lot carry a tire repair kit. They’re small enough to fit in a saddlebag or a tool bag, and lightweight. Get one that has the C02 cartridges so that you can reinflate your tire after you plug it. Also you should frequently check your tires for any unusual bulges, cuts, etc. The only thing between you and the asphalt is those two tires. Keep them properly inflated and inspect them frequently, and don’t try to coax unreasonable mileage out of them–replace them before they’re severely worn.

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Psychic tip: Sometimes paranormal events will occur in clusters, so don’t quit paying attention after one supernatural happening; more may be on the way! As an example if you’re out UFO hunting some night and you see one, don’t quit and go home. There may be more UFOs for you to see, or there may be other paranormal phenomena associated with the UFO’s appearance which may occur either coincidentally or some time later.

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Psychic experiment: Ask the Other Side to provide you with some physical evidence of a paranormal event, and see what you receive. I’ve literally received objects out of thin air, such as the time a small chunk of wood appeared in a bowl of chili I was eating!

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Next week’s post: Whose Voice

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Phantom Phone Calls

2009-06-04T06:14:00.001-04:00

Aahhh–the sun shines warmly on me as I sit on a bench in Riverdale Park which is located on the banks of the Saint John’s River here in Florida.

Melissa, my motorcycle, is the only vehicle in the parking lot, and I’m the only human inhabitant of the park. I’m enjoying the solitude: my life is spent dealing with peoples’ energies on a daily basis, and I have to recharge my batteries just like everyone else does, and for me, solitude and peace and quiet is one of the best ways for me to do that, and thankfully Florida contains a bountiful number of places where I can find that needed escape.

I’m watching a barge make its way downriver; eventually its wake reaches the shoreline where I’m sitting and it gets me to thinking about waves of all kinds, not just watery ones, and it boggles my mind for me to think that I can pull the cell phone out of my pocket and wirelessly send waves through the air that will accurately transmit the sound of my particular voice, and I can make a call to someone right here in this very town or I can call a buddy of mine who lives in Oslo, Norway, all while sitting right here on this very bench, and whether I’m making a call to someone who’s several hundred feet away or several thousand miles away we can talk to each other in real time. If that isn’t magic, I don’t know what is!

This train of thought eventually pulls into the Station of the Paranormal, and I get to thinking about people who have received phone calls from a lot farther away than Norway. It’s well documented that many people have claimed to receive phone calls…from the dead!

I mull this over and while I don’t believe that I have received any phone calls from the Other Side I recall an incident where one of my outgoing calls may have been intercepted by someone on the Other Side! I’m glad the sunshine’s warm, because when I recall the details of this story it gives me chills even now; it didn’t scare me, but it was one of the creepier encounters that I’ve had. You’ll see what I mean…

* * *

I have a dear friend named Bill that I hang out with frequently. We enjoy each other’s company and we have a lot in common. One of those things in common is that we like to pull pranks on each other: at a bar he once tossed a lit match onto me when I wasn’t looking and actually started a small fire in my lap. (People tend to be leery and wary when it comes to sitting close to us!)

One of my favorite irritants is to wait until I’m reasonably sure that he has just nodded off to sleep and then I will call his house, wake him up, and then blather to him until he curses me and hangs up on me. (Yes, we are sometimes a handful to deal with. We even have a nickname: when people see us coming they shake their heads, roll their eyes, and proclaim, “Oh, god, here comes the Toxic Twins!”)

Naturally if you’re going to make a habit of tormenting someone in this manner you want to enjoy convenience with it: I have Bill’s number programmed into my cordless phone on speed dial! (This, as you can tell, is before the common use of cell phones.)

So this evening, a short time ago, I have called Bill using the speed dial function on my phone. We chatted briefly and then he informed me that he was giving it up for the night. We said our goodbyes and I started my stopwatch function on my wristwatch. I’ve been watching TV and as I glance down at my watch I see the elapsed time has been about thirty minutes since our call; perfect! Bill should either be asleep or just dozing off. Oh, I guess I should mention that there is some consideration to my dastardly behavior: Bill is a widower, and lives alone. But aren’t I worried that my ringing will one night interrupt some coital behavior? That would be even better if it did, but I am aware of one of Bill’s particular quirks, and that is the inalterable fact that Bill never brings a woman back to his house; never. We’ve discussed it; Bill’s explained his reasoning; it’s a rule.

Grinning, I pick up my phone and hit the speed dial number for Bill’s phone. Set my lap on fire, huh buddy? Revenge is sweet! There’re two or three rings and then the sound of a receiver picking up and a woman’s voice says lazily, “Hello?”

For a moment I can’t speak. I quickly pull the phone away from my head and double check that I pressed the right button; I did. What the hell?

I’m caught completely off guard, and I actually begin to stammer. “I’m sorry; I was trying to reach Bill. Is he there?”

“No.”

“Has he gone out?” I ask.

“No. There’s no Bill over here.”

Man–what in hell is going on? Is Bill pranking me? But the odd way is which she has responded is my first clue that this may not be a prank: She said, “There’s no Bill over here.”

“I’m really sorry,” I say. “Is this–?” and I recite Bill’s number, the number that I know without a doubt is the one that I dialed.

“No, it isn’t,” she says.

But I know that’s the number I just dialed. The number is programmed into my speed dial. That means I can’t have misdialed! I know I’ve dialed Bill’s number, so where in the heck is Bill? And who is this woman?

Quickly I rev up my psychic senses. I know that I will be able to discern whether or not this is Bill pranking me by having some woman there to answer the phone in expectation of my call.

I send out my psychic radar bounce, and when the return comes I almost wish that I hadn’t done it! For in a split second I know the absolute truth, and it is this: I have dialed correctly, all right, but I have not reached Bill’s home! So who have I reached, and where?

Now this is before digital phone and all these wonderful improvements that we enjoy today; this is back in the day when sometimes you could still tell that a call was long distance by the way it sounded.

This call sounds like a long distance call, like I might have reached someone from overseas, maybe; or farther.

The woman sounds like I have just woken her from sleep, but that isn’t what’s getting to me. What creeps me out just a little bit is the quality of her voice. Her voice is deep, dreamy, but very strange sounding. I’ve talked to a lot of women, but no woman has ever sounded like this woman sounds! There is literally an otherworldly quality to her voice! And there is some other weird quality to this call that I can’t quite put my finger on, like perhaps I’ve reached another dimension or something, but my psychic senses are all buzzing now–there is definitely something not quite right about this call!

And suddenly things get really bizarre! This is what the woman says to me: “This is John Russell, isn’t it?”

My skin has goose bumps! I am completely taken aback! This call has just gone from strange to high strange!

“Well, yes, it is,” I stammer; “who is this, please?”

There’s a brief pause before she speaks again. The call sounds, if that’s possible, like it’s becoming more distant, but there’s clarity and I can hear her fine!

“Hmm,” she says, “so you’re John Russell.”

“Yes, I am, and I’m very sorry, but I don’t know what number I’ve accidentally managed to reach and I apologize, but I don’t recognize your voice. What number have I reached, and who is this and how do you know me?”

“So this is John Russell.”

My freaky-weird meter is pegged!

“Yes. Please, who have I reached? I apologize again but I don’t recognize your voice at all, and I wonder how you recognize my voice and seem to know me but yet I don’t recognize your voice at all and I don’t seem to know you? What’s your name, please? Who is this?”

There is another pause, and then she says, “I’m sorry, I’m very tired now. I’m going to bed. Good night.” She has drawn out the word “tired” and placed great emphasis on it, as if the call has almost literally drained her of all of her available energy.

And before I can say another word, she’s hung up!

Oh, no-no-no-no! I’m not through with this whacky conversation! I immediately hit the exact same speed dial button that I had hit before…and this time I connect with, and wake, my old friend Bill!

Psychically I can tell that he is not “possuming,” but that he truly was asleep and I have just woken him. Nevertheless I ask: “Bill, have you been asleep up until now when I called. Did I just wake you up?” Yes. “Bill, this is important, and I’ll explain it to you tomorrow, but is there a woman there with you? I have an important reason for asking and I’m being serious, so please, tell me the truth?” No. “Between our last call and the one right now, did your phone ring at all, or, did I call you?” No. Bill thinks I have gotten way too drunk.

I bid my buddy good night.

I never heard that mysterious woman’s voice before, and I’ve never heard it since. However hers was a voice that I believe I could recognize to this day; I doubt I’ll ever forget it!

So who was this phantom woman? The only thing that I can surmise is that someone on the Other Side was able to intercept my call and that they somehow had the energy to hold a brief conversation with me, and here’s the chilling part: It was obviously someone who knew me; and yet I did not know them!

Makes you wonder just who is keeping tabs on us from the Other Side, and for what reasons.

* * *

I rise from the bench and walk back to Melissa; it’s time to hit the road. But before I throw my leg over the bike I take my cell phone out of my pocket and stare at it for a moment or two. I wonder: Will I ever talk to the phantom woman again? And, more importantly–who is she?

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Epilogue: An odd thought crosses my mind from time to time: While Bill was passed out asleep did the spirit of his deceased wife answer my call? I don’t know which is the creepier thought, that there may be someone on the Other Side who watched my developing friendship with her husband, or that there is some phantom woman out there who knows me, or knows of me, and if so, how, and why? Or did someone on the Other Side decide to play a prank of their own, a prank on me? I’d like to know! Or would I??

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Biker tip: Don’t run with your fuel petcock set to the “reserve” setting! Lots of guys like to brag that they know exactly how many miles their bike will travel on a full tank of gas, so they compute mileage and simply pull in to a gas station to fill up when they’re close to the maximum number of miles that they should be able to ride so they routinely leave their petcock on the reserve setting. Don’t do this! Here’s the reason why: I’ve discovered over the years that there are many things that affect gas mileage, chief of which seems to be wind resistance. I have ridden into headwinds that were so strong that they lowered my normal mpgs by 5-10 miles per gallon! Think seriously about that for a moment. That means that if your gas tank holds 4 gallons of gas and you normally average, in normal wind conditions, 40 miles per gallon you’ll go 160 miles before you run out of gas. So if you’ve planned to be able to go 155 miles before you need gas but today you’re riding into a really stiff headwind you could run out of gas after having ridden only 120 miles! And if it’s five or ten miles to the nearest gas station you’re about to find out how heavy that motorcycle really is to push! There’s no need to ever have that experience! When you fill up turn your fuel petcock to the “on” position, and keep an eye on your mileage. When you get close to hitting reserve try and find gas and fill up before you need that reserve fuel! And if you ever see a sign that says gas is 30 miles away and about that time your bike chugs and coughs and you have to go to reserve, you’ll thank the powers that be every single time that you’ve got enough gas to go that 30 miles to the station!

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Psychic tip: Unless it’s a real emergency don’t be in such a rush to get a psychic reading; control yourself! Most areas of life that you’re going to want a reputable psychic to examine are areas that most likely will not be affected by a wait of a month or two! But everybody wants a reading “today!” which of course is just not possible for a psychic to accommodate. And if you’re so insistent that you simply must have your reading today, then you’ll take the first psychic who will accommodate you and that person, more than likely, will not be any good. Think about it: if a person is any good there are going to be lots of people wanting to utilize their service, which means you will have to get in line like everyone else. Save yourself some grief and don’t be so impatient to get your reading. And please be sure that you don’t define the mundane as a real emergency: “My boyfriend and I split up two months ago; I broke up with him; do you think he’ll call me in the future?” I have had that question posed to me as an emergency! Trust me, it is not!

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Psychic experiment: Ask someone on the Other Side to give you a phone call, preferably one that you can document (through caller id, etc.) and see if you can record the call when it comes in. (Yes, for this experiment you may have to have a recorder that records both sides of a phone conversation hooked up to your phone and ready to go at a moment’s notice should that next call indeed be from the Great Beyond.) When I can make the time I plan to conduct some experiments of this nature myself, and I’d really love to hear from any of you that have success with this or have had phone calls from the dead in the past! A good book you may enjoy reading is D. Scott Rogo’s Phone Calls from the Dead.

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Next week’s post: UFOs and Bears in the Woods

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

2009-05-28T10:03:00.006-04:00

I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and the movie, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and since I try to ride to Savannah, Georgia and back a couple of times a year I have decided that on this upcoming trip I will make Bonaventure Cemetery my destination. I am taking along my digital camera, my film camera, and my digital voice recorder so that I can attempt to capture ghost photographs and EVP.¹ I had hoped that I might get Jim Williams’ spirit voice greeting me with, “Hello, Sport!” but I’m disappointed to learn that he’s not buried in Bonaventure but instead in a cemetery near his hometown.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day in April, 2009, but still a tad chilly on the bike as I ride north, but that’s okay: I’m basking in the warmth of a leather jacket layered over a sweatshirt layered over a t-shirt. I decide to skirt I-95 north through Jacksonville by taking I-295 north instead and as I’m tooling along I look up and guess who I see? A pair of geese flying by me headed in the opposite direction!

In my post, Funereal Aethereal, I mentioned seeing the pair of geese at the Tallahassee Automobile Museum and intuitively understanding at the time that I should take them to be an omen. This morning I look up and there they are again! Are they the same geese? Probably not, but I don’t know for sure. All I know is that they again seem to present themselves to me as a positive omen, and I feel sure that Bonaventure Cemetery is going to provide me with some warm psychic experiences today.

And after a pleasant journey of two hundred-plus miles I am in Savannah, taking the streets that will lead me to Bonaventure and on one of these streets is a very large, colorful painted sign for a psychic, and her neon sign in the window proclaims, “Open.” I laugh aloud as I recall my experiences with some of these “psychics” (See my post: The Calling Cards of Charlatans). I’m not saying that this lady is a fraud; I’d have to personally investigate her in order to determine that, but I will say that Savannah has a Mrs. Hope, and a Mrs. Grace, and I begin to wonder if there’s also a Mrs. Faith and a Mrs. Charity, too; Lawsy.

I finally arrive at the gates of Bonaventure Cemetery, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Bonaventure can only be described as a beautiful, awe-inspiring, Gothic dream of a destination if you love cemeteries, and I do!

I park Melissa and unpack my gear, and after a brief chat with one of the cemetery’s personnel I head to the office to pick up a map. Outside the office I discover a public restroom, a soda machine, a little area to sit and relax, and there are also numerous trashcans placed around the cemetery. This is obviously a popular tourist destination, and besides myself there are several other tourists here today, too.

I’m not antisocial (my old lady would beg to differ) but I try to get off away from the other folks so that I can be by myself…I want to focus fully on the paranormal realm, and I also want to try and obtain some EVP and I don’t want any chattering voices from my fellow visitors around me when I do.

The psychic energy in the cemetery is warm and relaxing, and I have no doubt that Bonaventure holds a wealth of paranormal communication for me to experience in the future. Today, however, I’m rushed: I have to make it back home before day’s end. I’m also overawed by the plethora of large, exquisite, ornate tombstones, statues, monuments, and mausoleums. It’s as much fun for me to behold them as it is for me to hunt ghosts!

But I finally wrest my attention away from the artsy side of this beautiful cemetery and I direct my focus back to business: hunting ghosts. I take out my Nikon film camera and shoot a roll of film. I take out my Kodak digital camera and shoot several photos. And then I begin my EVP recordings. I wander down toward the back of the cemetery which is bordered by the Wilmington River, and I stand a few moments and allow myself to enjoy the view. I turn around and the first thing I behold is a tiny grave that’s only a few feet long, and my heart sinks.

I approach the tombstone and I calculate from the dates of birth and death that this young boy was only 1 year and seven months old when he died, and this fact pisses me off: Because here I am, a grizzled old bastard no more deserving of life than anybody else and I’ve been blessed to enjoy fifty-five years of it, while this poor little soul never got to taste any of this old world’s joys and pleasures.

All of my life I’ve lived close to dying and death and loss: I have literally held the hand of the dying as they have crossed over to the Other Side and I have felt their grips go limp as their spirits have left their bodies. I’ve preached funerals; I preached my own father’s funeral, and that was hard! I have lived with the fact of death and dying all of my life, and because of my psychic gifts I’ve probably been more acutely aware of the great issues surrounding life and death than the person who isn’t so gifted, and it would be logical to think that I am somehow numb to this whole death and dying thing by now, but I’m not, and this little grave is the straw that breaks the camel’s back and it’s hard for me not to cry as I stand here.

One thing I’ve learned over the years, both from my own personal experience and the experiences of others, is that losing a loved one to death hurts and that hurt never stops.

So now I think of this family who more than likely rejoiced in the birth of their son, grew to love him, watched him begin to grow and then shared together their hopes and dreams for what his life would eventually become, and then had all of that pulled away from them before their beloved child could even taste life. In less than two years time he was yanked away from them. I memorialize their tears and their mourning. I am indignant that Death should throw such a tiny grave into our faces.

I feel the resentment building inside of me toward this inescapable fact of our life here on Earth: death. I say aloud, “Damn!” It’s a curse meant for the Grim Reaper.

Yes, I believe in the Afterlife; I believe that our souls, spirits, whatever, live on; I believe that our intelligences, memories, and personalities survive the deaths of our physical bodies, but let me tell you something: In spite of my strong beliefs about the afterlife, death still angers me. Especially when the Reaper’s dismal scythe falls on one so young and tender.

Have the young child’s parents met up with him on the Other Side? I hope so; I believe so. But does that make up for the depth of painful emotions that they experienced for all those long years when they had to live without him? It seems to me like that hurt would last for a long, long time. And if you are reunited on the Other Side, wouldn’t you worry that, “Well, we lost him once before. Is it possible that we can lose him yet again?”

I shake my head and hold up my recorder. It’s the final attempt I will make at recording a spirit voice before I have to leave if I’m going to make it home today. Softly I ask, “Is there anything anyone wants to say?” And then I press the record button and fall silent as I allow about ten seconds for a response from someone I can’t see with my physical eyes, nor hear with my physical ears.

I blow a little kiss to the tiny grave and I attempt to remain stoic in the face of this loss and grief; after all, bikers are supposed to be tough.

* * *

Back home the next day I upload my photos from my digital camera and, while I’ve captured much of Bonaventure’s beauty, I haven’t captured any paranormal phenomena; no ghosts.

I develop the roll of film; still no ghosts.

I listen very carefully to each recording, one at a time, listening to each one over and over and over before moving on to the next. Nine recordings I’ve listened to and so far not so much as a peep from the spirits!

And then, at the start of the tenth recording, the last one that I made as I stood before that tiny grave and asked if anyone had anything they wanted to say, I make out, with great difficulty, the words of a spirit voice.

And those words ask me a question, and when I finally make the question out I get chills, for the ghost asks me:

“Are you angry?”

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¹EVP: Electronic Voice Phenomena

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Here’s a link to Bonaventure’s web site:

http://www.savannahga.gov/cityweb/cemeteriesweb.nsf/cemeteries/bonaventure.html

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Biker tip: Don’t just dress for where you are, but dress for where you’re going, or bring along different clothing that will be appropriate for where you’re heading. Remember to check the weather forecast for not only your immediate area but for your destination, too: Just as it can be pouring rain on one side of town and sunny on the other you might start off your trip under blue skies and sunshine and warmth and a hundred miles away you might give your left arm for a warm jacket and/or some rain gear! I keep a thin insulated long-sleeved undershirt rolled up with my rain gear just in case; I’ve seen a ninety degree temperature drop to sixty degrees in a matter of fifteen minutes! Sixty on a bike is chilly to most people, and if you throw in rain the combination of dampness and wind chill is going to feel even colder. Also, a good rule of thumb is to take the ambient temperature and deduct 5 to 10 degrees from it to see what it will feel like on the bike. If you’re getting older, like me, and the old bones are achy, a 10 degree deduction will make sure that you’re comfortable, and remember, you can always take a jacket off and stash it in your saddlebags or bungee it to your bike, but you can’t put on something to get warm if you haven’t brought it with you! Worst case scenario: you’ve started off on a warm, beautiful ride and now, a hundred miles down the road, you’re freezing and you haven’t brought a jacket. Stop into a Target, Wal-Mart, or one of the large sporting goods chains such as Gander Mountain and buy a sweatshirt and a windbreaker; if they have no jackets of any sort buy several sweatshirts and layer them; and of course if they do have a good, warm jacket, buy it! And some bungee cords if needed so that you can take off the jacket later if necessary and still be able to hold onto it. And you do have gloves, right??

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Psychic tip: When visiting cemeteries to conduct paranormal investigations be respectful and use your manners. If you’re going to be dragging around a lot of camera equipment and recorders it pays to contact the cemetery management first to ask if photography is permitted. Most places won’t mind if you carry only a small camera and a small recorder and are discreet about what you’re doing. Be courteous to cemetery staff and especially considerate of mourners: keep your distance; out of sight is best…simply move to another area of the cemetery. If a ghost is there and wants to talk to you, they’ll follow. If you’re questioned by cemetery staff explain what you’re doing and if you have a recorder on which you have some clear EVP ask them if they’d like to hear a voice from the Other Side and offer to play one or two recordings for them. If you’re asked to stop photographing and/or recording be respectful and courteous and stop. If asked to leave the cemetery property be gracious and leave politely and without hesitation. Remember, you’re on private property which is also the domain of those who are bereaved of loved ones, and their comfort comes first. If you’re discreet and visit tourist destinations like Bonaventure and just wander around unobtrusively and make a recording here and there without making a big deal out of it, you won’t even have to ask permission. Just don’t come off all like “I’m a big time ghost hunter: notice me!” and you’ll be okay. P.S. My old lady, who sells pre-need funeral services and works at a cemetery, informs me that most cemeteries, except tourist destinations like Bonaventure, will not allow you to photograph on the premises unless you are photographing the grave of a loved one.

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Next week’s post: Phantom Phone Calls

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Second Chances

2009-05-21T14:05:00.002-04:00

I believe in supernatural healing, and I’ll share with you a couple of true stories that will show you why I do.

* * *

Melissa, my motorcycle, is sitting in the garage and looking out at me as I mow and trim my yard, and she’s giving me the evil eye: It’s a nice day and she wants to be on the road, but I have to do my yard work.

I have had to wear glasses in the past but somehow, in my fifties, my eyes have changed and now I no longer have to wear glasses. I go to the drivers license office and when I take my eye test for my replacement license I can read the very smallest line on the test, and the letters are all super-sharp and clear! I tell this to the clerk, and she, tongue-in-cheek, informs me that no one likes a smart aleck!

Previously when I wore glasses they protected my eyes from flying debris when I worked in the yard, but today, like an idiot, I’m not even wearing my sunglasses, and my line trimmer slings a large, hard piece of bark mulch directly into my open right eye! The pain is intense! I hold my hand over my eye until the worst of the pain subsides and I wipe away the copious tears my eye is weeping and I close my left eye and the world is a total blur! Oh my god, I may have lost my sight in my right eye! I castigate myself for my carelessness.

I’m a photographer, and my dominant eye is my right eye! I also realize that if I have diminished sight in my right eye it will mess up my depth perception and riding Melissa will never be the same again! And I, through carelessness, have allowed this to happen to myself after I have had the gift of perfect sight returned to me so graciously.

I immediately petition the Other Side for healing help for my eye, and I also begin healing work on my eye, too.

As the day progresses I feel real concern: My vision worsens, and everything is a blur, both up close and far away. The area around my eye is swollen, and my eye is bloodshot and also has a large red vein bulging out that looks as though it may have ruptured.

This is serious. I make earnest contact with the Other Side and I ask them if my vision will be okay, or do I need to go to the optometrist and let him look at my eye? With as much certainty as I’ve ever received any assurance from the Other Side they tell me that my eye will be okay, and my sight will return, and not to be such a careless idiot in the future!

I express my gratitude and I also continue to perform my healing work on my eye.

In a few days time my sight returns fully and completely, and my vision actually is a little sharper than before! THANK YOU!!!

Did I learn something? Every single time I do yard work I wear safety goggles. If I’m hammering something or banging on something or chipping at something…I wear safety goggles. If I’m working on Melissa I wear safety goggles. If I’m doing anything that by any stretch of the imagination could result in damage to my eyes, I wear safety goggles.

I learned a valuable lesson, and thankfully I was also one hundred percent healed! I am so grateful that I did not lose sight in my eye!

* * *

The other true story is this: I receive a call from a new client, and she tells me that she has called me to learn how to die. Now, I’ve read professionally for over thirty-five years, but this throws me for a loop. I ask her if she’s going to kill herself, and she says no, that she has been under the care of one of the best cancer specialists in the nation, and that she’s been in stage four for some time now and finally the doctor has told her that she has no more than two to four weeks to live and for her to go home and get her affairs in order. Wow! Imagine being on the receiving end of that news!

BUT, the Other Side tells me the most miraculous good news: It is not her time to die!

She doesn’t believe me. I understand, but I tell her to assume that I’m right and that if it’s not her time to die that she can live sick an awful long time and wouldn’t she rather be well?

She agrees, and the Other Side gives me a healing regimen for her, based mostly on the book, The Art of True Healing. I tell her that she is to do this prescribed regimen daily for the required amounts of time each day, and that she must do it every single day whether she’s happy or sad, throwing up or feeling better, cursing me and cursing God, and whether or not she feels hopeful or hopeless! And I tell her that she must not ever miss a day! Period!

I explain to her that the Other Side tells me that if she will do this every day without fail that in six months time her hair will be back, her appetite will return and her weight will come back, and she will return to work! Then, if she will continue for an additional six months of the daily healing treatments that she will return to the doctor who gave her a death sentence and his jaw will literally drop!

She believes me, and she does the prescribed healing regimen. In six months time she calls me to tell me that her hair is back, her appetite is back and she’s gaining weight, and she’s returned to work!

In six more months she calls me to tell me that she wished I could have been in her doctor’s office with her, to see his jaw literally drop, for, the physician who had had her under his care for so long and had told her that she had two to four weeks to live and to go home and get her affairs in order now had to deliver the news to her that he had run every test imaginable on her and that not only did she not have any cancer at all in her body but that there were no markers of any kind in her body to indicate that she’d ever even had cancer!

And this woman who received this death sentence six or seven years ago is still cancer-free and alive and well and healthy and happy and is still my client these many years later!

* * *

Some people ask the question: “Don’t people try to heal themselves with these same techniques, and ask the Other Side for healing, and they either get worse or die?”

Yes. I can’t tell you why. I wish I knew, but I don’t.

But what I do know is that the fact that people try to be healed and don’t receive healing should not stop every single one of us from trying to be healed!

Don’t accept any sickness or illness or disease or discomfort as a matter of fact. Pester the Other Side for healing, and pester them many times a day and every single day for the rest of your life!

Don’t be afraid to try different doctors, or alternative healing techniques, always with a watchful eye out for charlatans and frauds.

And try this book, The Art of True Healing, which is always available at amazon.com.

I have studied metaphysics, psychology, parapsychology, and the supernatural, and psychic matters since I was twelve years old, and I have found very little that works. The technique in this book works better and more reliably than anything else I’ve found. I have used this book to heal myself of several health problems that the doctors had given up on!

But, it’s like anything else: The more disciplined and dedicated to it you are, the better your results are going to be! You can’t make a half-hearted effort for a few weeks and then give up! You must determine that you’re going to utilize this healing technique every single day for as long as it takes to feel better and/or completely heal yourself!

If you’re willing to make that commitment to your health and well-being I’ll be willing to bet that the Other Side is more than willing to meet you at least halfway!

What do you have to lose by being willing to try?

Wouldn’t you like your own second chance?

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Biker tip: Either before or right after you’ve purchased your first motorcycle take a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course to help you to learn how to ride properly. And remember that motorcycling is just like anything else: the more you practice it the better you’ll become! Run errands on your motorcycle; take progressively longer and more challenging rides; try to ride every day. And for you more experienced riders the MSF offers an advanced rider course from which you might pick up some new and helpful tips, too!

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Psychic tip: Be willing to acknowledge that healing could be a possibility for you. What if that little book, The Art of True Healing, enabled you to set yourself free from physical problems and pain? Wouldn’t that be a joyous day? Are you willing to make the commitment to your health and well-being to try, really try, to obtain healing for yourself? Aren’t you worth it, and don’t you owe it to yourself to begin trying right now, today? YES!

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Psychic experiment: Practice using a pendulum to find an object that someone has hidden from you. A good starting point to learn how to use a pendulum is the book: Pendulum Magic for Beginners. You may reference these books from my web site at: http://members.tripod.com/atdaylong/recread.html or purchase them directly from amazon.com.

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Next week’s post: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

An Enigma

2009-05-13T18:08:00.002-04:00

I have just finished eating with my friend Eric Huber who’s down from New York for Bike Week. I met Eric when I was living in Cornwall, New York, and we’ve been friends ever since. Eric’s an ex-cop with some interesting stories, such as the time he chased after Indian Larry, a gentleman who in his younger days brushed up against the wrong side of the law but who then straightened out and went on to garner considerable fame in the motorcycle world.

I’ve been riding since I was about fifteen or sixteen and I’ve racked up my share of honest miles, but Eric’s an old pro at this Bike Week thing: for years he has been coming down for the festivities, and he used to make the trek down from New York to Florida on his motorcycle sans fairing, windshield, or helmet, which makes him about as real deal as you can get. He’s got a few good road stories, too, like the time he and a buddy stopped to eat and Eric says he guesses maybe the heat got to him or something because he was blithering nonsense while his buddy and the waitress stared at him like he was nuts, but to him it sounded like he was speaking perfect English and making perfect sense. I still laugh when I think about that one.

Including Eric and me and some of Eric’s buddies who I have just met there are six of us, and we have our bikes parked next to each other in a row in the restaurant’s parking lot. Four of our group have fired up and are waiting on us; they’re sitting two abreast in line at the parking lot’s exit.

I raise my kickstand and shift the bike into neutral in preparation for starting her up. For some bizarre reason I push down on the ground with my right leg, throwing both my and the bike’s weight to the left. I realize that my left foot is stuck between the foot peg and the shift lever and that I can’t get it out to catch myself as I begin to topple with Melissa, my bike, into the bike next to me, which belongs to one of my new friends! Nice way to start a new friendship, huh? Moron!

I curse loudly as we go down. Thank god I had already strapped my helmet on for I smack my head into my friend’s bike on the way down. Melissa, all 750-800 pounds of her, lands on me as I fall into the machine next to me, crumpling my body up and sliding me down and I yell in pain as I feel a lower rib pop on the other bike’s passenger footrest. Son of a bitch, it feels like Mike Tyson has just unloaded on my rib cage! I come to rest with part of me bent up at an odd angle against my friend’s bike, and part of me lying on the ground with Melissa on top of me. My foot is still trapped between the shift lever and the foot peg. My friends come running and pick Melissa and me up, and they have to hold her steady while I work to extricate my trapped foot from between the foot peg and the shift lever.

Amazingly both my friend’s bike and Melissa are okay! The fall could have broken something on his bike, or scratched the paint up; it could have broken my clutch lever, or bent or broken the shift lever and linkage, but no, everything is in good working order! Except for me; I’m hurting like one painful sumbitch! But, I can breathe, in spite of what I know is a cracked rib, and I flex and twist and test my limbs and I’m okay to ride. In spite of the pain my ego hurts the most! It’s embarrassing as hell to drop your motorcycle in front of your friends, even though everyone who rides has done it at one time or another. (When I see my friends again over the next few days, I pay: as we walk up and down Main Street in Daytona Beach at every single store we go into together my buddy Eric engages the employees in conversation and then, making sure that I’m within earshot, inquires in earnest as to the availability of training wheels for motorcycles; ha, ha-ha, ha.)

When I get home I begin to take aspirin and I soak in a tub of hot water. I rub a generous amount of liniment on myself before bedtime, and the following morning I again take aspirin and soak in a hot tub, followed by the application of more liniment. This becomes a frequently repeated daily routine.

In a few days time I am a mass of ugly bruises. Most of my left leg and foot, my left hip, the left side of my torso, and all of my left shoulder and arm are various shades of black, blue, purple, yellow, and green. Ouch! But I keep on riding! And as the weeks pass by I finally begin to look like a normal human being again instead of some type of bizarre coloring book come to life. Oh sure, I hurt like hell for awhile, and I’ve got a cracked rib for my trouble, and I took some good-natured razzing from my buddy, but my life, for the most part, has continued on its merry little way with no great disruptions as a result of my fall.

So this evening I’m reading a motorcycling magazine and there’s a brief news article about a fellow who, just like me, dumped his bike over on himself while he was sitting still on it. My first thought is, “Poor guy, I hope he didn’t do it in front of all of his buddies!” I keep reading and I learn that he got bruises all over, just like me. I smile and nod…yep! Further, the article states, he was okay for a couple of weeks–just like me–and then, out of the blue, he died!

I shake my head to clear it and I read the article again.

His bruises caused a blood clot to form; the blood clot broke loose and went to his heart and BAM: end of story.

I tell you, reading this news account has an impact on me like you can’t believe! Who would think to imagine that something as apparently innocuous as a bruise could kill you? That could have been me!

And then I get to thinking: Why wasn’t it me?

Both of us suffered the same type of motorcycle accident. He dies; I live. Why? Was it his “time” to go, and not mine? Was his guardian angel lax about their protective duties that day, but mine was working overtime for me? Was it a stroke of dumb luck for me, and not for him? Did I take more aspirin than he did, and it worked more effectively for me? Was the liniment the key? I don’t feel like I really have an answer that makes any sense.

All of us struggle to try to understand life’s disparities and we don’t really have any satisfactory answers as to why something, either good or bad, happens to one person and not the other.

Oh, sure, we can espouse this or that religious or spiritual belief and then create a philosophy to explain why we have our experiences, but all that does is rationalize what we don’t understand, and the reality of this world is that our very existence is capricious at best and that our lives can be taken away from us in a heartbeat by the most unexpected of circumstances, and that realization should cause all of us to truly make the attempt to live our lives to the very fullest that’s possible, each and every day!

For who knows when Death is just a bruise away…?

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Biker tip: There are first aid kits that contain a lot of useful items and are small enough to fit into your saddle bag. I highly recommend carrying one; it seems like we bikers are always cutting or scraping something, or getting an insect sting, or something in our eyes. A good first aid kit will help you to take care of these minor injuries, and you may also be called upon to provide some first aid items to your riding buddies from time to time.

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Psychic tip: Here’s a book that I recommend frequently both to my clients and to my radio listeners: How to Get Everything You Ever Wanted, by Adrian Calabrese. Amazon.com always has it in stock. Order your copy today, and use it to begin to change your life for the better before it slips away. And check out these other books, too: Visit my web site at johnrussell.net, and below my picture there is a link which reads: “Books John highly recommends.” A new page will open up for you and there will be pictures and descriptions of books, Tarot decks, etc. When you click on the pictures of the items you will be taken to that exact page at amazon.com where you may then order the item directly from them. When you get the books, use them until you begin to see positive changes occur in your life!

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Psychic experiment: Think of someone you know intimately who is ill. Close your eyes and meditate on that person, seeing their face in your mind’s eye. Visualize that person encased in a giant orb of golden light and speak words of health and healing to them; speak the words out loud, just as if your friend were actually standing there in the room before you. In your vision see the person healing and becoming well, and visualize them becoming radiantly healthy and happy as they are able to resume normal activities. For a minor illness or injury perform this ritual daily for a month. Has your friend improved or gotten well? For serious illness or injury consider starting a “prayer group” that will combine its focused power and direct it toward the sick individual, and keep track of your results. We did this when I was young and the positive results were sometimes amazing!

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Next week’s post: Second Chances

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

The Haunted House of Dolls

2009-05-07T05:31:00.001-04:00

Good god almighty damn!

It’s some serious stuff we’ve been talking about, isn’t it? Jesus! Cancer eatin’ peoples’ brains; trying to figure out who’s who and what’s what with the other side; storms that may actually be intelligent roaming around and spying on us; little babies dying; spirits speaking to us from the Other Side with voices so strong that we can actually record them. Crop circles; UFOs; vanishing motorcyclists! And somehow trying to discover a higher purpose in our lives and make sense out of it all!

Let’s take a break and have a little fun, want to? The serious stuff will still be there when we want to ride on its highway once again. Right now, I need a break, and maybe a few laughs! You too? Good! Enjoy this memory with me as I utilize the truth as a catalyst to help me play a dark prank on my sister…but first, a short background story that may just make you look at your kid’s dolls and stuffed animals a little bit differently.

* * *

I know a highly gregarious man who is very black-skinned and this evening I’m talking to him after he’s been out moonlighting as a door-to-door salesman. Well, I’m attempting to chat with him: He’s atypically non-responsive. Also, my friend is extremely pale to the point of being a dark shade of white! I have never seen a black person become so pale that they actually turn a dark shade of white. I am highly concerned about my buddy so I ask him if he is ill, to which he responds that no, he isn’t ill.

Hmm. Well, without putting too fine a point on it I inform my black friend that he is now several shades lighter and if he isn’t ill, then why is he turning white? During more persistent questioning his answers are mostly terse and uninformative, but he finally says that if he tells me what happened to him earlier this evening that I wouldn’t believe him and that I would make fun of him!

Well, I certainly am not going to make fun of him: This is a man who speaks, reads, and writes several foreign languages fluently. He’s highly educated. He’s dignified without being aloof. On top of all that he’s handsome. He is a great companion and a good friend, and I hold him in high esteem. I respect him greatly. Make fun of him? No.

So I assure him that I absolutely will not make fun of him, and I continue to badger him a little bit longer and he finally relents and tells me the following story, which he upholds to be the absolute truth: He tells me that as twilight is beginning to fall he has parked in front of the home of one of his last appointments for the evening. The first thing he notices as he glances up at the house is that the living room is absolutely full of people! Its interior is somewhat visible from the street even in the waning daylight thanks both to a large picture window and some unidentifiable light source shining from deep within the house that serves to softly illuminate the living room and silhouette those who are inside.

His first thought is: That how rude the homeowners are to accept an appointment for his sales presentation and then to schedule a party, for Pete’s sake! He considers skipping the appointment altogether, but reconsiders when he thinks about his pregnant wife and their need for additional income during this time in their lives.

Then he notices something odd: There are not sufficient cars filling the street for the amount of people who seem to be inside the house! Extrapolating from his rough head count the street should have been full of cars for at least a few blocks. Maybe, he thinks, they’re all neighbors and they’ve simply walked over to the party.

He fumes a minute or two, realizing that it’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to take time out from hosting their party to listen to his sales presentation, but after further consideration he decides he’ll go ahead and pursue the appointment anyway since he’s already here.

As he gets out of his car and begins to walk up the long sidewalk he notices that the people inside the house don’t seem to be moving around, and an eerie feeling begins a slow crawl up his spine.

As he mounts the steps to the veranda he can finally see clearly into the living room. The living room, which he had presumed to be full of people, is full, alright. But it’s not full of people. It’s full of dolls! There are dolls of every size and description: big dolls, little dolls, realistic dolls, and life-size dolls! It’s these silhouettes he has mistaken for people!

By now he’s convinced that things are more than a bit odd at this house, and he thinks about just turning around, going back down the steps to his car, and leaving this strange place for good. But he thinks again of his pregnant wife and their need for more money and so he convinces himself that he’s just being silly, that his mind is playing juvenile tricks on him. What is there to be scared of?

He braces himself; stands erect and reaches for the doorbell. And then he swears to me that the next event actually happens: As he reaches to ring the doorbell every single doll’s head in that room turns and they all look at him through the picture window!

He immediately leaps from the porch, clearing all the steps in a single bound, races down the sidewalk and makes it back to his car in a few more long strides, and then he burns rubber leaving and now appears before me in this pale and shaken state!

I believe him! He is totally serious, and I can tell from his demeanor that he isn’t shining me on with a shaggy-dog story. I beg him to take me to the house so that I can experience the weird phenomenon for myself! Nope! No way! He is never returning there again! So, to this day, I never got to see The Haunted House of Dolls.

* * *

After both my sister and I experience divorces we move back into our childhood home to take care of our ailing mother. Our home is a large, rambling old house with an attached shotgun apartment in which my sister lives, and the apartment is connected to the main house by a doorway and a sort of a very short hall. My sister and I have begun a game together. The game is played thus: We try to scare each other so badly that one of us causes the other to have a stroke. So far the game is approximately tied. Tonight I will serendipitously discover a way to score a lot of points!

Tonight as my sister prepares to retire to her apartment to watch TV she asks me to accompany her to see a sight that she has been contemplating over the course of the last few days, a sight that is visible in a window of our neighbor’s house.

I accompany my sister into the apartment and she leads me to a view of the neighbor’s window. There, silhouetted against a translucent bamboo window shade, sits a rather startlingly human-looking doll, almost life-size! My sister asks me what I think it is, and I tell her: I have immediately recognized it as the outline of one of those very large Raggedy Ann dolls.

My sister says that it looks so human (And it does!) and that it hasn’t moved or shifted position for days, and it has caused her a little bit of concern: She wondered if someone in the house next door had murdered someone and had left them sitting there in a chair by the window until they decided what they were going to do with the body! We decide that such an explanation is not far-fetched; we read the daily papers.

As we chuckle about my sister’s fears I have one of those “A-ha!” moments as serendipity strikes. “Oh, Sis! Let me tell you what this doll next door has reminded me of!” And I tell my sister the haunted house of dolls story. I can tell that the story has played with her mind. Good; I go back into the main house and leave my sister alone, knowing that her imagination will get the better of her and that the creepy factor will continue to rise given a sufficient amount of time for my spooky tale to work its sinister magic.

I give her just enough time so that I know that her nerves will still be slightly on edge from contemplating the eerie story and then, as silently as I can, I make my way through the house, quietly open the back door, and sneak outside.

It’s fall, and in West Texas the temperatures are most often warm enough to have windows open in the evening, so I know that my sister, who is hot-natured, will have one of her living room windows open to enjoy a little breeze as she watches TV. She will be reclining on a couch on one side of her living room and directly opposite her on the other side of the living room is another couch, on the back of which will be her two scruffy little dogs. They’ll be gazing out the window, sniffing the autumn air and hoping to spot an errant cat or two.

Being autumn the ground is now covered with dry, crunchy leaves; I have to sneak around the outside of the house to Sis’s open window and it’s extremely difficult for me to do so without giving myself away with my noisy footfalls. Assisting me, however, is the fact that Sis has the volume on her TV turned up fairly loud, and if I’m cautious I’ll be able to make it to her window without her hearing me crunch the leaves underfoot.

But, on top of the noisy crunching of the leaves I have gotten tickled at the prospect of the gag I am about to pull and I can’t help but laugh out loud occasionally. I actually have to hold my hand over my mouth to smother the involuntary spasms of laughter that escape as visions of my dastardly plot unfold.

In spite of all this noise I actually manage to reach her open window undetected. Undetected by my sister, that is. Her two small dogs have alerted to my presence and they begin to bark a riotous cacophony of warning to my sister. They are standing on the back of the couch looking down at me through the window screen, and by peering underneath their little bellies there is just enough space for me to be able to see my sister sitting across the room.

“Oh hush!” she admonishes the little dogs. “It’s just the neighbor’s cat!”

They hush; I poke at them through the window screen; and they start their racket again. Finally, in a state of disgust over not being able to hear her TV show any longer, my sister rises and comes across the room to look out the window.

Sis mashes her face against the inside of the window screen in order to better peer out into the darkness and when she does I immediately jump up and mash my face against the outside of the screen, placing my face squarely into hers! I bug my eyes out as wide as I can and I make as scary a face as possible, my mouth a rictus from which pours a growl conjured from the depths of Hell itself! The overall effect is that of a demented leer that reeks of malicious intent accompanied by a demon’s roar!

“OH MY GOD!” my sister screams! Now her eyes are bugged, but from fear! Her mouth is a rictus, too, but it is a reflection of the momentary horror from which she’s reeling! Her head snaps back and then she leaps backward off the couch and away from the window, her arms flailing, and by the time she lands clear across the room she nearly collides with the other couch on which she had been sitting and she stumbles briefly as she struggles to catch her balance! One hand is on her chest as if to keep her racing heart from leaping out of it and her eyes are still wide with fright, her mouth still agape as…I lose all composure and chortle as I begin to run back around the house, trying to get back inside and back to my room before my sister has a chance to compose herself and figure out what has happened, but my laughter has betrayed me. My fervent hope was that my creepy story would bear such vile fruit that she’d think the doll next door had come to life and had come to get her, but such is not to be my luck: Before I can even round the corner of the apartment she has turned on her porch light and now she flings open her front door, yelling so loudly that it causes two neighbors to flip on their porch lights and come outside, too: “John! You crazy son of a bitch! What in God’s name are you trying to do, give me a heart attack?” She intercepts me before I can make it into the sanctuary of the main house.

I have abandoned even a pretense of running, for I am now doubled over with laughter that I don’t try to conceal at all. One neighbor inquires as to our well-being, which causes me to go into a paroxysm of laughter while my sister is left to explain what has happened. When I can finally catch my breath I insincerely bid my sister a pleasant and restful good night, knowing full well that she will be so on the alert for a follow-up attack to occur that her nerves will be on edge for a good hour or more.

And before I go to sleep I check that I have securely locked my bedroom door. I check twice; payback’s a bitch!

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Biker tip: Do you take prescription medication(s)? If you carry them along on your bike make sure that you also carry the refill label to prove that the drugs are yours and are prescribed by a recognized doctor. The Man (Police) ain’t too keen on believing that those Darvocette tablets wrapped in a piece of aluminum foil are legally yours. Either ask the pharmacist for a small bottle with your prescription label on it that you can conveniently carry in your pocket, or, as is the case with my asthma inhaler that isn’t labeled, simply cut the prescription label off the box and carry it with you. The Man used to have a little bit of a sense of humor about him; not no more. Maybe with good reason, too.

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Psychic tip: Be willing to listen to others’ psychic experiences with an open mind. You don’t have to hang your hat on everything that people tell you, but you can listen politely, ask appropriate questions, and then mull it over later and make up your mind about what you choose to believe, or not. Some of the stories I have told you, and will continue to share with you, are so fantastic that they must leave you shaking your head, but they are 100% true, and I have had the good fortune to have had others witness many of these dramatic experiences with me. Needless to say these experiences have proved to be life changing events for most of those witnesses who, maybe for the first time in their lives, have to acknowledge that they have indeed been confronted by the supernatural. By the same token, examine carefully every paranormal and psychic claim; if they’re the real deal they will hold up under scrutiny. And don’t drink from any vats of juice found in a so-called prophet’s jungle camp! (You youngsters Google “Jim Jones.”)

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Next week: An Enigma

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Catch a Falling Star

2009-04-30T05:47:00.000-04:00

I explained to you in my first post on this blog, Introduction to Psychic John Russell, that I have had these amazing paranormal experiences since I was a kid, but of all the exciting supernatural things I heard and saw as a young boy, the one that impressed me the most and remains vivid in my mind to this day is when my mother and I saw a falling star; a big, five-pointed, glowing, yellow-colored falling star. Up close and personal.

Of course we all know that stars are round objects; our sun, for example, which is round, is a massive star, and so far, as far as I know, the Hubble Space Telescope has failed to detect anything pentagram-shaped in space. Certainly it has never detected anything with the shape that we drew as kids to portray twinkling stars in the nighttime skies of our crayon drawings.

But that classic pentagram-shaped star is exactly the shape of the object that fell from the skies into a vacant lot beside our friend’s home…

* * *

Ha! You think that because I’m only around 10 or 12 years old that I can’t be a biker yet, but I am! I have terrorized my neighborhood no end on my Schwinn Stingray! Once I attached so many playing cards to my fender with clothespins so that they would impact the wheel’s spokes and make a “motor” noise that I couldn’t hear a real motorcycle riding by me the other way down the street! Yeah, our neighbors call my mom periodically to complain about all the noise I make.

Anyway, it’s summertime in West Texas (think sticking your head inside of a pizza oven and trying to breathe) and the car my mom owns, a '52 Chevy, doesn't have air conditioning, so we always leave the windows down in hot weather during the day because we don’t want to come outside and get into a blast furnace on wheels, and of course leaving all of the car’s windows down makes locking any of the car’s doors pointless.

Today we’re going to visit some friends of ours who live in the north part of town, and for some reason my mother pulls in front of their house and parks facing the “wrong” way, that is, into oncoming traffic. What I don’t know is that far into the future such a maneuver will merit you a ticket, but today it either isn't much of an issue, or else the police are just looking the other way.

We park in front of our friend’s house, facing east. Their house sits on a corner lot, facing south, and directly east across the street from their house is a vacant lot, one of many we have in San Angelo, and the lot is filled with mesquite trees, scrub brush, cacti, and various grasses and weeds, which are all bone dry in the heat of our scorching West Texas summer.

With it being summertime, and a real scorcher when we arrive (at about 3 in the afternoon) we leave our car's windows down, and the doors, naturally, unlocked.

After a pleasant but uneventful visit which lasts several hours we finally bid our friends farewell just as it’s reaching one of the darkest stages of twilight outside. Mom will definitely need to turn on the car's headlights to drive.

We say our goodbyes on our friend’s porch, and they watch us walk down their sidewalk and get into our car, waving a final goodbye before shutting their front door.

And it’s then that I see it!

Mom has started the car's engine when, falling very slowly, almost in slow motion, a perfectly symmetrical five-pointed star–yes, a pentagram–falls from the sky in a gentle arc right in front of us, and its trajectory is carrying it into that bone dry vacant lot next to our friend's house.

“Mom! Look!” I shout, somewhat unnecessarily of course, for my mother is transfixed; her eyes are locked onto the object as it falls.

It has a pretty yellow phosphorescent or luminescent glow as if lit from within, and it trails a brief tail behind it like a comet might, which dissolves as the star falls. The star is as large as the side of a house, and seems to be no more than several inches to a foot thick, and it’s a flat object rather than being rounded or bulbous.

What’s so bizarre is how slowly it falls! It’s a striking, beautiful sight, but it terrifies my mother who begins to literally shout for me to lock all the car doors, and roll up the windows! She’s frightened, more frightened than I have ever seen her before.

Me, on the other hand, I want to get out and go investigate! (I don't know if I've always had an uncommon bravery, or an uncommon stupidity!)

But my mother absolutely forbids it! She puts the car into gear and starts to zoom off, but I stop her with a query: “Mom, it's bone dry in that field, in that vacant lot.” The vacant lot covered a good half block, maybe more. “If that star falls in there, won't it set it on fire? And won't our friends be in danger? And shouldn't we wait to see what happens so if the star does cause a fire we can run back up to our friend's house and use their phone to call the fire department?”

My mother reluctantly agrees that there is indeed some merit to my suggestion, although complying necessitates that we remain in proximity to this unknown and, to her, frightening object.

We watch, both of us transfixed, as the star slowly falls into the midst of the vacant lot, falling down among the trees into the dry grasses and weeds, trailing its tail as it goes.

The star gives off such a bright glow that we can see its light shining through the trees! We continue to watch, and the glow begins to dim, more and more, until, gradually, the glow winks out completely and darkness resumes control of the night.

There is no fire, no aftermath of any kind that we can notice, and my mother drives home much faster than usual tonight as I pepper her with questions that she can never answer.

After we’re miles away she finally allows me to roll the windows down so that we can get some relief from the stifling heat that’s built up in the car.

* * *

A falling star.

I think I may have made a wish that night.

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In the years gone by I’ve tried to assign many different meanings to the experience, but so far I haven’t come up with one that satisfies. There are a lot of possibilities, but nothing that I want to hang my hat on. My old lady tells me, “It meant that you were going to be a star someday!” Yeah, well; I’m still waiting.

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Biker tip: Go to a large discount store such as Wal-Mart and buy a couple of packages of long cable ties. Pack them into your saddlebags or other luggage. You will find a multitude of uses for them! Just be sure to also carry either a pocketknife or a pair of scissors to cut the ties, for once they’re cinched up that’s the only way to undo them.

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Psychic tip: Try to remember the earliest psychic or paranormal memory that you can recall. How old were you? What occurred? What, if anything, did you learn from it?

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Next week: The Haunted House of Dolls

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

I Didn't Believe in UFOs

2009-04-22T18:00:00.001-04:00

I’m in my early twenties and I’ve already had an incredible number of paranormal experiences, but nothing has prepared me for this.

It’s about four in the afternoon and as I exit the building the first thing that strikes me in the face is the wind. Living in West Texas, in San Angelo, I’m used to the sometimes fierce thunderstorms and occasional tornadoes we hope to survive without incident, but the energy of this storm feels peculiar. I sense something unknown and unfamiliar to me on my psychic radar screen.

I didn’t take my bike; I’m the cager¹ today and to get to my car, a hulking Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon, I merely have to walk a very short distance and then cross a two lane street and enter a small parking lot; I can see my car from where I’m standing.

But I stay rooted to the spot which is right by the building’s door rather than walk the short way to my auto, for, actually down in the parking lot, resting on the asphalt, is a black, threatening cloud which, it appears, has lowered itself down from the low, dark clouds which cover the sky, and to which it is still attached. The cloud is undulating and churning and folding over on itself, but it stays rooted to its spot, too…which is near my car.

And the cloud emits from within strange, glowing, fluorescent colors: a large globule of yellow emerges, and then recedes; large globules of greens, blues, and oranges emerge here and there from within the cloud, and then recede back into it. I’m both spellbound and mystified, and a little unsettled: I can’t decide if this is a funnel cloud turning into a tornado, and I can’t decide if I should continue to stand here and watch or turn around and walk back through the door back into the relative safety of the building.

Some odd urge arises from within me, and I feel as though I’m supposed to walk toward the ominous, weird cloud! I take a few halting steps in its direction, and good god almighty the cloud advances toward me! I stop, and it does, too! I take a few steps back and the cloud retreats a small ways. I’m going nuts! This can’t be real! I move several steps in its direction, and it moves several feet toward me. I take several steps back and the cloud moves back several feet away from me, almost as if playing some type of game with me!

About this time I’m nearly flattened as a friend of mine exits the building and nearly whacks me with the door that I’ve been standing close to in case I needed to beat a hasty retreat back into the building. He apologizes and asks what in the world I’m doing standing there so close to the door like that, and then he says, oh wow it looks like we’re in for a storm, and then, oh my god what in the world is that? He too sees the cloud in the parking lot. I tell him to watch, and I take several steps toward the cloud and it moves several feet toward me, and then I take several steps back and the cloud retreats several feet. I do this a few times, which confirms that I am not going nuts because my friend sees this phenomenon occur, too, but it also causes him to look at me like I’m the Devil incarnate and he says a quick “Bye” and beats it out of there like the Hounds of Hell are after him. His car is parked in the opposite direction of the abnormal cloud, and I’m once again alone with this strange manifestation. Just as my mounting frustration at my inability to make a decision as to what I should do has grown to epic proportions the cloud suddenly lifts itself back up into the clouds above and the clouds all begin to move.

I decide that it’s now or never, and while keeping a wary eye on the skies I run to my car. “Geez,” I say out loud, “what in the hell was that?!”

I light a cigarette to calm my nerves, start my car, push the button for my favorite radio station, and pull out of the parking lot.

It starts to rain, and in West Texas, it can really rain: 4 inches or more in an hour is not uncommon, but this rain I’m experiencing now is unlike anything I’ve experienced before. The rain is so blinding that I can barely see to drive, and the dark clouds have served only to reduce visibility further. I turn on my headlights so that other cars can see me better.

After I’ve driven a few blocks the rain is now coming down so heavy that I can no longer look out my passenger window and see the cars that are angle parked in the parking spaces on the side of the street, and their rear ends are only a few feet away from my car! I make sure that my headlights are on, and I double-check to make sure that I have my windshield wipers on high. It doesn’t do any good: visibility continues to worsen and the rain falls in such torrents that the wipers can’t even pretend to clear the waterfall running down my windshield! It’s only when I am inches off the bumper of the car in front of me that my headlights pick it up! I realize that if I try to keep driving in this weather that I’m going to hit someone or someone is going to hit me!

The car in front of me is turning and I follow it as closely as I can. I’ve counted the intersections and I know which street I’m on, Twohig Street, and just a half a block away is the entrance to the rear parking lot of Sears, Roebuck and Company. I believe that if I can just creep along until I can, hopefully, make out the entrance to the parking lot that I will park there and sit in my car until the rain lets up enough to be able to drive safely. Or, hell: I won’t melt! I’ll jump out of my car, get instantly soaked to the bone, and run inside Sears where, down in the basement, I can peruse one of the finest sporting goods departments in all of town! None of this, I realize, is very sound logic, but it’s the best that I’ve got under the circumstances.

I lean across my front seat toward the passenger window, desperate to get just a glimpse of where the parked cars are on the street, and also desperately trying to see the entrance to the parking lot while at the same time trying to keep an eye on the car a few inches in front of me so that I don’t rear-end it when suddenly, without warning, the rain totally, completely stops!

Realize with me how weird this feels! One second it is raining so hard you can hardly see past the hood of your car, and the very next second the rain has gone away!

The rain has not slacked off; the rain has not lessened; the rain has not gradually decreased in intensity. Nope. A second ago I was experiencing the worst downpour I’ve ever seen in my lifetime, and now, a second later, there is not one bit of water falling from the sky! I reach up and turn my windshield wipers off, and there’s not as much as a mist hitting my windshield! Perfect visibility has returned, although the skies are still overcast with dark clouds, and that visibility lets me see where I am: I can see the rear corner of the Sears building and I’m almost at the entrance to the parking lot. I can also see the shenanigans that the drivers ahead of me are pulling. People in both lanes of traffic are going nuts! I’m in the westbound lane of traffic, and people in the eastbound lane of traffic are swerving toward my lane and nearly hitting other cars! Horns are blaring, and some people are rolling down their car windows and yelling, and still others are opening their car doors, getting out of their vehicles, and pointing up at the sky!

In a split second this is the thought that enters my mind: Oh, crap! The weird cloud I experienced earlier, the torrential downpour of rain, and the sudden cessation of the rain may all be indicators of the arrival of The Killer Tornado from Hell, and that must be what everyone up ahead is pointing at!

I look up in the direction that they’re pointing, expecting to see a whirling mass of doom, and instead I’m greeted by the sight of a round, shiny metallic disc which is hovering right over the rear corner of the Sears building!

Holy friggin’ crap!! I have had so many concrete paranormal and psychic experiences in my life that I have almost come to take them for granted, but I don’t believe in UFOs!!

I literally perform a cartoon-style eye-rub, but when I look back up the UFO is still there, hovering silently. There is no smoke, no flame, and no noise. Just this shiny metallic disc, which I estimate to be about fifty feet in diameter, sitting there in the air destroying my belief system!

I look back down at the street, and people are pointing up at it, gesturing, talking animatedly. I grab the door handle to open up my car door and get out, too, when very slowly and smoothly a low cloud comes up from behind the UFO and covers it, and the second that the cloud covers the UFO the rain is instantly back with all of its former intensity! One second there’s not a drop of moisture in the air, and the next second I can hardly see beyond the hood of the car.

Traffic begins to crawl again, and lo and behold the car in front of me makes the turn into the Sears parking lot. I decide that I’m going to follow this person even if I hit their car, and when they park I’m going to confront them and make them tell me what they just saw. I still can’t believe my eyes!

They park, and I park right by them, and before I can shift my transmission into park and turn my car off I see their dome light come on as they open their car door and dash out into the torrent of rain.

I follow as fast as I can. The second that I exit my car I’m immediately soaked to the bone. The rain hits me with stinging ferocity and I have to squint and shield my eyes to try and see well enough to make a run for the store. It’s cold, too!

But I make it, and there, standing just inside in the store’s small vestibule, is the fellow who occupied the automobile in front of me! He’s standing there stone still with his head bowed; he’s dripping water, and so am I; his eyeglasses are beaded with rain that he hasn’t even bothered to wipe off yet. I walk around to stand close in front of him, and in a moment he realizes that I’m there and he looks up at me.

I ask him: “Did you see what I just saw?”

He stares at me for a moment. And then he answers. “Yeah, but I damn sure ain’t gonna tell nobody!” And with that he sidesteps me and walks on into the store.

I stand there for a moment longer, and then I take the steps down into the basement, to the sporting goods department.

I probably looked at one of the finest collections of sporting equipment in town and I can’t tell you about one single item that I saw! The only thing I saw was that UFO. I couldn’t get it out of my mind’s eye. And I remember it to this day just as vividly as if it had happened only yesterday, and whenever I return to San Angelo I make it a point to go downtown to the old Sears building, which is now the Tom Green County Public Library, and regardless of whether it’s clear or overcast I turn my eyes to the sky over the building, and this time I carry a camera.

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¹Cager: Biker terminology for a person whose primary form of transportation is an automobile, or, “cage.”

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Epilogue: Unlike those who claim to know exactly what (and whose) UFOs are and where they come from I did not jump on that particular bandwagon. I have formulated no theories because I haven’t yet discovered a way to formulate a theory that makes any practical sense. This much I know: they exist. I have seen another one since that initial sighting. I have no idea whose they are or what they are. And until we obtain some hard evidence of whose they are and for what purposes they are here, I will abstain from formulating what can only be a half-cocked opinion based on assumption. There’s enough of that kind of thinking that litters the paranormal landscape already, and I refuse to add my mental garbage to it. I will tell you this: although I don’t agree with all of their hypotheses there is one group of people that are performing some mighty interesting investigations, and those are the people starring in the TV show “UFO Hunters,” shown on The History Channel.

* * *

And then, what in the world was that cloud? And what was its connection to the UFO, if any? Read my post titled “Fay.” The strange cloud years ago may have been my first encounter with an “intelligent storm.”

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Biker tip: Try not to ride during severe thunderstorms! You are a big bag of salt water sitting on a huge chunk of metal. That screams to the powers that be: “Hit me with a bolt of lightning!” Pull into a restaurant and eat a leisurely meal, or check into a motel until the worst of the storm passes and you can get back on the road. And carry rain gear!

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Psychic tip: Try to always have a camera with you so that you may obtain photographic evidence of paranormal phenomena! Good digital cameras are so small that there’s never an excuse to be without one. If I had had a camera with me on the day that I saw that UFO up close and personal (and with so many witnesses to boot) I could have snapped several pictures that would have both made me rich and would have been the smoking gun evidence of the existence of UFOs.

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Next week: Catch a Falling Star

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Funereal Aethereal

2009-04-16T05:38:00.002-04:00

Tallahassee. I’ve been having psychic impulses to ride to Tallahassee. I don’t know why I’m receiving these psychic prompts, but they’re increasing in frequency and intensity, and while the Other Side urges me to ride to Tallahassee they don’t tell me why, but I know that there has got to be a particular reason and I hope that I can discover it easily when I arrive there. Sometimes the purpose of a trip will smack me in the face as soon as I get to my destination, and other times I have to do a bit of psychic detective work before things fall into place.

I have the day off. I rise early and check my map. Tallahassee, which is Florida’s state capital, is within easy striking distance for a day’s roundtrip ride of between 450-500 miles. The weather forecast promises blue skies and sunshine and lots of Florida’s infamous heat. My throttle hand is itching. I pack Melissa, my faithful bike, check her fluids and tire pressures, and make sure that all of her lights and signals are in good working order, and I hit the road.

My trip on I-10 west is uneventful until I hit a traffic jam. I put my sidestand down, turn off my bike, and dismount, walking over to the median so that I can look far down the straight, flat highway and try to determine why we’re stuck. Up ahead I can see a major wreck, and both I-10 east and I-10 west are closed. The thought crosses my mind that my trip to our state’s capital will have to be postponed, and that I will probably have to turn around and take a different ride this day, but I have a sudden feeling that I should take out my handheld CB radio and see if those who are close to the wreck can tell me what’s going on and approximately how long our delay could be.

Sweet merciful crap, as Homer Simpson would say: I used to use CB radio with some regularity when I was in my mid to late teens, but I haven’t been on the air for over thirty years now and when I switch on channel 19 to try and get some information from either the truckers who are close to the accident or anyone else up there who might have a CB, I’m astonished! The barrage of cursing; filthy chatter; and off-color remarks takes me aback! This ain’t my daddy’s CB radio anymore!

Now I’m far from being a prude, and my old lady says that sailors should come to me to learn how to cuss, but what I’m hearing is something else. I’m thinking I’m going to tune into the CB airwaves of my youth and be greeted by polite chatter and be able to obtain some useful information that will help me to make an informed decision about whether or not to continue my trip.

Instead my hair is blown back by ribaldry, and the useless chatter pouring forth from my CB radio is so incessant that I can’t get a word in edgewise to ask for a “break” and then try to find out what’s going on. I continue to listen and someone right on top of the scene of the accident says that a Life Flight helicopter is coming to evacuate one of the victims of the wreck. That can’t be good! I say a silent prayer for the poor person and I continue to listen to the chatter. One of the truckers makes the heartless remark that he wishes they’d hurry up and get the person out of the way then, so that he could get back on the road. I wonder what he would feel in his heart if that was his wife lying there waiting to be evacuated by helicopter to a hospital where they would try and save her life and he overheard others saying that they wish to hell they’d get on with it then and get her out of the way so that they could continue on their trip. Whatever happened to common courtesy? I guess it fled the country along with compassion.

After a moment I hear that they’re about to open I-10 west, so I repack my CB, put my helmet back on and remount my bike, and soon we’re moving once again.

Farther down the road I cross the famed Suwannee River and for the next several miles I can’t get the song lyrics out of my head!

I’m close to my destination when I see a sign advertising the Tallahassee Auto Museum, and I get that blip on my psychic radar screen that lets me know that this museum is my destination and not Tallahassee proper. Hmm. This I don’t understand at all: I’m a bike guy, not a car guy, although I have an appreciation for hot rods and antique automobiles, so, what the hey, I’ll stop and obey my psychic promptings.

As I’m locking up my bike a pair of geese flies close by me on a long, low, level flight. I believe that they’re the first geese I’ve seen since I’ve moved to Florida. I feel a brief pang in my heart: I miss New York. I loved living there, upstate in the mountains, where one of my favorite things was to watch the geese flying. Once I was outside and it was a little chilly and overcast. I heard one faint, distant honk and looked up to see a large v-formation of geese and watched them as they disappeared into the clouds! It made such an impression on me that I remember it to this day and the incongruity of these geese blasting by me on this sunshiny day brings that memory back to me, and I’m suddenly in a New York state of mind, Billy Joel!

And then I get another feeling: these geese seem to be a portent. But of what are they an omen?

I start thinking about New York as I walk across the parking lot to the museum. While I lived in New York I shot a pilot episode for The History Channel.¹ That is a separate story worth telling all by itself, but the main focus of the TV pilot was my psychic investigation of the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

While filming my investigation at one point I became obsessed with locating the horse drawn hearse that had carried Lincoln’s body during the funeral procession, but no one seemed to know anything about its whereabouts. For some strange reason I could never get that hearse out of my mind, and years after we had filmed the pilot I would still think about that hearse occasionally.

I had also felt a very strong and sympathetic connection to Lincoln himself, particularly during our filming in the Ford Theater, and at one point I had even suggested to the Ford Theater staff that every now and then they should place a rose in the presidential box where Lincoln was gunned down as a memorial to him. Everything just seemed so touristy about Lincoln’s death, and I was overwhelmed with feelings of how somber a place it actually was that we stood in. I would silently send prayers and positive energies to Lincoln’s spirit.

All of those memories come flooding back to me now as I enter the museum. I feel nostalgic, but I don’t allow me to feel sorry for myself: I turn and look through the windows at Melissa in the parking lot and I think of all the wonderful adventures we’ve had together, and will have together. I look at the plentiful sunshine, and think about what a delight it is to live in a state where I can ride my bike all year round. I have a lot of pleasure in my life, and I’m grateful for it.

I pay my admission fee and begin to look around. It is an automobile museum, but there are also tons of other neat things to look at and enjoy: sports memorabilia; old ornate slot machines; a collection of outboard boat motors!

But there is a vehicle that catches my eye from across the room. I know what it is, but I don’t hurry to make my way to it. Instead I savor the discovery, and I occasionally allow myself to glance in its direction as I look at the other treasures in the museum.

And then I’m standing before it. It’s an old, horse drawn hearse. And it says that it’s reputed to be the funeral hearse that hauled President Abraham Lincoln’s body! Man, I’ve got goose bumps! My feet are frozen to the spot, and I have to consciously check to make sure that my mouth isn’t agape! When I can gather my wits I actually look around the museum to see if the ghost of Mr. Lincoln is standing somewhere and staring at me, smiling. If he is, I don’t see him. But I’m overawed to be experiencing the evidence that across the years and across the miles something, someone, has guided me to this place and to this hearse, which was the object of my obsession when I was a thousand miles away from here.

Click the link below to see a picture of Lincoln's hearse at the Tallahassee Auto Museum:

http://tacm.com/carmuseum/1860a.htm

(You will leave my site; once you've viewed the picture press your browser's "back" button to return.)

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Did President Lincoln himself respond to my concern for the sanctity of his memory and lead me to this treasure? Or was it someone else on the Other Side? I don’t know. I’m not told, and maybe I’m not supposed to know. But for me this highly prized incident helps to close a door on what for me was a type of unfinished business, even if only in the psychic realm. And once again I send silent blessings to President Lincoln’s spirit.

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Epilogue: For the next several weeks I find Lincoln pennies everywhere; I see the name “Lincoln” frequently; and there is an abundance of Abraham Lincoln memorabilia and related items that I seem to encounter at every turn and in the most unlikely of places.

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¹Those interested in pursuing a media project with me may contact my producer, Jim Mullen, for a demo of the pilot we filmed together. His contact information is below.

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Biker tip: Carry maps! You may not get lost, but if you do, you’ll think that map is worth its weight in gold once you need it! Also, it’s sometimes necessary to be able to find alternative routes in case of traffic jams. And you may want to consult your map just because it’s fun to ride home a different way than how you came.

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Psychic tip: To simplify, there is a metaphysical theory which believes that there is a force that is omnipresent and connects everything and everyone, and some have called this force the “Aether.” Ask that what you need will find its way to you via the Aether. You never know who or what is going to reach out to you from the Other Side of life. Or when!

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Next week: I Didn’t Believe in UFOs!

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

The Calling Cards of Charlatans

2009-04-08T06:22:00.001-04:00

I see their large, colorful painted signs as I roam Florida and Georgia on my motorcycle.

I see their neon signs beckoning from their houses’ windows.

You have probably seen them in the town you live in, or in your own travels: these signs which advertise psychic readings.

“Walk-ins welcome,” many of the signs proclaim, indicating that a person may come right in off of the street without an appointment.

“Past, Present, and Future,” many of the signs declare, letting you know that the psychic therein is capable of marvelous feats of precognition and clairvoyance.

“Special Reading–” and this will be followed by a dollar amount, usually anywhere from $10 to $25. The implication is that of a sale, perhaps.

And then we see the ads in magazines, newspapers, and on TV, and of course the Internet is full of psychics; why, I myself have maintained a web site advertising my psychic services for years and years.

So how do you know if a psychic is legitimate or not?

I’m going to explain to you how you can tell if any psychic is legitimate or not so that you will never be taken advantage of again!

1. A psychic should have set rates for their readings. My rates are clearly posted on my web site, and I have no qualms about quoting my rates to a potential client when they call for more information. I discuss my rates periodically on my many radio appearances, and what you see is what you get. I don’t have hidden fees, extra charges, nor do I offer to include “extra” or “special” work on your behalf for an additional charge or fee. You should be able to ask a psychic what their rates are, how much time each dollar amount buys you (a half hour, an hour, etc.) and approximately how many questions you may ask or how many issues that you may examine during that time frame.

2. A psychic should have a generous amount of testimonials from their clients available for you to read. On my web site, for example, I currently have 82 testimonials from my clients! If you take the time to read all 82 of these testimonials/recommendations then you are going to have a pretty good idea of what a reading with me, and its outcome, is like. Think of it this way: If you needed someone to come to your house and replace a broken window and the first person that showed up to give you a quote on the job only had two references but the next person that showed up had one hundred references, including glowing recommendations from prominent townsfolk, and you could check many of those references out, who would you be most likely to use?

3. A psychic should not ever advertise or say that they are 100% accurate. No psychic on this planet is 100% accurate, myself included. If any psychic, I don’t care who they are or how famous they supposedly are, ever says that they are 100% accurate, or makes that claim on their web site or in their advertising or other literature, do not use that psychic! I can tell you with absolute authority, certainty, and assurance that no psychic on this planet is 100% accurate. Do not waste your time and money with such a charlatan.

4. If a psychic guarantees you that they will achieve a certain result for you then that psychic is a liar, plain and simple! No psychic on this planet can make you any guarantee that they can cause you to get the job of your dreams, or the person of your dreams, or guarantee you a healing, or a raise, or a cure, or anything else! If any psychic on this planet guarantees you results, they are a phony, a fraud, and a liar! Again, do not waste your time and money with such a charlatan, and be aware that such phony “guarantees” are always accompanied by repeated requests for increasingly large amounts of money from you!

5. If a psychic promises you a miracle or other supernatural happening in exchange for a certain amount of money (usually in the hundreds or thousands of dollars) you can rest assured that this person is a liar, a cheat, a con artist, a swindler, and a phony! Use a little common sense: if the so-called psychic has the ability to create these miracles, they’re not going to waste time performing them for you! They’d foresee the winning lottery numbers for themselves and be off spending their money and enjoying life instead of trying to wheedle you out of your hard-earned cash and promising you bullshit results that they can never deliver! If I had the power to perform these miracles I wouldn’t need your money…I’d be performing financial miracles for myself!

6. If any psychic tells you that they see evil or negativity or demons or curses or dark forces or darkness around you…RUN…run away from that “psychic!” Again, this is a bullshit lie that is designed to part you from your hard-earned money! These phonies and con artists will scare you into believing that the current hard knocks you’re experiencing come from a curse someone has placed on you, and they will offer to remove the curse from you…for a few hundred or a few thousand dollars! And when the curse removal doesn’t work they’ll have some excuse as to why it didn’t and they’ll tell you that they need to perform more work on your behalf and they’ll need even more money this time, and on and on and on until you finally wise up and quit supporting these leeches! Guess what, folks? Every single person in life has bad luck and good luck, up times and down times, good experiences and bad. More often than not all of these things are the products of our choices! We make bad decisions: we experience bad consequences! It’s a normal law of life on this planet, and it’s not the result of a curse or a demon or anything else!

7. If any psychic performs a supernatural feat for you right in front of your eyes and then tells you that the performance of that supernatural feat is proof of their powers and then says that having those powers justifies the amount of money they’re asking for from you…you’ve just seen a good magic trick; applaud, stand up, and leave with your money in your pocket! That phony has no supernatural powers! They’ve learned some astonishing sleight-of-hand magic tricks that you yourself can learn from any good magic book which is available most times for free at your local public library and to someone who doesn’t know how the trick is done it does indeed look like real “magical” or “psychic” power is being employed and displayed. Think for a moment: if any psychic on this planet, me included, could routinely and reliably perform fantastic feats of supernatural prowess they’d be on the evening news every night of the week!

8. Just because a psychic is famous doesn’t make them honest, reliable, trustworthy, or even authentic! Just because a psychic is famous doesn’t exempt them from the same scrutiny that you would give to the psychic in your own hometown, and the same rules of thumb for legitimacy that we’ve been discussing here apply to the famous as well as to the unknown.

9. If, over the course of several readings, you discern that a psychic is only telling you what you hope to hear or what you want to hear, then that person is wasting your time and money. Change psychics. They could be inept, but they could also be a good con artist. Likewise if most of their predictions don’t come true, change psychics! Again, the person could be well-meaning but inept, or they could just be a good con artist hoping to keep stringing you along and getting all the money they can out of you before you tire of the game.

10. If you read of, or a psychic tells you of, a “guarantee,” a “government approval” or “certification,” or hints at any other type of license, licensing, approval, registration, etc., they are lying bullshit con artists! The government of the United States of America does not test, certify, license, approve, guarantee, register or do anything else for, to, or on behalf of psychics; period, end of discussion! There is no such approval granted by any branch or entity of our government! This is made up, lying, phony bullshit designed to con you into thinking that you are dealing with a psychic who has passed some type of government approval or certification, when in fact, no such thing has ever existed, nor does it exist now, and I doubt that it ever will. “Our psychics are registered with the U.S. Government” could simply be a clever way of saying that the business has a federal tax I.D. number and pays taxes under that number. But again it’s important for you to realize that the government does not have any process in place whereby it tests and then approves, certifies, licenses, registers, or does anything else for psychics.

11. Most legitimate psychics will not work for 900-number type operations which are the types that you see advertised on TV and in the tabloids, magazines, etc. It’s a well-known fact that many of these psychic services, even those run by supposedly famous people, will hire anyone off the street who has a good gift of gab and can read the scripts they supply. Scripts? Oh yes, most of these outfits will supply the average Joe off the street (who is less psychic than that pencil lying on your desk) with a suggested script of things to say during the “reading!” If, for example, you call one of these services because you’re having problems in your relationship the “psychic” you get hold of may simply turn to the pages in the script having to do with relationship problems and embellish what’s written there, which of course doesn’t provided you with any authentic psychic input into your situation! And most of these people work on commission, which means that the longer that they can talk you into staying on the phone with them (thereby running up your phone bill or credit card bill even higher) the more money they will make!

12. If a psychic cannot, over the course of time, provide you with accurate insights, predictions, and help for your life that causes real changes in your day-to-day concerns, then change to a psychic that can. Any psychic can spout pie in the sky, dreamy, vague, spiritual platitudes; all that does is waste your time and money and does you no good. A legitimate psychic should be able to tell you what reasonable courses of action to take in your life, and what changes you can expect as a result. And you should be able to experience those changes in the here and now, and not in the by and by!

13. If a psychic is constantly worried about the devil, or demons, or dark forces, or is constantly referring to demon possession or spiritual possession, or hauntings, or is constantly referring to demons by name, or is blaming your problems on demons or demonic forces, or on some type of spiritual possession or demonic haunting, or witches or witchcraft, change psychics! No legitimate psychic finds a devil hiding behind every bush, nor should you!

14. If a psychic tells you that they know exactly what life on the Other Side is like, find yourself another psychic. That would be like me telling you exactly what life in Japan is like on a day to day basis, even though I’ve never lived there! None of us will know exactly what the Other Side is really like until we die and get there ourselves!

15. Finally, if a psychic either encourages or demands that you schedule regular readings with him, for example once a week or at least every month, find another psychic. A legitimate psychic will allow you the freedom to make up your own mind as to when you need to consult with him.

Well, there’re fifteen good rules to apply to any psychic whom you are considering getting a reading with.

If you have a specific question or issue about determining the legitimacy of a psychic that can’t be covered by one of the above rules then feel free to post it here and I will answer it as fully as space permits.

And remember folks, with psychics, as with anything else in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

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Biker tip: When mounting a roll bag horizontally on your bike make sure, if the bag opens on the side instead of on the top, to mount the bag so that the side opening faces away from the kickstand side of the bike! The reason is that when you dismount the bike and lean it onto the kickstand the bag will be tilted in the direction of the kickstand, and if the opening is also on that side then when you open up the bag the contents, thanks to the angle of lean and the forces of gravity, are apt to spill out onto the ground. If the opening faces the opposite side of the bike then the opening will be on the “uphill” side and nothing will spill out when you open up the bag. If, as some bags do, the bag opens on both sides then perhaps you could use a cable tie to make the opening on the kickstand side of the bag temporarily inoperable so that some well-meaning soul (or your forgetful self) doesn’t spill all of your stuff out onto the ground.

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Psychic tip: Don’t hop from psychic to psychic hoping to find one that will tickle your ears by telling you what you want to hear. A psychic reading works best if you are prepared to deal with the truth. When you find a psychic who is accurate in working with you, stick with that psychic. You don’t need any others. It’s a waste of your money to get ten readings a year with ten different psychics! And, if most of those ten psychics aren’t any good then you’re going to be so confused by the conflicting information that you’ve been given that you won’t have any idea as to what you should do with your life!

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Next week: Funereal Aethereal

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

People of the Owl

2009-04-02T06:13:00.001-04:00

Melissa is parked on the opposite shore, chained to a tree, and she has her disc lock/alarm in place and activated.

I am returning to her on the same passenger ferry, which took me away from her to begin with. The word “bear” shakes me out of my reverie.

The only other passenger has said something about bears to the park ranger who is captaining the ferry and that statement has, in turn, attracted my full attention.

I ask the ranger: “So, do you have any bears on the island?”

He grins and rolls his eyes. “Boy–do we have bears!” He then proceeds to regale me with a brief account of the bears and their mischief. I wonder how they get onto the island, and he informs me that bears are not only excellent swimmers, but excellent long-distance swimmers, too!

The ranger and the passenger continue the bear talk, but I don’t listen; I’m too busy wishing that the sun would relieve me of the chill that has just swept over me as I think back to where I’ve been for the past several hours…

* * *

I park Melissa in the grass, sliding a sidestand plate underneath her sidestand so that she won’t tip over in the soft soil, and then I chain her to a nearby tree and attach her disc lock/alarm.

I walk to the dock and wait for the ferry as instructed. The ferry will take me across the river to Hontoon Island; Native Americans were its first inhabitants, and one of the things that I learn about one of the tribes is that they utilized a large owl totem–the people of the owl. This bit of knowledge will soon become more significant to me than I can possibly imagine.

I scout everything out: The ranger station has restrooms, soda machines, and–something else that I spy and for my entire psychic prowess don’t make any necessary connection with–a water fountain. I take a long drink of the cold water and hit the trail. The big attraction is a huge mound of discarded snail shells, the preserved evidence of the Indians’ staple food, and it’s a leisurely walk of an hour away, says the brochure.

Today I haven’t brought with me a camera, or a recorder. Today I’ve brought the most state-of-the-art, ultra-sophisticated, all-weather, and most sensitive device known to mankind: myself. I will interact with the energies and the spirits and the memories of this place. They will speak to me, and I to them. And then I will let the experiences of this place live forever in my memory, joining the more than 700 other exciting paranormal experiences that live there, too.

And indeed, the island is rich with psychic and paranormal energy, but two events really stand out for me this day. The first occurs as I’m walking the trail and I’m about halfway to the shell mound. I suddenly become acutely aware of energy or a presence of some kind to the rear of me and to my right hand side. Before I can even turn my head to look there is something in my peripheral vision at about my height! Not more than a few feet away a large owl glides by me so close that the feathers of its left wingtip almost brush my cheek!

I catch my breath as the owl dips down slightly in its flight path and continues to glide in front of me as I walk, and then it suddenly swoops up into the air toward a tree, making a pivoting turn in the air to land on a branch facing me as I walk toward it!

Wow! The people of the owl! I’m on the island of the people of the owl, and out of the blue here comes this huge owl and flies by close enough for me to touch it, glides down the path in front of me, and then comes to a rest on a branch facing me, and this bird locks eyes with me as I walk the path and does not look away!

I stop and stand before it, and I speak to it with respect and awe, and I tell this magnificent bird (Spirit?) that I know of the history of the island being partly that of the people of the owl, and I thank the owl for its presence, for the experience, and I ask for its knowledge, and its wisdom, and its guidance, and its protection. I talk to the owl a long time, and not once do its eyes ever leave mine. I finally tell it that I’m going on to the shell mound and that I will always remember and appreciate this experience, and I leave it with a blessing.

I tingle with excitement for the rest of my walk, and I am able to tune in to much of the island’s energy, but I’m so astounded by my experience with the owl that everything else pales a little by comparison.

I make it to the end of the trail and there’s a bench on which to sit and ponder the shell mound. I take a break from my hike and I sit on the bench for a long time, and I offer further blessings to the spirits on the island. How I would love to spend several nights here, wandering freely and interacting with the energies and the spirits!

Finally, and reluctantly, I stand up to return through the forest to the ranger station, over an hour away.

And that’s when it hits me: I’ve screwed up! And the reasons that I know that I’ve screwed up are these: Ever since I was a child I have had numerous severe health problems. I have nearly died 3 times. I have many bizarre health issues, health conditions so potentially deadly that my doctor, one of the finest in New York City, insisted that I wear a Medic Alert emblem at all times engraved with a list of my more serious ailments. “Wear it even in the damn shower, John!” my doctor told me.

I don’t know if it’s a separate health issue or if it’s related to my other health problems, but I know from past experience that once I get really overheated I can’t usually cool down except by soaking in a tub of cold water, or literally sitting in front of an air conditioner for a long period of time. I know these things because I used to run long distances and bicycle long distances in the West Texas heat, and I’ve always been prone to heat exhaustion. It doesn’t happen every single time I’m out in the heat; I have to pay attention to my body and kind of go by how I’m feeling that day. Well, this day I thought I had listened to my body; I always give myself kind of a psychic checkup before I venture out, and I might have been okay today if I had prepared with that one essential ingredient that helps a person survive in the heat, the one thing I failed to make the essential connection with earlier: water. I didn’t take any water with me and now it’s getting close to noon; noon in the Florida heat. Florida, the place where I went to Navy boot camp and it gets so hot and humid that they would fly a black flag on the flagpole and that meant it was literally physically dangerous for normal, healthy recruits to do anything except walk because of the danger of heatstroke or exhaustion!

Now here I am without a speck of water, and I’ve never been a normal, healthy recruit to begin with, and I’m feeling dangerously overheated and I have almost an hour’s walk to the ranger station and there’s not another soul in sight to help me if anything goes wrong!

I walk slower to try not to build up any more excess body heat, but I’m not sure that’s helpful either: The longer I’m in the sun and out in the heat, the more my body temperature will rise whether I’m exerting or not.

I’m by the river, but I don’t dare drink the river water and splashing it on me to cool myself down lasts all of a few seconds before I feel the heat boring into me again like a laser beam.

My cell phone! I can call the ranger station for help if I need to, if things get really bad! If I can get a signal out here, and if I can get hold of directory assistance and get the number for the ranger station, and if…ah, hell! All of that’s irrelevant: my cell phone’s battery is dead! Man! I know better than this! I have hunted and fished and camped and hiked and I’ve been an outdoorsman all of my life and I know to take necessary precautions when going into the wild!

I could be in real trouble here. Spirit, help me.

I round a corner in the path, and I look up at the tree and over an hour later since I first passed this way the owl is still sitting there on the exact same branch in the exact same position and is staring down at me! Astonishing! Incredible!

I stop and tell the owl my plight. I apologize for being stupid. I tell the owl that I know that Nature does not forgive fools, nor treat them lightly.

“But can you please help me? I’ve made a mistake, a serious one, I know. I should have thought to bring water, but for some god-awful reason I didn’t think ahead, and now I’m paying the price, and I’m starting to feel really bad physically, and I know that there might not be another single person that hikes this trail today, and I need help, please.”

The owl says nothing to me either physically or psychically, but never takes its eyes from mine.

I bless the owl again for showing itself to me, and I leave it with a serious benediction: “Please help me and look after me if you can, and if I’ve made a really stupid mistake today that leads to my demise, then, as I’ve read that the Native Americans used to say,” and here I pause to take in my magnificent surroundings…the water, the blue sky dotted here and there by puffy white clouds, the awe-inspiring forest...and then I say it too, “then this is a good day to die.”

I’m not being melodramatic. I realize the very real possibility that I could have a heat stroke and keel over right here on this trail, miles from help, and that it could be hours or maybe even days before anyone hiked out here and found me.

I wave goodbye to the owl and I trudge forward at a slow, even pace. In Florida it’s usually so humid that sweat doesn’t evaporate much, so sweating doesn’t provide that much of a cooling effect. But then I notice something that really worries me: My sweat output is decreasing, a sure sign that I’m headed toward heat exhaustion or possibly even heat stroke, and I have a long, long way to go to the ranger station.

I focus on my breathing and I begin to meditate, using everything I’ve learned about mind over matter to work on controlling my body and helping it to combat the effects of the heat.

And then I experience the second outstanding event of today! Again I sense a presence behind me, but this presence is a human presence, and it’s a large male presence, and this person can’t be more than ten feet behind me on the trail! Normally I’m hyperaware of everything that goes on around me, but perhaps I’ve just been so focused on my worsening condition that some fellow hiker has managed to get this close behind me without me even being aware of their approach. Maybe they’ve got some water!

I turn, and I meet…a Native American spirit. This man shakes his head at me, and I reply softly, aloud, “I know, I know.” A thought springs to mind unbidden: I’m going to die today and this man has come to usher me to the Other Side!

“Come on,” he tells me, “I’m going to walk you safely out of the forest.”

I give much thanks to my invisible friend, and as I turn back around I can feel his presence directly behind me, and one of his hands is resting on my left shoulder, and I can physically feel his hand on me as he guides me forward! And then, from nowhere, a cooling breeze begins to caress me. I begin to cool down, in spite of the soaring temperature, and this Indian spirit marches me safely out of the forest, but not without soundly reprimanding me before leaving me alone.

I’m at the ranger station, and I drink copious amount of cold water and splash it over my face and head. I purchase a soda, and drink it. And then, I drink some more cold water. It takes me a long time before I stop feeling woozy and nauseated!

I finally feel good enough to take the ferry back across the river to Melissa, and I know that once I get on the road the windblast will help to cool me down even more.

And then I get that chill when I think about myself out there alone on Hontoon Island, miles away from the ranger station, and not another soul in sight; Hontoon Island where the bears love to roam. And bear attacks, I’ve read lately, are on the rise!

Before I even disembark the ferry I’m putting together in my mind a list of items to bring in a backpack the next time I venture into the forest, and bottles of water and/or a canteen top the list. A backup battery for my cell phone is another item I won’t do without again. And a can of…bear spray!

I may literally owe my life to the owl, and to this Native American spirit who walked me out of the forest!

Thank you!

Through a tremendous act of grace, I’ve lived to seek adventure another day.

Thank you.

I unlock Melissa and fire her up, and I wave goodbye to the island. Because of my shortsightedness in an area where I know better I’ve had a really close call today, and I have been saved by the kindness of the people of the owl.

Thank you.

* * *

“So, John,” you may ask, “if you know that you have these serious health issues and that something can go drastically wrong with your body at any time and without warning, and if you also know of the many hazards that you can encounter in nature, weather and otherwise, then why do you take the risks?” That’s a good question, and one that friends and loved ones have posed to me over the years. And my answer is this: I refuse to be trapped by my body, and I refuse to be trapped by the fear of death. When I used to run ten miles a day or more a concerned friend asked me if I didn’t realize that people with one of my particular health conditions were liable to keel over dead during such extreme exertion, and my response was that yes, I realized that could be a very real possibility, but that I could also keel over dead while sitting on the couch watching TV, and that running was more fun! I was, and I am, willing to take the risks in order to experience as much of this world as I desire. And even though I do believe strongly in life after death nonetheless it is a psychological and emotional challenge to risk my physical wellbeing, and sometimes, let’s admit it, my very life, for, as the old saying goes, “Everybody wants to go to Heaven; but nobody wants to die to get there.” Amen.

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Epilogue: Over the course of the next several weeks, nearly everywhere I turn there is an abundance of owl-related items and experiences.

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Biker tip: Don’t think that you’re macho enough to defeat the elements or Nature herself; you’re not. It’s not being sissy to adequately know yourself and as a result to properly prepare both your ride and yourself for whatever you’re reasonably liable to encounter on the road and at your destination. You might even desire to come up with a checklist that you consult each time you hit the road, just to make sure that you have with you the necessities to confront the particular experience you’re aiming to have. And don’t buy cheap; cheap will break or refuse to work just when you need it the most. Invest in quality gear. Your life may depend upon it!

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Psychic tip: Don’t think that because you are psychic and that you have access to knowledge “above and beyond” that you can’t make a foolish mistake! None of us are God, none of us knows everything, and all of us have our “off” days when it comes to making good judgment calls about our own lives. We are, after all, only human; as were the people of the owl.

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Next week: The Calling Cards of Charlatans

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Fay

2009-03-26T06:02:00.002-04:00

Fay.

That was the name of the lady who breezed through Florida in August of 2008.

Growing up in West Texas I have survived tornadoes, but this is my first hurricane experience. A hurricane is basically a very slow moving giant tornado, so I am not looking forward to the possibility of such an event.

My wife and I do the basics: stockpile non-perishable food, and lots and lots of water; provide ourselves with several flashlights, spare bulbs and batteries, and battery-powered radios; we fill both bathtubs full of water; and we provide for ways to cook without power, such as Sterno, and charcoal briquettes to use in our barbecue grill. We also purchase a couple of camping cook sets to use on the grill or over the Sterno so that we won’t ruin good pots and pans, and we stock up on disposable knives, forks, spoons, plates, and glasses to cut down on the necessity of having to wash dishware. We make sure that we have necessary medications, and plenty of food for our pets. We try to keep the gas tank in our car full, and we also plan in advance as to what we will do just in case we have to evacuate.

We wait, and we hope and we pray for Fay to stay away–and Fay comes.

And she bumfuzzles everybody. The experienced weather forecasters that we are watching every day on TV say that they have never seen a storm behave quite like Fay is behaving.

You can’t predict her! They say she’s moving, and she sits still. They say she’s going east, and she veers west. They say she’ll be out of the state soon, and she hangs around longer. Fay moves slowly over just about the whole state of Florida before all is said and done, but she doesn’t move in one direction only, she moves up and back, and from side to side. And I begin to have really creepy feelings: Fay is sentient, intelligent, and self-aware; and she’s looking for something!

It’s taken me awhile to come around to this way of thinking that storms may be inhabited by beings of some type, or that maybe the storm itself is some form of intelligent life. Some American Indians held a similar belief, and as I begin to research this train of thought I discover that peoples around the world hold comparable ideologies. Over the years, because of my paranormal experiences that are storm related, I have come to embrace these beliefs as sensible conclusions, that storms may be inhabited by, or directed by, intelligent beings, and also I accept the possibility that the storm itself may somehow be a form of intelligence.

I know, it’s pretty far out, isn’t it? But when you’ve experienced what I have, there’s not too much left in life that strikes you as bizarre or unbelievable.

Anyway, you can research the idea for yourself, that storms may somehow be intelligent. It’s an area that I plan to research more fully for myself.

So as Fay continues to hover over our fair state, I allow myself the possibility that she’s intelligent and that she’s also here for a reason, and so I ask the Other Side, “What is that reason?”

And here’s what they tell me: First, our entire state has been in a severe drought, and Fay has come to provide some much needed relief; which, through her rainfall, she does. Second, Fay is looking for something; something specific. When I press the Other Side for an answer as to what it is exactly that she is looking for, I am not given any further information. Third, Fay is gathering intelligence–that means just what it says at its face value–and that is the reason for her erratic pattern of movement and why she is here for such a long period of time.

As used to the bizarre and incredible as I am and in spite of the over 700 paranormal experiences I’ve had, and as used to the fantastic communications with the spirit world as I am, I have to admit: what the Other Side tells me about Fay floors me. It takes me awhile to try and wrap my mind around this information, and it bumfuzzles me for days.

Well, Fay finally bids us adieu and I fire up the bike, and for no particular reason I ride down to Titusville on I-95 south.

Coming up I-95 north is, to me, an astonishing sight: a convoy of a hundred or more electric company trucks! There could even be hundreds of trucks. There are trucks labeled with the name of an electric company in North Carolina, and there are some bearing the name of an electric company in Indiana! Folks have come from far, far away to help us to restore power after Fay’s fury, and I feel an immense sense of gratitude.

For a good portion of my ride the sides of both I-95 north and south are flooded; some trees are halfway under water!

At Titusville I shoot over to U.S. 1 north and decide to ride back home that way.

I’m tooling happily along at the speed limit, relaxed but keeping a wary eye on the sky…tornadoes form before, during, and after hurricanes, and I become aware of a towering thunderhead moving in from the east, but it appears to be several miles up the road which gives me plenty of time to think about what I want to do about it. If there’s no lightning I can stop and put on my rain gear and ride on. I have ridden hundreds and hundreds of miles in everything from gentle showers to horrendous downpours; the rain doesn’t bother me, but Florida is the lightning strike capital of the world so I must be careful and I have to be correct in my assessment of this potential storm’s danger–my life may literally depend on it.

My other choice is to head back west to I-95 north. The sky is clear to partly cloudy in that direction, and it looks as though I might be able to outrun the storm if I go that way.

While I’m riding along and trying to make up my mind something very strange happens to the cloud formation of the thunderhead. And when I say very strange, I mean, very strange! I’ve watched the weather in Texas for years and I’ve seen some very odd things, but I’ve never seen anything like this!

The thunderhead fans apart into two overlapping layers, remaining joined at its bottom, much like you’d fan a pair of cards open. That startling effect alone is enough to make me stare at this weird development, but what’s uncanny is that the top of one of the layers of the thunderhead, I swear to you, is a perfect profile silhouette of the Disney character Goofy, and the top of the other layer shares the exact same shape! It’s as if someone had put a giant mirror behind the cloud and now I’m seeing a perfect reflection of it.

Then something even more incredible happens! The thunderhead opens up once again, fanning apart into two additional overlapping layers so that there are now four overlapping layers, all joined at the bottom! Imagine fanning four cards apart so that they’re all sharing a common pivot point at their bottoms and that they’re wide enough that you can see each card’s face but they all still overlap! The back two overlapping layers share the “Goofy” shape, and the front two overlapping layers are twins of each other, too, and the shape they share at their tops reminds me of a crescent moon, or maybe Pac Man!

So there’s a “bottom” layer that’s a very dark cloud that looks like “Goofy,” a cloud layer that’s lighter in color overlapping that one that mirrors exactly the “Goofy” shape, still another layer overlapping that one that looks like a large crescent moon or Pac Man and is a shade of color somewhere between the dark and light of the other two, and finally the “top” layer which mirrors “Pac Man” exactly and is yet another shade of color!

This awesome display has occurred in a matter of only a few minutes time and I’ve been so engrossed by it (and trying to keep from crashing due to inattention to the traffic at the same time) that I haven’t planned out how I need to continue my ride, but I’m thinking at this point that perhaps it’s not a good idea to ride into the strange cloud! Maybe it’s one of Fay’s relatives and it might be looking for something, too, like maybe a biker to devour.

Out of respect I send the thought to the cloud that I appreciate the demonstration, and then I notice a sign at an intersection up ahead that shows I-95 as a left turn there, and I’m in the far right lane. I have to make up my mind fast!

I check my left rearview mirror and make a quick glance over my left shoulder, and that’s when I notice him, a fellow biker coming up on my left in the left lane. He overtakes me as I begin to slow down and try to figure out what I should do, and he looks at me intently and smiles and gives a little nod or wave. I don’t think there’s anything unusual about that as we bikers are usually pretty friendly to one another but it’s the particular way that he looks at me that strikes me as just a little bit odd.

He swerves over into the left turn lane to head toward I-95 and for some reason I feel compelled to follow him, so I check over my shoulder once again and head toward the left turn lane just as he makes his turn onto the long, straight, flat road that heads toward a junction with I-95. I wait for traffic to clear so that I can turn, too, which only takes a few seconds time, and when I turn onto the long, straight, flat road I’m so gobsmacked that I nearly fall off my bike, for my fellow biker has completely disappeared, bike and all!

I shake my head and look for small side roads or parking lots or any place at all he could have turned off onto, and no such exit exists! And for him to make it so far up the long road that he would be out of sight in such a short few seconds time he would have to have been riding a rocket, not a motorcycle!

I gather my wits about me and ride to the junction of I-95 and head north, toward home. The weird thunderhead stays off to my east and slightly behind me as I ride, and I finish my trip with clear skies and not a drop of rain.

Was the disappearing biker a guardian angel sent to beckon me to follow him to a safer route, or was he just another of the peculiar manifestations that showed up at about the same time that Fay did?

I’m not sure, but I’m grateful for the safe ride home. Thanks.

And you, my friends: keep your eyes on the skies…

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Biker tip: If you choose not to wear a helmet with a face shield please at least wear a quality pair of sunglasses or goggles, even if you have a windshield on your bike. Why? Because having a large insect, such as a bumblebee or a June bug, collide directly with your eye while you’re doing seventy miles an hour hurts like a sumbitch at the least and could stun you so severely that you lose control of your bike and crash, not to mention the very real possibility of causing loss of vision either temporarily or permanently in the affected eye. Also, rocks of any size which have been tossed up by other vehicles and then smack you in the nose at highway speeds don’t feel so good, either, and I’ve talked to riders who had fairings and windshields who have experienced these smacks in the face in spite of the supposed protection fairings and windshields offer, so at least think about the helmet and face shield, too.

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Psychic tip: Ask your “Guardian Angel” to appear to you this week, and then be alert for any unusual interactions with strangers who appear for only a brief moment in your life in either human or animal form. Remember to say “Thanks” if you have the experience, and then call on your Guardian Angel to guide you, to help you, and to offer you protection, and then you must be willing to act on the guidance you receive.

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Next week: People of the Owl!

As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Ghosts of Olustee

2009-03-19T08:38:00.001-04:00

I’m zooming up I-95 north into Jacksonville, where I’ll pick up I-10 west and ride to the Olustee Battlefield, site of one of the major Civil War battles.

I do some thinking on the way; this is my first visit to such a place and I wonder what my psychic senses will tell me about it when I get there. It also gets me to thinking about warfare in general, which is a part of man’s inhumanity to man.

I dodge the cager¹ who wants to make me and my motorcycle into a hood ornament and I recall famed nuclear physicist, UFO researcher, and lecturer Stanton Friedman’s comment about our so-called civilization: “…a primitive society whose major activity (judging by how its wealth is spent) would certainly appear to be tribal warfare and for whom every new frontier is a new place to do battle.”²

Lord a’mighty, we do love to fight, don’t we? By “we,” I mean, “all of us” here on this old planet named Earth. And here I am, enroute to a memorial to war in all of its hideous glory.

I don’t know why we worship war. The Bible is full of it, and glorifies it. God even commanded his followers to commit genocide. Most religions have a veneer of peace and goodwill toward man, but if you scratch below the surface the hostility and condemnation toward others who do not subscribe to the same belief system soon becomes evident, and many times expresses itself in violence: the shooting of the abortion clinic doctor; the murder of a young gay man; Manifest Destiny.

And we all do it. Hell, if we can’t find The Other with whom to fight, we will fight amongst ourselves: American Indian tribes fought with each other; black-skinned people kill other black-skinned people; white-skinned people kill other white-skinned people; the Baptist church up the street can’t get along with the Baptist church down the street. Preacher opposes preacher, and country opposes country. As a whole we are indeed a pugnacious lot, aren’t we?

A short way from my destination I pull into a gas station to fill up. It’s a bittersweet experience: My fill-up will only cost me six or seven dollars, and a full tank of gas, all conditions being just right, will carry me about 220 miles. That’s the sweet part that makes me smile; the bitter part is the continued thought that I’m going to visit a place where fellow Americans slaughtered each other wholesale in the names of various freedoms and political and religious beliefs.

It’s early morning as I pull into the Olustee Battlefield State Park parking lot, and I’m the only person here. I dismount and secure my bike, and I’m immediately struck by how peaceful the atmosphere is; I would expect to be psychically assaulted by sensations of loss, sorrow, violence, remorse, grief, etc., but instead I’m lulled into a sense of calm. It’s an odd feeling to have in such a place, and it’s highly unexpected!

I walk into the small building which contains a seating area in front of a TV, on which is playing, on an endless loop, a documentary about Olustee and the Civil War.

It takes me about two minutes to become bored to tears so I exit onto the grounds to explore. I’d rather watch the psychic movie unfold in my head as I tune into the vibrations from this hallowed killing field.

I wander around looking at the cannons, the monuments, and the land. I’m particularly struck by one large monument which reminds me of an overgrown rook from a monstrously large chess set. I take several photos and I hope that I’ll see ghosts in one or two of them; I’m disappointed later when I have them developed and there are no ghosts to be seen.

But the ghosts are here. I feel them. I sense them. And even though the battle waged fierce over all of this countryside I feel an urge to move away from this touristy area into the forest proper. And it’s there that I have my first truly powerful paranormal experience: I hear volley after volley of musket fire! I hear the pounding of cannons! I don’t hear this “psychically,” but literally, with my physical ears!

It’s so real and it’s such a powerfully moving experience that I wonder if there is a small reenactment of some sort going on, but no, I can tell that the shots are coming from just right over there, and right over there is…nothing! No one! Except the ghosts of this Civil War past who are giving me an aural welcome to this haunted property.

Astonished I reach for my recorder…and remember that once again, I forgot to bring it. No matter, the experience is real and solid and one that I won’t have to have a recording of in order for me to remember it vividly for the rest of my life!

The shots subside and finally fade out entirely. I begin to walk the nature trail back into the forest. Spaced at intervals along the trail there are large signs erected that provide a running commentary on the battle of Olustee. I’m astonished at the savagery I read about. Just think: on this very spot where I’m standing a husband, a father, a son, a friend…died. And for what? The result that we live in a nation where the “North” and the “South” still curse each other and blacks and whites still nurture prejudices toward one another. My god.

I force those thoughts out of my head and I attune to the battle itself, and I’m once again confronted by the unexpected, for here, on this battlefield, as the battle raged long and men lost lives, there was an unnatural calm that prevailed inside the men that fought. It’s revealed to me that there were few, if any, that acted cowardly, and few, if any, that gave way to feelings of fear. Most, if not all, of the men and most of the animals were possessed of a single-minded focus, and that was to eliminate, as swiftly and as powerfully and as efficiently and as heroically as possible, the enemy.

Indeed, there was almost a calmness to their resolve, and, (Dare I reveal this??) among several of the soldiers there was an attitude that this grisly business was akin to fun! I can feel and relive several of the soldiers’ emotions and there was definitely a mass mindset of heroic accomplishment prevalent here that served to lift this life and death struggle up onto the plateau of grandiosity, forgetting that each man slayed was a brother in reality, and was also literally someone’s brother; or friend; or father; or husband.

Did anyone bother to count the cost of that “minnie ball” that was fired into a fellow human being in terms of the loss that would radiate outward from that soldier’s death like rings in a pond in ever widening circles that would touch several lives and culminate in that dreaded empty chair around the family dinner table?

No; sadly, the “glories” of war triumphed over human reason that day, and carnage was viewed as not only inevitable, but desirable.

I bow my head for a moment, not to pray, but because I’m humbled and overwhelmed by the revelations that have come upon me.

And then one of the larger questions of life that we all face confronts me anew on this battlefield: What has happened to all the souls of those who were killed here that day?

Have they found peace in the afterlife? Expressed remorse? Guilt? Shame? Or are they ready to once again mount horses made of spirit instead of flesh and bone and continue the fight on the Other Side? If I was your enemy here, will you still count me as your enemy over there?

I don’t know. Today, I’d rather not know.

Today, I’d rather know how to cause peace, instead of war.

I finish my hike and fire up my bike, and as I ride out of the Olustee Battlefield I glance in my rearview mirror at the testament to our unreason.

We take such pride in our violence.

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I wonder why it’s so easy to tear things down and so hard to build things up, and I wonder why we feel the need to cast our lot with a gang–whether that gang’s alliance be with turf, religion, politics, economics, or race–when instead we could be searching for our commonality, for our shared humanness, for ways to benefit all instead of just some.

I realize with a pang in my heart that wiser men than I have wrestled with these very same questions since time began, and unfortunately we don’t seem to be any closer to lasting answers; we only seem to produce more memorials to our anger, our rage, and our prejudices.

I open the throttle wide, and urge the iron horses beneath me to flee this place.

I want to beat my sword into a plowshare, and learn war no more.³

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¹Cager: Biker terminology for a person whose primary form of transportation is an automobile, or, “cage.”

²UFOs: Challenge to SETI Specialists by Stanton T. Friedman

³Isaiah 2:4

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Biker tip: Use a sidestand (kickstand) plate underneath your sidestand where it contacts the ground when parking your motorcycle on soft surfaces so that the sidestand won’t sink into the surface and your bike won’t fall over. Commercially made plastic ones are usually available for free at your local dealer, and at most major motorcycle events such as Bike Week many vendors hand them out for free. In a pinch use a small lid from a mustard jar; a playing card or business card; a folded pocket handkerchief or bandana; or even a large green leaf folded in half! Flattened beer cans work nicely as well.

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Psychic tip: When visiting a site where you hope to obtain EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) with your recorder or where you hope to obtain spirit photographs, don’t be in a hurry. Linger at the site awhile and let your intuition guide you to the areas you should record or photograph. When recording you may want to experiment with, say, 10 twenty-second recordings rather than one long one. The first two recordings may have nothing, but the third might, and the remaining ones may contain nothing of interest, either. Use earphones when you play back the recordings, as most spirit voices are faint and hard to detect. Likewise take a photo of an area, wait a few moments and then take another of the same area. One photo might not have anything in it, and the one shot a few minutes later may.

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

The Little Green Frog

2009-03-12T16:13:00.004-04:00

My bike is parked for an oil change, but I hope you will enjoy this story until I get back on the road…

My sister and I were both divorced, and we moved back into our family home with our widowed mother to take care of her as she became increasingly disabled.

My sister had a couple of small dogs. One was the offspring of the other, and he was always in poor health.

As my mother’s health continued to decline and she became bedfast the little dogs loved being lifted onto mom’s bed to keep her company. She would talk to them, and pet them, and they would comfort her.

So one day I’m sitting at the dining table eating a sandwich when I hear the click-click-click of the little unhealthy dog’s paws as he makes the transition from the carpeted hallway into the wooden floor of the dining room. I glance over my right shoulder to look behind me, and I note that he’s moving pretty slowly today. His arthritis seems to be flaring up worse than usual.

I say something to him in greeting and he wags his tail and moves behind me toward the kitchen, and when I turn my head the other way to glance over my left shoulder I jump up so fast that I overturn my chair, and I throw my sandwich which, fortunately, lands basically intact on the dining table!

For when I turned my head, a woman, as solid as you or I, bent down and looked into my face, her face only inches from mine!! She was smiling a very cheerful smile at me. She had a pretty face, she was wearing lipstick (I think pink), and she had short, dark hair trimmed in a bob; she wore a tight khaki skirt which went below her knees, tan Loafers, and a dull white, or maybe beige, long-sleeved blouse which she had tucked into the skirt.

And then she promptly disappeared!

The little dog had skittered when I had jumped up and overturned my chair, and my mother, in her bedroom down the hall, had heard the sound of both the chair and the dog and inquired as to what the matter was.

I tell her that I’ve just seen a ghost, and while I wasn’t scared the woman did startle me.

Mom laughs, and asks me if she had a message for us–this is how I grew up: the paranormal was normal.

And the ghost does have a message for us; well, for me, at least. In a flash I realize that she is the ghostly guardian of this little dog. She has come to let me know that she follows him around, and that she will be there to escort him to the Other Side when he dies, which I discern will only be a matter of a few weeks time at most.

Her smile and cheerful demeanor are meant to communicate to me that I should feel happiness knowing that someone is specifically watching over this little animal and will be there to ease his transition into another life; but I know this message will break my mother’s heart, and my sister’s, too, so I lie and I tell my mother that the ghost told me nothing and I keep the message to myself.

Sure enough, in a few weeks the little dog dies.

My sister wraps his body in several turns of an old bathrobe of hers she had given him to play with and snuggle on, and next to his body she places one of his favorite toys: a green plastic frog about the size of your hand that squeaks when you squeeze (or bite) it. It’s been the little dog’s toy for a long time, and it has several peculiar markings, scars, and discolorations that mark it unmistakably as his.

The frog is next to his body, which is wrapped tightly in several turns of bathrobe, and then my sister wraps the bathrobe up in several turns of an old towel. We bury the little dog in our back yard, as is our custom with deceased family pets. The hole we dig is about three feet deep.

So much time goes by that grass has fully and thickly re-grown over the little dog’s grave.

I’m walking up our driveway one day when something in the back yard catches my eye, something in the direction of the dog’s grave.

I stop and look, and there, on top of the undisturbed grave, sits the little green plastic frog!!

I can’t help myself; it’s an involuntary reflex action: I glance around the yard to see if someone is there playing a trick on me!

But no, no one in the flesh is there, and I walk over to the grave and pick up the frog. It’s definitely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the little dog’s frog toy! I look down at his grave, and it is completely undisturbed. The soil is firm and intact. The grass is thick and lush and not cut into or disturbed in any manner. I check: I get down on my hands and knees and inspect the grave. It is perfectly undamaged and un-tampered with.

I mull this over: it must be that animals can communicate with us, or cause communication to occur with us, from beyond the grave! Think of the implications of this!

I bless the little dog’s spirit and wish him well, and thank him for the sign.

I then carefully place the frog on the steps leading into my sister’s apartment, which is attached to our family home, knowing that she will see it when she comes home from work, and then I go tell mom what I’ve experienced. My mom and I are talking when my sister comes home and finds the frog. She comes running into the house, frog in hand, screaming: “Look at this? Did you see this? Where did this come from?”

I tell my sister about how I found the frog when I came up the driveway, and we all inspect the frog and confirm that it is indeed the little dog’s toy!

This can only be an incident of animal communication from the Great Beyond, which you surely must agree is one of the more dramatic examples of such spirit contact.

Makes us look at our animal friends in a whole different light, doesn’t it, to realize that they love us so intensely that they can sometimes communicate with us from beyond the grave, in ways so tangible as to be truly startling.

Well, my oil change is done. Let’s fire up the bike and get back on the road for next week’s story.

(Next week's story will post on March 20th.)

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net/.

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Crop Circles, Part 3

2009-03-05T15:37:00.001-05:00

So I’m flying down the highway on my bike en route to the third state park I want to visit today, enjoying the scenery, when I notice a disturbance in the tall grass off on the right shoulder up ahead.

It looks to me like it’s a dust devil, the small whirlwind that can wreak temporary havoc with a motorcycle if the wind is strong enough, but the dust devil isn’t making progress toward the road, but seems to be stationary instead. As I get closer the dust devil is whirling the tall grass flat, into the shape of…a crop circle! The wind is flattening the grass into a perfect circle about fifteen to twenty feet in diameter!

A thought immediately crosses my mind: This is the only wind I’ve seen today!

Is this my sign?

I decide that as interesting as this is it’s not my specifically requested sign, because it’s not in my yard where I requested the formation to appear. Still…

Okay, I may have to give the crop circle Intelligences this one, even though it’s not in my yard. I’ve learned over the years that we can request specific signs and sometimes that sign may appear at a time and in a place not of our choosing, but still be appropriate to our request. Hmm.

I’ll think about it later, when I relax on my lanai at day’s end. Right now I turn the wick up on the bike and enjoy the feeling of speed experienced on two wheels.

Before long I’m at the third state park I’ve visited today, and this park has a roadway that encircles it, and as I’m riding around it and nearing the end which will take me to the park’s exit one single tall stalk of bamboo out of a large planting by the side of the road starts to very slowly curve over the roadway. I can’t believe my eyes. The bamboo is curling over like it would as if a squirrel were on the very top of the stalk slowly weighing it down–except that there’s no squirrel!

I ride as slowly as I can, keeping the big bike balanced at the pace of about a slow walk, watching this spectacle unfold. The stalk of bamboo continues to bend over in a graceful curve until its tip is almost touching the roadway on the other side, in effect making an arch that I have to ride through, so low that I have to duck down on my bike to make it under!

I stop to carefully examine the stalk of bamboo. There is absolutely nothing I can find that accounts for this behavior. I’ve been an outdoorsman all of my life, and I’ve never seen anything like this before!

And then it dawns on me: bamboo is…grass. The crop circles are always associated with some type of grass. Wheat, in which many crop circles appear, is a type of grass. Lawns are varieties of grass. And bamboo is classified as a type of grass.

I’m blown away! I’ve experienced some definite signs today, some occurrences for which there can only be paranormal explanations, and some have had specific grass connections, including the crop circle formed on the shoulder of the highway by the dust devil, and the bamboo.

As I ride away I stop and look back, and the bamboo stalk is still arched over the roadway! Amazing!

I say a silent word of thanks for all I’ve experienced this day, and then I leave the park to enjoy my bike with no particular destination in mind; I’ll ride my favorite way to ride: in whichever direction my nose leads me.

I enjoy several more miles on the bike, and when I get home I’ve covered 200-300 miles today. It’s been a short ride.

I park my bike in the garage and take a moment to listen to her ticks and pings as she cools down. To me it’s like a little song she sings to me.

Finally, time to enjoy sitting on my lanai with a cold beer!

And just when I think that I can sit and ruminate about today’s events, I’m confronted with yet another odd experience: When I left this morning the chair in which I had been sitting was right by the back door; now it’s all the way over to the edge of the lanai! Nothing else has been moved.

I ask my wife if she moved it for whatever reason, but no, she hasn’t even been on the lanai!

I look in the grass in my yard, but there’s nothing there, no crop circle. Still and all I’ve experienced the waving frond, my disappearing walking stick, the leaf suspended in the middle of the hiking trail, the dust devil forming a crop circle in the grass by the highway, the bamboo arching over the roadway, and now my chair having been moved across the lanai. Six distinct experiences after I made my request early this morning for a sign from the Intelligences behind the crop circle phenomenon, and two of those experiences having to do with grass!

I have experienced an intelligent communication this day; as a matter of fact, I’ve experienced several intelligent communications. There’s more than meets the eye here, there’s more for me to learn, more knowledge for me to try and apply to this investigation: could EVP be intensified in crop circles? Are there apparitions that appear in or around crop circles? And what about the supposed connections between UFOs and crop circles?

My mind is in a whirl.

It grows dark, and my wife joins me on the lanai and we listen to some music and discuss the day’s events. We both agree that it’s pretty astonishing to have experienced all of these occurrences after having made the request that morning.

The mosquitoes worsen and my wife heads inside; I spray repellant on, grab another cold beer, and stay outside on the lanai to enjoy not only the music but the bright stars glistening overhead and the sounds of the night.

And then it happens: the most bizarre experience I’ve had this day!

This one particular star suddenly grows brighter as I gaze at it, and it seems to rapidly move closer toward me! And then, it splits in two!! I shake my head to clear my vision, but no, the twin star is still there! I quickly glance around the lanai, looking at the other pieces of furniture which are softly lit by the kitchen light coming through the windows and glass doors; I look at the blazing Tiki torches, and my radio sitting on the table which is close by. I’m not seeing double! Everything else is sharp and in clear focus.

I look back up at the double star, and I can’t keep the thought out of my head: Something, someone, is looking at me! The bright twin stars are spaced just far enough apart to look like blazing eyes gazing down upon me! Suddenly the doubled star rejoins into one and just as quickly seems to recede back into the night sky!

Shortly thereafter, I go inside for the night.

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Epilogue: In a small way it’s frustrating for me to be a full-time psychic who performs readings for clients every day, because it leaves me precious little time to engage in the paranormal research I desire to do. This interaction with the Other Side and whatever other Powers That Be doesn’t rely on a set timetable; you can’t make an appointment with a UFO. Sometimes these experiences occur when and where you least expect them, when you haven’t asked for them, and irritatingly enough when you go to a place with the intent of interacting with these presences, ofttimes they will make themselves scarce!

I am bombarded by paranormal experiences nearly every single day of my life, but I haven’t specifically set out to research the crop circle phenomenon again; yet. But I will do so at some point, and if I learn anything additional other than the fact that there is Something, Someone above and beyond what we experience in our “normal” day-to-day lives that will occasionally interact with us, I will let you know.

And if you have had any legitimate crop circle experiences I would love for you to share them with me here.

And if you’re hungry for a spiritual experience of your own, all you have to do is ask, and then, pay attention. And don’t ignore, ridicule, or pass off your experience as “imagination” or “coincidence.” I’ve learned that the Other Side will sometimes back off if you disrespect them, and wouldn’t you rather be assisted in life by all the helpful guidance you can get?

Thanks for sharing this ride with me; come back next Friday for more intriguing tales from the Beyond!

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Crop Circles, Part 2

2009-02-27T05:19:00.002-05:00

Even though it’s early morning I’ve already worked up a sweat, walking the hiking trail in the Florida heat.

I’ve waved goodbye to the little waving frond, fired up my bike, and now I’m back on the road roaring along at highway speeds, and the wind blast feels good to me and helps to cool me down.

I put the incident with the waving frond behind me for now; I’ll think about it more in depth later, when I’m once again sitting on my lanai with a cold beer at hand, but for now I must focus my attention on my ride: I’ve been riding motorcycles since I was about fifteen or sixteen years old, and I know all too well the hazards that a motorcyclist faces on the road.

The big v-twin purrs like a kitten, hungrily gobbling up miles of highway and begging for more and before I know it I’m at my next destination, which is another of Florida’s beautiful state parks.

At this park I’ve also captured EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena: the recording of spirit voices.), and unlike most EVP which you have to listen to over and over again to make out what the spirit is saying, here I have captured a spirit voice so astonishingly clear and audible that you can hear it directly from my recorder’s speaker without even having to use headphones or enhance the audio digitally!

It sounds like a young child’s voice, and it clearly says, “Peek-a-boo.” I guess the spirits want me to know that they’re watching me!

(Click here to hear the mp3 of this intriguing spirit voice say "Peekaboo!" You'll clearly hear it about 3-4 seconds into the recording, and it may actually be clearer if you turn your speakers down a little.)

But today I decide that I’m probably not going to try and record any spirit voices; instead I’m going to walk some more for exercise and because I enjoy being outdoors. I have always loved to be outside, in nature, ever since I was a small child. Yeah, I was one of those kids who had to be called repeatedly to come in and was always begging for “Just another half hour, please!”

In this particular park I had found, on one of my previous visits, a small fallen tree branch which was about two to three inches in diameter and about five to five and a half feet tall; just perfect for use as a walking stick! It also had some oddities about it that made it easy for me to differentiate it from, say, ten other similar branches you might have mixed it with.

I had stashed the walking stick in some underbrush back up under some trees so that no one else could find it and so that I would be the only person who would know where it was and then I could retrieve it from its hiding place and use it whenever I was in this particular park. Subsequently I had learned, online, about a collapsible aluminum walking stick and I ordered one. It was sturdy, collapsed small enough to fit into one of my saddlebags, had a compass in the handle, and was delightful to use in the outdoors, so had I decided that I would leave my old wooden walking stick propped against a tree along the trail so that some other hiker might find it and use it. And sure enough, the next time I had walked this particular trail the walking stick was gone.

I had walked that trail several more times and then one day as I neared the trail’s end there was my old faithful wooden walking stick waiting for me, propped against a tree just as I had left it for another hiker!

I had examined it closely and there was no doubt whatsoever that it was the same branch! So I had taken my old friend and had put it back into hiding, concealing it in the underbrush back up under some trees as I had done before. After that incident I had found another unique branch and I had also hidden it with the first one.

Sometimes I would use my aluminum walking stick, and sometimes I would go and dig out my old friend to accompany me on the trail.

So today I go to get my old friend the hiking stick to accompany me in my walk, and it’s gone from its hiding place! The other branch is there, but my first original branch has vanished! Now remember, this is all occurring after I had asked the crop circle intelligences for a sign.

I use the newer branch I had found to dig around in the underbrush to see if it might simply have overgrown my original branch somehow, but no matter how much I look I have to acknowledge the fact that the branch has simply vanished!

So here was the first of today’s unusual experiences at this park: My reappearing walking stick has now vanished; I shake my head and grab the remaining branch to use as a walking stick on my hike.

After I walk for maybe half an hour I round a curve in the trail and there is a single leaf suspended in the middle of the trail about eight to twelve inches off the forest floor. Just one leaf. Slowly rotating. And again, the wind is still calm!

I walk around the leaf until I catch the light just right, and I can see that the leaf is suspended by a long, long single strand of spider silk which is attached to its very tip end and stretches up high into a tree. Bizarre!

I guess the leaf’s rotation could be ascribed to the strand of silk untwisting under the strain of the leaf’s weight, but it certainly couldn’t be ascribed to the wind, for there is not the slightest breeze at the moment.

Wow! My walking stick has disappeared from its secure hiding place, and this lone leaf is suspended by an unbelievably long strand of spider silk directly in the middle of my pathway!

Okay, that’s a total of three incredible experiences so far today, and it’s not even close to noon yet! I take my camera out and take a picture of the suspended leaf.

I finish my hike, hide my one remaining branch, and head back to the parking area and my beloved bike.

These three events are mind-blowing enough, but little do I know that three more astonishing experiences await me, one at the next state park I visit, and two when I arrive home! I’m gonna need that beer after all.

Come back next Friday for the final installment in the Crop Circle series. But it’s not the end of my stories! There’s plenty more to tell.

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.

Crop Circles

2009-02-19T14:33:00.003-05:00

I was reading a book by a noted crop circle researcher and an experiment they tried piqued my curiosity: A person decided that if there were Intelligences of some kind that formed these crop circles, then one should be able to approach these intelligences with a request. The person, best I remember, spoke aloud his request, addressing the Powers or Intelligences behind the crop circle phenomenon, and he asked that if they heard him that they would show him they had heard his request by causing a small crop circle to appear in a specific shape and in a designated patch of grass.

Lo and behold, after a certain amount of time had passed there appeared this small crop circle in the patch of grass that he had designated, and its design exactly matched his request!

I decided that I would attempt to replicate this experiment so, early one morning, on my day off, I sat on my lanai and spoke softly and made a request to these Intelligences, indicating what type of shape I would like to see appear in my lawn, and designating the area in which I wanted the shape to appear.

Then I fired up my bike and took off, intent on riding for the entire day, visiting two or three state parks and covering hundreds of miles in the process. The day was sunny, cloudless, and the wind was totally calm, making for a really enjoyable ride.

My first stop was at a state park where I had had many encounters with spirits and had even captured some EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena, literally recording spirit voices) on my recorder.

As I walked one of the nature trails, always being sensitive to the Other Side, I noticed a small young clump of saw palmetto, which is a small palm with spiny leaves. The fronds stood about two feet high or so, and one frond in particular caught my eye while I was still a hundred feet away or more, because this frond was waving at me!

Now understand, this is on a day when the wind is calm! And yet this one frond is waving back and forth, back and forth, its arc a good foot wide or more! None of the other fronds on the same plant are moving; I look around and there are no leaves blowing on any of the trees, and not so much as a slight ripple of leaves on any other plant or shrub in the area! It’s totally calm.

As I get closer to this little waving plant I can hear the stalk clicking like a metronome as it rocks from side to side. I finally stop and stand before it, scarcely believing my eyes, and the little plant continues to wave at me, that one frond waving back and forth nonstop: click-click-click-click-click-click. I look at the trees again, and all the other plants and shrubs and everything around me; nothing stirs–there is no wind.

I look closely at the frond to see if there are bugs or snakes or something, anything that could be physically responsible for this strange behavior, but upon close inspection there is nothing to be found; the little plant is totally normal.

Finally, after shaking my head in disbelief, I wave back to the little plant, and I talk to it: “Well, hello, my little friend. It’s nice of you to welcome me to the forest, and to wave hello to me. Thank you.” I believe in nature spirits, and in communicating with nature; I know, it sounds a little “New Age-y,” but if you’d had the many supernatural experiences that I’ve had in the woods, you’d talk to the nature spirits, too!

I pause and get quiet to see if some other paranormal phenomenon will occur, but nothing does and I don’t receive any message from any spirits, so I tell the little plant goodbye and continue walking the path. I look back from time to time and it’s still strongly waving. It hasn’t stopped or slowed, and again, the air is still and there is no wind.

I reach the end of the path and turn around to retrace my steps back to my parked motorcycle. Sure enough, as I get close enough to see my little plant friend, it’s still waving at the same frequency and with the same wide arc as it was before; it hasn’t stopped! There is still no wind.

I stop and stand before the little plant and I reexamine it once again, just to make sure that there is no normal explanation for this incredible behavior. The little plant is normal, except for it continuing to wave that one frond back and forth, back and forth.

“Well, my little friend,” I say, “I’ve enjoyed this experience! Thank you. I’ve enjoyed communing with you, and I speak a blessing and peace to you, and I hope you return the same to me. I’m going to be going now, I have a lot of miles I want to put in today and it’s a beautiful day to enjoy a nice, long ride. You take care, and I’ll see you again soon.”

I wait to see if anything else will happen, but nothing does. But it does dawn on me that this strange happening is occurring on the very morning that I’ve made my request to the crop circle intelligences! I wonder if this is somehow connected. But then again I’ve experienced over 700 amazing paranormal experiences in my life, and maybe, for whatever reason, this is just another of the things that I routinely see and experience. Or is it? I shrug and decide I’ll try to make more sense of it later; right now, I’ve got miles to cover, and more state parks to visit!

I wave a final goodbye to the little plant and head up the trail to the parking area. Again I look back from time to time and the little plant is still waving at me, just as vigorously as before. Wow. What an amazing start to my day.

Thank you, Spirit, for giving me signs that let me know that you see my path in life each and every day, that you know where I’ve been, where I am, and where I’m going. I don’t understand each and every thing that happens to me, but I know that there is a higher power, a higher intelligence, and that knowledge keeps me walking in the light that I have now, and searching for ways to attain even more light on my path in my days and years ahead, so that I can see my way more clearly and be even more of a light to others if I can.

I fire up my big v-twin and roar out of the park on my way to more adventure. What I don’t know yet is that at my next stop I will experience not just one, but two incredible happenings!

Are the crop circle Intelligences responding to me?

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Check in next Friday to read about more of the incredible occurrences that happened to me as a result of my request to the Intelligences behind the crop circle phenomenon.

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an e-mail inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Introduction to psychic John Russell

2009-02-13T17:24:00.000-05:00

I'm John Russell. I'm an internationally known professional psychic with over 35 years experience in providing my clients, both nationwide and worldwide, with accurate readings.

I have also had over 700 paranormal experiences, and many of these intriguing phenomena have been witnessed by others, and sometimes even caught on film!

And, as an avid motorcyclist with over 72,000+ miles achieved in a little over 4 years, I have had many psychic adventures because of my wanderings...thus the title of my Blog, "Vibrations From the Road:" vibrations from my big v-twin motorcycle, and the psychic vibrations I receive as well!

How did I get here? Here's where it all started, when I was a very young child...

No noise woke me. I was just suddenly wide-awake for no apparent reason, and I was also without any post-sleep grogginess: My mind was as clear as a bell; my senses were on full alert. I didn’t hear, or at first see, anything unusual. But then, as I rose up on my elbows in my bed so that I could look around, I saw the old black man's face peering around one of the doorways from down the hall! He was clearly visible in the night light's glow as he gazed down the short hallway into my bedroom. He was looking at me, staring me straight in my eyes! I was five years old, and I screamed bloody murder at the top of my lungs, for my family was white and we didn't have anyone black living with us, so I assumed an intruder had entered our home!

To compound my fright the old black man responded to my scream of distress by venturing a few steps into the hallway! He stood facing me, and the glow from the night light illuminated him clearly as he stood with his feet slightly apart and his arms hanging by his sides. He wore a red plaid shirt, khaki pants with a black belt, and black dress shoes. As I stared in disbelief he maintained his steady gaze, his eyes never once leaving mine. Feelings of terror overwhelmed me as my heart thumped in my chest, and my mouth was so bone dry I'm surprised I could still scream, but scream I did, a blood-curdling howl even louder than my first, and still the old man stood staring at me!

The old black man was not smiling. But neither was his look menacing. His close-cropped white hair gave him an almost regal appearance as he stared at me with a benign, slightly bemused expression as if he were intrigued by this strange white child who was howling like a banshee!

By now I was sitting straight up in bed, the tears streaming copiously down my face, and as I screamed again he began to disappear! Starting with his feet he began to vanish a bit at a time: his lower legs disappeared, and then his thighs, and then his arms and torso until all that was left of him was his handsome face, that face now floating in the air without a body to sustain it, and his face was still wearing that benign, slightly bemused expression until, at last, his face was gone, too!

As my parents came running, I began screaming at the top of my lungs that there was someone in the house (even though I’d just seen him disappear!), and I begged them to turn on the lights and look for the old black man who I described to them in a sobbing voice. So powerful was the sense of reality and urgency I conveyed that while Mom held my shaking body close and tried to comfort me my Dad did indeed turn on every light in the house, and he looked through every room and even in every closet. I think I remember that he even looked under the beds! Dad checked all of our exterior doors, and of course, they were securely locked. None of our windows had been broken into. No one had come into our house. No one in a physical body, that is.

And after finding no intruder in our home and also discovering that our house was just as secure as when we had retired for the night my folks insisted it had all been a bad dream. A child's nightmare.

I knew better.

I had seen someone. Someone who was just as solid as you or I, someone who had subsequently vanished into thin air when I saw him and began to scream. And I finally realized what else I had just seen: I had seen my first ghost!

Even though my parents comforted me and left the hall light on for me it took me long hours to get back to sleep! I peered down the hallway wondering if the ghost would come back, and what he would want with me if he did. Why was he visiting me, scaring me to death in the middle of the night? How was it possible that he could appear in a body with clothes that was every bit as solid as yours or mine, and then vanish like a mist? And why did he vanish when my parents came running in response to my screams? If he came back again, what would he say to me, what would he ask me if he were to talk to me? Would he want me to do something that I would consider scary? Would he hurt me? There was a whirling dervish of questions in my frightened mind, but there were no answers.

From sheer exhaustion I finally dropped back off to sleep.

* * *

I never saw the old black ghost again*, and I'm now 55, but I remember him as clearly as if the incident had happened this morning!

He was the first of many ghosts I would come to see, the harbinger of the beginning of my paranormal life, a life lived at the edge of the Veil which separates the seen and unseen worlds.

To that old black man, that old black ghost: I never knew your name, Sir, nor have I seen you since...but it is to you that I fondly dedicate these reminisces, explorations, investigations, and new experiences.

Thank you for opening the portal. It’s been one incredible journey for me, and as for you my friend, I hope you found your way. And please come see me again. I’ve missed you. And this time, I promise not to scream!

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*Well, I think that I may have met up with my old black ghost friend one more time many years later when I was shooting a screen test in preparation for shooting a TV pilot; it’s an interesting tale, but there are many other intriguing stories to share with you first!

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Each week, on Friday, I will post another exciting paranormal adventure! I hope you will follow along.

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As always, your comments and questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Visit my web site at: http://www.johnrussell.net/

Interested in psychic John Russell for a media project or TV series? Send an inquiry to my producer, Jim Mullen, at: info@mullenmedia.net. Visit his web site at: http://www.mullenmedia.net

Copyright 2009 by John Russell, all rights reserved.