JUDGE, AFTER A LONG CHILD SUPPORT HEARING: After careful consideration on the evidence in this case, I'm paying $800 per months toward the support of the child in this case.
THE DEFENDANT FATHER: Judge, that sounds fair to me. I'll toss in a few dollars myself every couple of months, too.
Saturday, September 30, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
ASKING PEOPLE TO TURN THE OTHER CHEEK
Most of the participants here are still alive, so all names have been changed, to "protect the guilty."
Councilman Rob Smith had a schizophrenic wife. She was on medication, which helped 90%. The unmedicated 10% was the problem. It emerged as bad judgment and extreme temper and demands.
One day Mrs. Smith saw Maria, her next door neighbor, carefully trimming the hedge between their back yards, and she flew into a rage and complained to her husband, the Councilman. Her husband the Councilman worked for a local pest controller firm. When his wife demanded that he put a stop to the outrage next door, he lost touch with good judgement, picked up on her extreme rage, ran out to his truck, grabbed a tank of pesticide, ran through the house, crept into the back yard while Maria went inside for a break, and hid behind the hedge. When Maria came out and resumed cutting, he jumped up and said, "GOTCHA!" and sprayed pesticide in her face.
Maria fell to the ground, sick and coughing. Her husband Michael came out, deduced all that had occurred, and called an ambulance.
Michael also called me, the family attorney. When Rob saw me come into Michael and Maria's backyard, he bragged about how he had sprayed Maria in the face with poison for the outrageous act of cutting a border hedge!
I said, "Rob, you don't understand. If Maria is still in the hospital tomorrow without a clean bill of health, police are coming to your house tomorrow to cuff you, take you in, charge you and set bail. You responded to perceived aggression against hedges with a hedge trimmer by attempted POISONING. That's crazy, and it will certainly earn you time in prison.
"If, on the other hand, Maria is fine tomorrow, they've agreed, in that case, since you are neighbors, to let the matter drop."
Maria did return home the next day with a clean bill of health. As far as Maria and Michael were concerned, the matter was over.
But Councilman Rob and his wife remained angry instead of counting their blessings!
One day, Michael was coming home from work as a contractor. The driver side rear view mirror of his truck happened to be at exactly the same height above the ground as Councilman Rob's van's mirror. So, as Michael drove his truck home, Councilman Rob's wife pulled away from her house in the van, and her van's mirror kissed Michael's truck's mirror, with injury to neither vehicle.
For Councilman Rob's wife, the touching of mirrors was, as far as she was concerned, an extremely offensive intentional act. Councilman Rob, intent on justifying his wife's extreme anger, secretly went to another neighbor, Rick, and asked him to punch Michael in the morning before he left for work.
While the neighbor Rick hid behind some bushes at about 5:00 a.m. the following morning, Michael came out with his usual styro cup of piping hot coffee and walked toward his truck.
The neighbor sprang up from behind the bushes, ran over to Michael, and punched him hard in the belly through the coffee cup. The hot coffee shot up and squirted Michael in the face before he fell to the street.
Michael's wife Maria had been watching through the front storm door and seen everything. She and Michael called me at 6:00 a.m., and I told them to call police and file an assault charge against the neighbor who punched Michael. Only later did the neighbor, Rick, confess that Councilman Rob put him up to it, for allowing car mirrors to touch.
Michael and Maria had had it up to their eyeballs with Councilman Rob and his wife. They had me add a conspiracy charge against Councilman Rob.
The case was switched to a neighboring town because of the charge against a local councilman. It was night court. I warned Michael and Maria that trials are scheduled last in night court, and that our case would be one of the last cases heard, due to its spectacular nature. The presence of the media in the courtroom made this even more certain.
By 2:00 a.m., our case still had not been heard. I made a suggestion to Michael and Maria: Turn the other cheek, by announcing in open court that they were going to buy $200 worth of groceries for Councilman Rob and his wife, as a sign of forgiveness, and dropping all charges "without prejudice," meaning future charges against them would permit a reopening of the case.
Michael and Maria looked at me with astonishment and offense, asked me if I "was kidding," and dug in their heels.
By 3:00 a.m., the case had still not been heard. The prosecutor suggested a dismissal without prejudice. I suspected that the delay was "political" -- the case was intentionally held in abeyance to grind Michael and Maria down, to get them to agree to the dismissal without prejudice rather than go to trial. Michael and Maria were so disgusted at 3:00 a.m. that they consented and went home.
The hatred boiled in their neighborhood for years.
Until about 10 years later, when something very surprising occurred.
Michael caught cancer, and he decided to die at home. As he lay in his deathbed, he asked for Councilman Rob and Rick. Councilman Rob and his wife had moved away years before, and were nowhere to be found. Rick came. Michael said, "Tell Pete he was right. I should have forgiven you years ago. I forgive you now. I hope that you forgive me."
And he died shortly thereafter.
Councilman Rob Smith had a schizophrenic wife. She was on medication, which helped 90%. The unmedicated 10% was the problem. It emerged as bad judgment and extreme temper and demands.
One day Mrs. Smith saw Maria, her next door neighbor, carefully trimming the hedge between their back yards, and she flew into a rage and complained to her husband, the Councilman. Her husband the Councilman worked for a local pest controller firm. When his wife demanded that he put a stop to the outrage next door, he lost touch with good judgement, picked up on her extreme rage, ran out to his truck, grabbed a tank of pesticide, ran through the house, crept into the back yard while Maria went inside for a break, and hid behind the hedge. When Maria came out and resumed cutting, he jumped up and said, "GOTCHA!" and sprayed pesticide in her face.
Maria fell to the ground, sick and coughing. Her husband Michael came out, deduced all that had occurred, and called an ambulance.
Michael also called me, the family attorney. When Rob saw me come into Michael and Maria's backyard, he bragged about how he had sprayed Maria in the face with poison for the outrageous act of cutting a border hedge!
I said, "Rob, you don't understand. If Maria is still in the hospital tomorrow without a clean bill of health, police are coming to your house tomorrow to cuff you, take you in, charge you and set bail. You responded to perceived aggression against hedges with a hedge trimmer by attempted POISONING. That's crazy, and it will certainly earn you time in prison.
"If, on the other hand, Maria is fine tomorrow, they've agreed, in that case, since you are neighbors, to let the matter drop."
Maria did return home the next day with a clean bill of health. As far as Maria and Michael were concerned, the matter was over.
But Councilman Rob and his wife remained angry instead of counting their blessings!
One day, Michael was coming home from work as a contractor. The driver side rear view mirror of his truck happened to be at exactly the same height above the ground as Councilman Rob's van's mirror. So, as Michael drove his truck home, Councilman Rob's wife pulled away from her house in the van, and her van's mirror kissed Michael's truck's mirror, with injury to neither vehicle.
For Councilman Rob's wife, the touching of mirrors was, as far as she was concerned, an extremely offensive intentional act. Councilman Rob, intent on justifying his wife's extreme anger, secretly went to another neighbor, Rick, and asked him to punch Michael in the morning before he left for work.
While the neighbor Rick hid behind some bushes at about 5:00 a.m. the following morning, Michael came out with his usual styro cup of piping hot coffee and walked toward his truck.
The neighbor sprang up from behind the bushes, ran over to Michael, and punched him hard in the belly through the coffee cup. The hot coffee shot up and squirted Michael in the face before he fell to the street.
Michael's wife Maria had been watching through the front storm door and seen everything. She and Michael called me at 6:00 a.m., and I told them to call police and file an assault charge against the neighbor who punched Michael. Only later did the neighbor, Rick, confess that Councilman Rob put him up to it, for allowing car mirrors to touch.
Michael and Maria had had it up to their eyeballs with Councilman Rob and his wife. They had me add a conspiracy charge against Councilman Rob.
The case was switched to a neighboring town because of the charge against a local councilman. It was night court. I warned Michael and Maria that trials are scheduled last in night court, and that our case would be one of the last cases heard, due to its spectacular nature. The presence of the media in the courtroom made this even more certain.
By 2:00 a.m., our case still had not been heard. I made a suggestion to Michael and Maria: Turn the other cheek, by announcing in open court that they were going to buy $200 worth of groceries for Councilman Rob and his wife, as a sign of forgiveness, and dropping all charges "without prejudice," meaning future charges against them would permit a reopening of the case.
Michael and Maria looked at me with astonishment and offense, asked me if I "was kidding," and dug in their heels.
By 3:00 a.m., the case had still not been heard. The prosecutor suggested a dismissal without prejudice. I suspected that the delay was "political" -- the case was intentionally held in abeyance to grind Michael and Maria down, to get them to agree to the dismissal without prejudice rather than go to trial. Michael and Maria were so disgusted at 3:00 a.m. that they consented and went home.
The hatred boiled in their neighborhood for years.
Until about 10 years later, when something very surprising occurred.
Michael caught cancer, and he decided to die at home. As he lay in his deathbed, he asked for Councilman Rob and Rick. Councilman Rob and his wife had moved away years before, and were nowhere to be found. Rick came. Michael said, "Tell Pete he was right. I should have forgiven you years ago. I forgive you now. I hope that you forgive me."
And he died shortly thereafter.
Friday, September 15, 2017
MAGNOLIA SOLAR FURNACE EXPERIMENT
Many years ago, my wife and I regularly babysat little Lesle Nhu Kieu, the daughter of our Vietnamese neighbors, on Saturdays, when both of her parents were working. I was the main caretaker, and, man, I loved that little punk. And like me she was a "lefty" -- the most left "lefty" I have ever seen -- and I think because I was a "lefty" also not only was she a "tomboy" who loved spending time with me, but she could almost read my mind.
If I wasn't helping little Lesle with her homework, she would always ask to go on some "adventure" or other. We did many really cool things -- we toured the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Archaeology Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum; we would go on photography walks, taking pictures of interesting things along the route; I took her flying, once; we would also do back yard experiments, which she loved more than anything else.
One of our backyard experiments was the construction of a solar furnace.
I had told her the story of Archimedes and the Roman ships attacking his City of Syracuse, Sicily. He had the city of Syracuse prepare about 6,000 highly-polished copper shields, with a man assigned to each shield, and stationed them around the harbor of Syracuse. When the invading Romans sailed their barges full of troops into Syracuse harbor, all 6,000 shield bearers carefully reflected the sunlight to the same spot on each barge, multiplying the reflected sunlight by 6,000, sending a blinding reflection of sunlight, as hot as lava from a volcano, onto each barge, cooking the troops, and setting the barge afire.
When I told little Lesle that we could imitate what Archimedes did in an experiment, she looked forward to it with enormous enthusiasm. I began buying $1 mirrors from our local dollar store ...
... until I had accumulated 60 of them, and then, one cloudless Fall Saturday, Lesle and I, and a neighbor kid named Andrew who had a kind of crush on Lesle, went down to the local ballfield for the experiment with our mirrors.
We set up an overturned trash can on the south side of some bleachers, and placed a black plastic flowerpot on the trash can, and I said, "This is a wooden barge of the Romans sailing into Syracuse harbor"; and the 3 of us, Lesle, Andrew and myself, then carefully set up in an array all 60 mirrors on the bleachers, so that the sunlight reflecting off each mirror landed on the same spot on the black flower pot.
As the concentrated sunlight on the flower pot from the addition of the reflection of each succeeding mirror grew brighter and brighter, it became so brilliant in its intensity, even on black plastic, that it became hard to look at. The side of the plastic flower pot began to smoke and melt, and finally it caught fire.
Voila: With a few dollars of junk mirrors, little Lesle and Andrew had helped me prove that Archimedes could, indeed, have saved his beloved City of Syracuse against invading Romans with a kind of "ray gun" powered by sunlight!
If I wasn't helping little Lesle with her homework, she would always ask to go on some "adventure" or other. We did many really cool things -- we toured the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Archaeology Museum, the Academy of Natural Sciences Museum; we would go on photography walks, taking pictures of interesting things along the route; I took her flying, once; we would also do back yard experiments, which she loved more than anything else.
One of our backyard experiments was the construction of a solar furnace.
I had told her the story of Archimedes and the Roman ships attacking his City of Syracuse, Sicily. He had the city of Syracuse prepare about 6,000 highly-polished copper shields, with a man assigned to each shield, and stationed them around the harbor of Syracuse. When the invading Romans sailed their barges full of troops into Syracuse harbor, all 6,000 shield bearers carefully reflected the sunlight to the same spot on each barge, multiplying the reflected sunlight by 6,000, sending a blinding reflection of sunlight, as hot as lava from a volcano, onto each barge, cooking the troops, and setting the barge afire.
When I told little Lesle that we could imitate what Archimedes did in an experiment, she looked forward to it with enormous enthusiasm. I began buying $1 mirrors from our local dollar store ...
... until I had accumulated 60 of them, and then, one cloudless Fall Saturday, Lesle and I, and a neighbor kid named Andrew who had a kind of crush on Lesle, went down to the local ballfield for the experiment with our mirrors.
We set up an overturned trash can on the south side of some bleachers, and placed a black plastic flowerpot on the trash can, and I said, "This is a wooden barge of the Romans sailing into Syracuse harbor"; and the 3 of us, Lesle, Andrew and myself, then carefully set up in an array all 60 mirrors on the bleachers, so that the sunlight reflecting off each mirror landed on the same spot on the black flower pot.
As the concentrated sunlight on the flower pot from the addition of the reflection of each succeeding mirror grew brighter and brighter, it became so brilliant in its intensity, even on black plastic, that it became hard to look at. The side of the plastic flower pot began to smoke and melt, and finally it caught fire.
Voila: With a few dollars of junk mirrors, little Lesle and Andrew had helped me prove that Archimedes could, indeed, have saved his beloved City of Syracuse against invading Romans with a kind of "ray gun" powered by sunlight!
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
"JESUS IS BORN !" SO WHAT ?
Millions of Christians get all excited every year when they celebrate the birth of Christ, but do they really know why? Why is it important that Christ came to humanity, lived here, and was arrested, tortured and crucified? So what? Spartacus was arrested and crucified by the Romans? Why shouldn't I regard that as Spartacus having been crucified for me and my salvation? Why was what happened to Christ significant?
Though millions of Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, proclaim that "Christ died for our sins," their brains stop there. And because their brains don't get past that point, they really don't understand their Faith -- at all, not one jot; not one tittle. And because they can't do so, I believe that very, very few Christians today would suffer or die for their faith, and in fact will abandon the Faith for more convenient exercises in The Great Falling Away, which I believe in happening as I type this.
So, what do we mean when we say that "Christ died for our sins?"
This ...
God is "extremely" everything that He is. Among other things, He has an extreme sense of justice. So, when the Old Testament portrays Him as a nasty God of Vengeance, it is accurately portraying God. When God sees us down here paying hypocritical lip service to his law, He becomes filled with blood-curdling -- blood-curdling -- rage. Bible students are astonished at some of the Scriptural portrayals of God's rage. E.g., "I, in my turn, will laugh at your doom. I will mock when terror overtakes you ..." Proverbs 1:26.
But, God is also extremely a God of Extreme Love. And the God of Extreme Love, even while He is mindful of His blood-curdling rage at us for our sin-proneness and sins, simple loves the holy heck out of each of us -- He loves us like crazy! And so He did something startling ...
The perfect God of Justice and Love, Whom we can neither prove nor disprove because of His ineffability, asked for a divine volunteer to pay the extraordinary price exacted by God's Own extreme Perfect Justice for our sins -- the suffering and death of the Lawmaker, God.
The beloved God the Son, filled with love, immediately threw up his hand and said, "I WILL! I'LL PAY THE PRICE!" or words to that effect.
And God the Father answered with something like, "MY BELOVED SON, I HEREBY ACCEPT YOUR LOVING OFFER, AND SO I DOOM YOU TO ENDURE HORRIBLE TORTURE AND DEATH FOR THE SINS OF ALL WHO ACCEPT YOUR SACRIFICE BY THEIR FAITH."
And so now, we have the grace conveying the benefit of Christ's sacrifice -- spiritual power and salvation -- if you accept it, in the current time of love, access to which will continue until what the Bible calls "The Day" -- the last day, which I believe is closing in on us with great rapidity.
Once The Day comes, however, things will change in a snap. Suddenly, as God closes down The World, those still living in a damned state will feel extremely hopeless and lost in their damned state -- perhaps well portrayed in the Sistine Channel painting of a damned soul being pulled down to Hell ...
The saved will nonetheless remain engraced, married as it were to the loving sacrifice of God the Son -- thus the importance of faith.
Because Spartacus and and other mere humans who were sacrificed were "creatures of Original Sin," their sacrifice was unimpressive to God as far as the salvation of Man is concerned.
Because Jesus is God Himself, and because His innocence, like everything else about God, is extreme and rooted in God's perfection, when Jesus offers to suffer and die as a sacrifice substituted in by God as the penalty for our sins, it is effective in persuading God to save us.
If ...
...if we "sign the check"; if we simply say, by our faith in the truth of God's promise, "Yes. I accept," to the offer of salvation by the merit of Christ's sacrifice.
Now, our sinful state is complete. Without grace, we can't even see the offer of salvation through Christ. The grace of the cross solves the problem, by raising each of us up to a level of equanimity, so that we can choose, "Yes!" in response to God's offer.
Though millions of Christians, Catholic and non-Catholic, proclaim that "Christ died for our sins," their brains stop there. And because their brains don't get past that point, they really don't understand their Faith -- at all, not one jot; not one tittle. And because they can't do so, I believe that very, very few Christians today would suffer or die for their faith, and in fact will abandon the Faith for more convenient exercises in The Great Falling Away, which I believe in happening as I type this.
So, what do we mean when we say that "Christ died for our sins?"
This ...
God is "extremely" everything that He is. Among other things, He has an extreme sense of justice. So, when the Old Testament portrays Him as a nasty God of Vengeance, it is accurately portraying God. When God sees us down here paying hypocritical lip service to his law, He becomes filled with blood-curdling -- blood-curdling -- rage. Bible students are astonished at some of the Scriptural portrayals of God's rage. E.g., "I, in my turn, will laugh at your doom. I will mock when terror overtakes you ..." Proverbs 1:26.
But, God is also extremely a God of Extreme Love. And the God of Extreme Love, even while He is mindful of His blood-curdling rage at us for our sin-proneness and sins, simple loves the holy heck out of each of us -- He loves us like crazy! And so He did something startling ...
The perfect God of Justice and Love, Whom we can neither prove nor disprove because of His ineffability, asked for a divine volunteer to pay the extraordinary price exacted by God's Own extreme Perfect Justice for our sins -- the suffering and death of the Lawmaker, God.
The beloved God the Son, filled with love, immediately threw up his hand and said, "I WILL! I'LL PAY THE PRICE!" or words to that effect.
And God the Father answered with something like, "MY BELOVED SON, I HEREBY ACCEPT YOUR LOVING OFFER, AND SO I DOOM YOU TO ENDURE HORRIBLE TORTURE AND DEATH FOR THE SINS OF ALL WHO ACCEPT YOUR SACRIFICE BY THEIR FAITH."
And so now, we have the grace conveying the benefit of Christ's sacrifice -- spiritual power and salvation -- if you accept it, in the current time of love, access to which will continue until what the Bible calls "The Day" -- the last day, which I believe is closing in on us with great rapidity.
Once The Day comes, however, things will change in a snap. Suddenly, as God closes down The World, those still living in a damned state will feel extremely hopeless and lost in their damned state -- perhaps well portrayed in the Sistine Channel painting of a damned soul being pulled down to Hell ...
The saved will nonetheless remain engraced, married as it were to the loving sacrifice of God the Son -- thus the importance of faith.
Because Spartacus and and other mere humans who were sacrificed were "creatures of Original Sin," their sacrifice was unimpressive to God as far as the salvation of Man is concerned.
Because Jesus is God Himself, and because His innocence, like everything else about God, is extreme and rooted in God's perfection, when Jesus offers to suffer and die as a sacrifice substituted in by God as the penalty for our sins, it is effective in persuading God to save us.
If ...
...if we "sign the check"; if we simply say, by our faith in the truth of God's promise, "Yes. I accept," to the offer of salvation by the merit of Christ's sacrifice.
Now, our sinful state is complete. Without grace, we can't even see the offer of salvation through Christ. The grace of the cross solves the problem, by raising each of us up to a level of equanimity, so that we can choose, "Yes!" in response to God's offer.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Monday, September 4, 2017
OUIJA BOARDS -- STAY AWAY!
I first bumped into a Ouija Board when I was a 4 year old kid. Back then, in the late 1950s, Ouija Boards were regarded as a harmless toy, safe for kids and adults. One of my older siblings received a Ouija Board as a gift, and retreated to the basement of our home with another older sibling to experiment with it. I followed them down into the basement and watched their Ouija Board ritual with the keen, pure interest of an innocent 4 year old. All were greatly disappointed when nothing seemed to happen, and they quit their game.
Nothing seemed to happen, that is, until late that night ...
That night, I had the first "ghostly" experience of my life. I awakened in my bed in the darkened house, and listened and heard my brothers sleeping soundly in their beds behind mine in the boy's room, and my parents snoring peacefully in their bed through the doorway to their room next to my bed. I pulled my blankets up to my chin and waited for sleep to come. Suddenly, I felt a strong, distinct compulsion ...
"Peter, look into your parents' bedroom. Something is about to happen."
I looked, and saw a classic ghostly figure come floating into my parents' bedroom from the direction of the other door to their room. She floated around the end of their bed, enabling me to see that she was dressed in a flowing translucent gown, about an inch above the floor -- toward me in my bed!
Frightened, I pulled my blankets over my head, hoping "the ghost lady" -- I had a strong feeling that "it" was a "she" -- would just go away.
After a few minutes, I peeked out from beneath my blankets and into my parents' bedroom, and saw that the thing was gone. Greatly relieved, I turned over to my other side under the blankets -- and froze.
There the thing was, between my bed and my older brother's bed, bent over my older brother's sleeping figure, staring intently at him.
After a few moments, the thing turned her head around, and stared at me, as I continued laying there, frozen in astonishment. Then it straightened up, and floated out the other door to our bedroom into the hall.
It dawned on me, years later, that when the thing first floated into our parents' bedroom, it was coming from the direction of the bedroom of the other sibling who participated in the Ouija Board "seance" that day, and then came and stared at the brother who had been participant #2, while I was alerted to watch -- what I had done in the basement during my siblings' "ritual."
I.e., the Ouija Board worked.
The house remained haunted for years after that. The thing followed a pattern. (1) It came in the dark or subdued light; (2) when the experiencer was asleep, going to sleep or waking up; (3) and "put on a show" for the experiencer; (4) frequently evidencing a "female" presence.
The "show" was comprised of knocking on the walls, or a physical grabbing of the body, or a sudden raising of the shades in the room -- anything to get our attention.
Once, when I confided that "ghostly" experience, and others, to Phyllis, one of the ladies who lived next door, she suggested that I try to contact the thing back. Astonished and fearful, I immediately said, "NO WAY!"
But, "fools rush ..."
On an evening not long after my conversation with Phyllis, everybody in our family had a place to go after dinner but me. It occurred to me that, isolated, I could attempt to contact the ghost, as Phyllis had suggested, with no one else in the family to distract or shame me.
When all had left and I was alone, I placed a paper and a crayon on the coffee table in the living room, turned on some soft music to help lull myself into a sleepy state, doused all of the lights in the house, sat on the living room sofa, and announced, "Okay, whoever you are, I would appreciate it if you tried to contact me."
Nothing happened except suddenly the radio broadcast some raucous rock music in place of the soft music.
I jumped up and changed stations, tuning the radio to MAGIC, WMGK FM 103, where I found some quiet soft shoe music. I returned to the sofa and repeated my request, "Okay, whoever you are, I would appreciate it if you tried to contact me." But I added, "If you do, I promise I won't tell anyone."
All of a sudden, an invisible cloud of cold materialized at my face, characterized by a sensation of wild touching, touching, touching. Then the touching sensation launched itself into my nose and mouth, and to my astonishment rushed down my lungs till, at heart level, it began to make my heart beat very violently.
"IT'S A DEMON TRYING TO POSSESS ME!" I thought to myself in a panic as I jumped up and kind of prayerfully "no'd" it out of me.
Poof. The sensation vanished and my heart went back to normal.
I never tried to contact the thing again. And I kept my promise to not tell anyone -- for a year or so.
But then, one night, when I walked into the house, I found my father telling the gathered family about his ghostly experiences when he was young. I thought to myself, "If he can do it without shame, I can do it," and I ran through the list of ghostly experiences beginning with the visitation which followed the use of the Ouija Board and ending with my "communication experiment" that had such a bad ending. As I told them about the communication experiment, I was conscious of the fact that I was breaking my promise to the thing. The members of the family who were present that night stared open-mouthed as I told them the story.
That night, or maybe one or two nights later, I had the worst "ghostly" experience of my life in the form of a wild, frightening nightmare. A group of 4 or 5 black-eyed "muchkins" in deep blue gas-station-style jumpsuits walked towards me, out of the screen of my dream, angrily sneering, "YOU SON-OF-A-B - - - H, YOU BROKE YOUR PROMISE TO US TO NOT TELL ANYONE. WE'RE GOING TO GET YOU FOR DOING THAT!!!" At that point I noticed that they were carrying a thick hose between them, like firemen holding a fire hose, and they suddenly rushed at me and rammed me in the belly with it. In the dream I went "oooooooooooooooofff" in response.
But then I awakened slowly in my bed. As I came to, I realized that I was screaming, screaming, screaming in my bedroom bunk. As I stopped screaming, I realized that not only was I covered head-to-foot with sweat, but I was lying in pools of sweat on the sheets. I also had a distinct sensation that I had been anally raped by the hose, not punched in the stomach by it. As I apprehended this, I saw a vision of the "muchkins" in the periphery of my vision laughing at me.
And then I realized that it was 10:00 a.m. on a sunny weekend morning, and that the rest of the house was quiet. I got down off my bunk, got a towel and dried off the sweat, and I dressed and went downstairs. There members of the family were gathered in the living room, staring at me angrily. One explained, "Around midnight you began yelling and screaming in your sleep. We tried to wake you, but couldn't. We've been down here for hours while you screamed in your sleep, talking about what to do with you."
"Sorry about that," I stammered without further explanation, hoping that they'd just drop the whole thing. I found it impossible, then, to tell them about the rape dream.
Years later, after I became a New Jersey trial lawyer and married and moved to New Jersey, I stopped at Blockbuster Video and rented the Whitley Streiber film Communion for entertainment one Friday night after court while I and my wife chomped on pizza. I had heard of Communion and of the Abduction Phenomenon, but that was it.
As we sat watching the film and eating pizza, the movie advanced to the point where the movie portrayed Streiber experiencing the blue-suited "munchins" assisting the almond-eyed abductors in the Abduction Phenomenon.
I had already told my wife about my rape dream years before. So, I blurted out, "THAT'S THEM! THOSE ARE THE BLUE-SUITED B - - - - - DS WHO ANALLY RAPED ME IN THAT RAPE DREAM YEARS AGO TO PUNISH ME FOR BREAKING MY PROMISE!"
And since that time, I have been firmly committed to the notion that the beings in the Abduction Phenomenon are demonic, and that the "ghosts" engendered by Ouija Boards are the same.
Take it from me -- Ouija Boards are thoroughly dangerous. Keep the kids away from them.
Nothing seemed to happen, that is, until late that night ...
That night, I had the first "ghostly" experience of my life. I awakened in my bed in the darkened house, and listened and heard my brothers sleeping soundly in their beds behind mine in the boy's room, and my parents snoring peacefully in their bed through the doorway to their room next to my bed. I pulled my blankets up to my chin and waited for sleep to come. Suddenly, I felt a strong, distinct compulsion ...
"Peter, look into your parents' bedroom. Something is about to happen."
I looked, and saw a classic ghostly figure come floating into my parents' bedroom from the direction of the other door to their room. She floated around the end of their bed, enabling me to see that she was dressed in a flowing translucent gown, about an inch above the floor -- toward me in my bed!
Frightened, I pulled my blankets over my head, hoping "the ghost lady" -- I had a strong feeling that "it" was a "she" -- would just go away.
After a few minutes, I peeked out from beneath my blankets and into my parents' bedroom, and saw that the thing was gone. Greatly relieved, I turned over to my other side under the blankets -- and froze.
There the thing was, between my bed and my older brother's bed, bent over my older brother's sleeping figure, staring intently at him.
After a few moments, the thing turned her head around, and stared at me, as I continued laying there, frozen in astonishment. Then it straightened up, and floated out the other door to our bedroom into the hall.
It dawned on me, years later, that when the thing first floated into our parents' bedroom, it was coming from the direction of the bedroom of the other sibling who participated in the Ouija Board "seance" that day, and then came and stared at the brother who had been participant #2, while I was alerted to watch -- what I had done in the basement during my siblings' "ritual."
I.e., the Ouija Board worked.
The house remained haunted for years after that. The thing followed a pattern. (1) It came in the dark or subdued light; (2) when the experiencer was asleep, going to sleep or waking up; (3) and "put on a show" for the experiencer; (4) frequently evidencing a "female" presence.
The "show" was comprised of knocking on the walls, or a physical grabbing of the body, or a sudden raising of the shades in the room -- anything to get our attention.
Once, when I confided that "ghostly" experience, and others, to Phyllis, one of the ladies who lived next door, she suggested that I try to contact the thing back. Astonished and fearful, I immediately said, "NO WAY!"
But, "fools rush ..."
On an evening not long after my conversation with Phyllis, everybody in our family had a place to go after dinner but me. It occurred to me that, isolated, I could attempt to contact the ghost, as Phyllis had suggested, with no one else in the family to distract or shame me.
When all had left and I was alone, I placed a paper and a crayon on the coffee table in the living room, turned on some soft music to help lull myself into a sleepy state, doused all of the lights in the house, sat on the living room sofa, and announced, "Okay, whoever you are, I would appreciate it if you tried to contact me."
Nothing happened except suddenly the radio broadcast some raucous rock music in place of the soft music.
I jumped up and changed stations, tuning the radio to MAGIC, WMGK FM 103, where I found some quiet soft shoe music. I returned to the sofa and repeated my request, "Okay, whoever you are, I would appreciate it if you tried to contact me." But I added, "If you do, I promise I won't tell anyone."
All of a sudden, an invisible cloud of cold materialized at my face, characterized by a sensation of wild touching, touching, touching. Then the touching sensation launched itself into my nose and mouth, and to my astonishment rushed down my lungs till, at heart level, it began to make my heart beat very violently.
"IT'S A DEMON TRYING TO POSSESS ME!" I thought to myself in a panic as I jumped up and kind of prayerfully "no'd" it out of me.
Poof. The sensation vanished and my heart went back to normal.
I never tried to contact the thing again. And I kept my promise to not tell anyone -- for a year or so.
But then, one night, when I walked into the house, I found my father telling the gathered family about his ghostly experiences when he was young. I thought to myself, "If he can do it without shame, I can do it," and I ran through the list of ghostly experiences beginning with the visitation which followed the use of the Ouija Board and ending with my "communication experiment" that had such a bad ending. As I told them about the communication experiment, I was conscious of the fact that I was breaking my promise to the thing. The members of the family who were present that night stared open-mouthed as I told them the story.
That night, or maybe one or two nights later, I had the worst "ghostly" experience of my life in the form of a wild, frightening nightmare. A group of 4 or 5 black-eyed "muchkins" in deep blue gas-station-style jumpsuits walked towards me, out of the screen of my dream, angrily sneering, "YOU SON-OF-A-B - - - H, YOU BROKE YOUR PROMISE TO US TO NOT TELL ANYONE. WE'RE GOING TO GET YOU FOR DOING THAT!!!" At that point I noticed that they were carrying a thick hose between them, like firemen holding a fire hose, and they suddenly rushed at me and rammed me in the belly with it. In the dream I went "oooooooooooooooofff" in response.
But then I awakened slowly in my bed. As I came to, I realized that I was screaming, screaming, screaming in my bedroom bunk. As I stopped screaming, I realized that not only was I covered head-to-foot with sweat, but I was lying in pools of sweat on the sheets. I also had a distinct sensation that I had been anally raped by the hose, not punched in the stomach by it. As I apprehended this, I saw a vision of the "muchkins" in the periphery of my vision laughing at me.
And then I realized that it was 10:00 a.m. on a sunny weekend morning, and that the rest of the house was quiet. I got down off my bunk, got a towel and dried off the sweat, and I dressed and went downstairs. There members of the family were gathered in the living room, staring at me angrily. One explained, "Around midnight you began yelling and screaming in your sleep. We tried to wake you, but couldn't. We've been down here for hours while you screamed in your sleep, talking about what to do with you."
"Sorry about that," I stammered without further explanation, hoping that they'd just drop the whole thing. I found it impossible, then, to tell them about the rape dream.
Years later, after I became a New Jersey trial lawyer and married and moved to New Jersey, I stopped at Blockbuster Video and rented the Whitley Streiber film Communion for entertainment one Friday night after court while I and my wife chomped on pizza. I had heard of Communion and of the Abduction Phenomenon, but that was it.
As we sat watching the film and eating pizza, the movie advanced to the point where the movie portrayed Streiber experiencing the blue-suited "munchins" assisting the almond-eyed abductors in the Abduction Phenomenon.
I had already told my wife about my rape dream years before. So, I blurted out, "THAT'S THEM! THOSE ARE THE BLUE-SUITED B - - - - - DS WHO ANALLY RAPED ME IN THAT RAPE DREAM YEARS AGO TO PUNISH ME FOR BREAKING MY PROMISE!"
And since that time, I have been firmly committed to the notion that the beings in the Abduction Phenomenon are demonic, and that the "ghosts" engendered by Ouija Boards are the same.
Take it from me -- Ouija Boards are thoroughly dangerous. Keep the kids away from them.
Friday, September 1, 2017
TOURETTE'S SYNDROME
Our family was friendly with a couple, years ago, where the husband seemed to suffer from two different facial tics. He was a very, very nice guy, except that he was prone to rage in disputes with his wife. When I would pay a visit to their home and accidentally walk into the middle of a fight, I would hear him robotically repeating, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle," again and again, hundreds of times. On such occasions, I would convince him to take an hour-long walk through town with me, during which he would continue repeating, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle."
On one such occasion, the encounter was especially bizarre. It was evening. Their child was curled-up in a corner of the living room, shaking, when I entered the house. The husband was holding the crying wife prisoner in a chair in front of a mirror by her hair, repeating as usual, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle." He didn't seem to realize I was there. I called home to my wife and told her that the mother and child would have to sleep in our spare bedroom. When my wife came over to assist, I gently persuaded the husband to let the wife leave that chair, and my wife quickly ushered the wife and child out the front door to our house. As I turned around to face the husband again, he walked past me without seeing me, still repeating his evil curse words, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle." I took him for his hour-long walk to give him the chance to calm down. He returned home and slept.
I probably should have called police, but the wife stubbornly refused to cooperate with that effort.
As I pondered the problem, I thought, "Where else have I seen this behavior in my law practice?" And then it dawned on me: In my few cases involving Tourette's Syndrome.
Tourette's cases are typically evidenced by multiple varieties of facial tics, and, again, the husband in this case had two of them -- a regularly-occurring sniff and a regularly-occurring grimace. Also, robotic behavior emerges, and I had clearly witnessed that. Also, there is sometimes a pronounced proclivity to obscene cursing -- my neighbor's outstanding persistent symptom. He had Tourette's. I was sure of it. When I told the husband and wife about my analysis and compared the husband's behavior to the list of symptoms on a brochure on Tourette's, they both burst out laughing. I pleaded, "At least see a doctor on this. Medication may solve the problem."
They laughed some more, and politely declined to abide by my suggestion.
But the fights continued. The husband's bad behavior continued. The situation finally exploded in divorce, which I was glad to see, if only for their traumatized child's sake.
On one such occasion, the encounter was especially bizarre. It was evening. Their child was curled-up in a corner of the living room, shaking, when I entered the house. The husband was holding the crying wife prisoner in a chair in front of a mirror by her hair, repeating as usual, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle; f - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle." He didn't seem to realize I was there. I called home to my wife and told her that the mother and child would have to sleep in our spare bedroom. When my wife came over to assist, I gently persuaded the husband to let the wife leave that chair, and my wife quickly ushered the wife and child out the front door to our house. As I turned around to face the husband again, he walked past me without seeing me, still repeating his evil curse words, "F - - k my mother-in-law; f - - k my wife's uncle." I took him for his hour-long walk to give him the chance to calm down. He returned home and slept.
I probably should have called police, but the wife stubbornly refused to cooperate with that effort.
As I pondered the problem, I thought, "Where else have I seen this behavior in my law practice?" And then it dawned on me: In my few cases involving Tourette's Syndrome.
Tourette's cases are typically evidenced by multiple varieties of facial tics, and, again, the husband in this case had two of them -- a regularly-occurring sniff and a regularly-occurring grimace. Also, robotic behavior emerges, and I had clearly witnessed that. Also, there is sometimes a pronounced proclivity to obscene cursing -- my neighbor's outstanding persistent symptom. He had Tourette's. I was sure of it. When I told the husband and wife about my analysis and compared the husband's behavior to the list of symptoms on a brochure on Tourette's, they both burst out laughing. I pleaded, "At least see a doctor on this. Medication may solve the problem."
They laughed some more, and politely declined to abide by my suggestion.
But the fights continued. The husband's bad behavior continued. The situation finally exploded in divorce, which I was glad to see, if only for their traumatized child's sake.
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