Free Falling

The following story comes from a close friend who wishes to remain anonymous. In the following story I will refer to him as Tyler.

Have you ever heard of astral projection, or OBE (out of the body experience)? The principle is pretty basic. It’s based on the belief that your spirit can vacate the confines of the physical body, for a time, and then return back to the body. This isn’t to be confused exactly with a near death experience but the two can definitely be linked, I believe.

An OBE can happen accidentally to someone. Some people have reported that in a moment of extreme duress, pain, or exhaustion, suddenly finding themselves floating outside of their body and observing what is taking place from a different angle, as if they were someone else merely observing. Others have reported to have left their body inadvertently while sleeping. They might be having a dream and then, the next thing they know they are standing in the bedroom, looking down at their own unconscious body.

Astral projection is the same concept, except that it is the deliberate action of leaving the body. Some claim to have figured out how to meditate and concentrate in the right way, allowing them to leave their body at will. Those who have been able to do this, say that they then are able to move about on what they call the astral plane. They are still here but are able to move through walls, fly about, and even meet other beings and spirits. NO THANKS.

My dad used to know a man that claimed he could do this. According to this person, there was a sort of silver umbilical cord that connected him to his body. He had the feeling that when you die, the silver cord is severed and your spirit is permanently separated from your body. Off you go towards the light. This man gave up the practice, however, after laying down on his bed one night, he meditated and successfully entered the astral plane.

He turned around to look at his body and was horrified to see a dark, shadowy figure standing in the corner of the bedroom. He felt an evil vibe coming off this specter and had the distinct feeling that this character was trying to figure out how to take possession of this now vacant vessel. He jumped back into his body without hesitation, and gave up the practice of astral projection. SO WOULD I! 

In my debut novel, The Summoning, the main antagonist, Daniel, uses astral projection to inhabit the body of someone else and commits a murder that can’t be traced back to him in any way.

The story of my friend, Tyler, is not that scary, but still quite incredible.

One late afternoon, after returning to his second-story apartment from an extra hard rugby practice, he collapsed on his couch. He was so exhausted that he didn’t bother taking a shower or anything. He doesn’t recall ever being in such an exhausted state before in his life, and immediately began to drift off to sleep.

He tells of suddenly experiencing the sensation that he was sinking through the couch. He opened his eyes and was shocked to be looking up at the ceiling, just a few inches from his face. He realized that he was falling, but very slowly—he wasn’t sure how he got up there to begin with. He tried to turn himself around to face the floor. He got about half turned and looked down. This was when he discovered he wasn’t even in his apartment!

Below him, on the floor, was a blow-up mattress with some big guy sleeping on it. He didn’t recognize the man, but he was distinctive, being a very big guy with long hair, possibly Samoan or some other type of Pacific Islander heritage. I’m out of my body, he thought to himself. At that moment, he felt himself fly back up through the floor, the couch, and into his body, like the snap of a rubber band.

At first, he just assumed that he’d experienced a really bizarre dream, brought on by his extremely exhausted state … until the next morning when he went to leave for work. He almost had a heart attack when, coming out of the apartment, he ran into the big Samoan man he had seen sleeping on the blowup mattress. He had not seen the man before hand and had originally thought he was just a figment of his imagination. Now the guy was standing right here in the flesh!

It turned out the big guy was spending the night with a friend and that’s why he had been on the blowup mattress in a spare bedroom. It was at this point that Tyler had to seriously take into consideration that he had, indeed, inadvertently slipped away from his body for a few seconds.

Personally, I don’t condone that one should try to experiment with this stuff on purpose. The story of the evil presence waiting there on the astral plane should serve as warning enough to those who might be curious. I don’t know what to actually think about this particular phenomenon. Of course, I do believe that we all have a spirit that inhabits this mortal house of clay. So, it’s not too far of a stretch for me to think that under the right circumstances we could find ourselves straying a little from our physical body.

But as far as I’m concerned, I’m only planning on my spirit taking a leave of absence from my body once, thank you.

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 If you have a personal story of the paranormal or an adventure that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at
bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

The images in this blog post were obtained through Google. The author does not own these images and takes no credit for them. No copyright infringement was intended. 

An Uninvited Guest in The Idaho Rockies

In this week's post I decided to switch gears a little bit. As much as I love a good ghost story, I'm also interested in other facets of the paranormal or the unknown. As far as legends and mysteries go, in my mind, Bigfoot is the supreme granddaddy of them all. In fact, I hope to write a novel around the subject some day--when I can conjure up a plot and a story that will do the subject justice. This isn't a ghost story, but in keeping with the theme of this blog, it is still a TRUE one. And it happened to me.

Now I imagine that most folks probably don't take the legend of Sasquatch--my preferred name for the creature--very seriously. Sure, it makes a great story around the campfire, but other than that, reports of sightings are mostly met with good-natured eye rolling at best, and outright ridicule at worst. The intent of this post isn't to try to convince skeptics or make a case for the existence of Sasquatch. The fact is, as fascinated as I am by the reports and stories of sightings, I'm not entirely convinced myself. That said, I WANT to believe!

The following really happened to me and some friends a few years ago. It's not proof of anything, but why don't you read for yourself, and then you decide.

It was the fall of 2011. A few years earlier, some childhood buddies and I had started the tradition of going on an annual backpacking trip together. Ironically--and half-jokingly--we refer to these trips as our annual Bigfoot hike. We joke with our wives that we are embarking on serious expeditions to locate the elusive cryptid. But, nothing out of the ordinary had ever taken place on these excursions. Until this particular year.

We were hiking in the White Clouds of Central Idaho, an outlying section of the famous Sawtooth Mountains. Our destination for that year was Walker Lake, a tranquil, blue mountain gem that lies in repose between soaring, jagged peaks.

This is a fairly remote location and given the time of year and the length of the hike, it was not considered abnormal that we had not encountered any other hikers that day on the trail. At the lake itself, there was only one other camp, aside from our own: an older gentleman--in his mid to late fifties--and two women. Based on the man's graying beard, wide-brimmed hat, fancy trekking poles, and khaki shorts, my friend, Jon, immediately dubbed him, the liberal. No offense to my more progressive friends and fans out there, but it was funny.

We made our camp near the lake's outlet, a crystalline trickle of ice cold water that tumbled down the valley, joining up with other small streams to form Little Boulder Creek. The liberal's camp was a few hundred yards away on the other side of the outlet. I have to take a moment here to describe the terrain of our immediate surroundings in order to properly convey what we experienced later the next night.

On one side of our camp was the lake, maybe twenty-five yards or so away. Behind us was a very steep hill, strewn with boulders, deadfall, and pine trees. The hill was steep, but not very high. I would guess about a thirty foot rise from where our tents were set up. At the top of the hill, the terrain leveled out into basically, a giant granite slab crisscrossed with big cracks, from which scrubby bushes and gnarled trees sprouted. If you were to climb the hill from our campsite, to your left would be a sheer cliff face a few hundred feet high, topped with boulders and trees.

Can you picture it now in your mind's eye? Good, I'll get on with the story. It was our second night camping by the lake and we found ourselves all alone, the liberal and his companions having hiked out that morning. The sun was down and the true darkness of night, that can only be experienced in the mountains, had fully settled in. But we had a good, comfortable fire going and were standing in the warm glow of its flickering, yellow flames, chatting and conversing, joking and laughing. Some of us were heating water in metal cups for hot chocolate.

It was the quintessential good times with good friends moment, when suddenly a loud crash shattered the relative peace and quite. All conversation and movement ceased amongst us as every eye went to the hill behind us. It sounded like a small boulder--about the size of a basketball in my mind--had fallen from the sky to smash onto the big slab of granite above and behind us.
We all looked at each other, mutual expressions of curiosity and concern on each face, some of us silently mouthing, what the ... as our minds raced with possibilities. We listened and kept our eyes peeled on the shadows dancing among the trees along the perimeter of our campfire's limited glow. After some discussion and some nervous shining of flashlights into the dark surroundings we determined that a large rock must have somehow fallen from the cliff to land on the shelf of rock below. Although, I do remember thinking to myself that if that were indeed the case, the rock had somehow managed to fall at a forty-five degree angle.

After a few minutes, we shrugged it off, light-hearted conversation eventually picking back up. Or perhaps, if I was getting my way, the telling of spine-tingling ghost stories had resumed. Either way, the moment was interrupted once again by the identical noise. I'm telling you, this was loud. A great, singular THUMP, and most definitely the sound of stone colliding upon stone.

Once more, we froze. Then flashlights clicked on, bright LED beams stabbing into the darkness as we strained with our ears for any other accompanying sounds. Once again, the sound had come from behind us, up and over the hill. I imagined someone ... or something up there, peering down at us from the blackness above. I even admit that more than one firearm was made readily available at this point.

It took a little longer this time for the moment to pass, but eventually it did and once again we dismissed the incident. A few more logs were fed to the flames, we huddled in a bit closer to the fire, and did our best to resume normalcy by picking our conversation back up where it had left off.

I actually couldn't believe it when a third crash resounded off the nearby granite cliff walls and reverberated across the still, black surface of the lake. A third time! I guess there's some truth behind the saying, third time's the charm because there was just something about this third interruption that said to me that, this was no coincidence of falling rocks or some other naturally explainable event. Somebody was up on that hill purposely screwing with us! I think we all reached this same conclusion at that time.

But, I think another reality weighing on all of us--that had no need to be spoken aloud--was our utter isolation in the area. That, combined with the fact that it was nearly midnight, made it highly unlikely that it was a someone screwing with us and more likely a something!

I remember at that point saying something to the group along the lines of, "We are men, for crying out loud. We are the dominant species on this planet. Let's all charge up that hill and let, whatever it is up there, know that it can't mess with us like this!" And so we formed a line and ran up the hill, our flashlights darting in every direction. I don't recall a battle cry, but there could have been one just the same.
We found the top of the hill to be void of any person or creature. Whatever had been causing the noise had made its fast escape from our impromptu charge. We returned to camp never to be bothered by the strange crashing noise again. Which confirmed to us that we had probably chased something or somebody away and it had chosen not to return.

To this day I wonder what it was. I'm fairly convinced that it's highly unlikely it was a person. We were almost literally the only ones on the trail that weekend. We saw no other people on the way up or down the trail--except for the liberal, of course. But even he was gone at this point. Also, we were miles from any roads or other suitable campsites. A person would have had to have hiked in complete darkness through very steep and rugged terrain for miles just to mess with us. And in Idaho it's reasonable to say that he would be at considerable risk of getting himself shot! It just seems far-fetched that it could have been a person. But at the same time, whatever it was must have had the ability and level of thought process to purposely distract us by throwing small boulders near our camp.

So where does that leave us? Well, you tell me.

Sasquatch image obtained from Pinterest and does not belong to me.

 If you have a personal story of the paranormal that you would like me to share on my blog please contact me at bradylongmore@gmail.com I'd love to hear your story. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

The Hollow Earth and Admiral Byrd's Incredible Story

For me, legends and myths are one of the great spices of life. It's the mystery and wonder that makes things interesting and keeps that innate explorer, that I'm convinced dwells in all of us, engaged. The irony is that I secretly don't want the legends to be proven one way or the other. Honestly, if some hunter one day drags a real sasquatch out of the woods and ends the speculation on Bigfoot, I don't think I'll be very happy. It will be amazing, but in many ways sort of a let down too, as the mystery and wonder will be gone. Although, it sure would be satisfying to see all the scoftics have to eat crow.

One of my all-time favorite myths, legends, or "theories", if you will, is the Hollow Earth Theory. The first time I heard of such a thing I was a teenager and my dad told me that there is a theory out there where some people believe that the earth is hollow, and not only that, but that it is populated by another civilization! The very idea of it fascinated me, as unlikely as it seemed.

It was hard to believe, but me being me, I had to try to find out what I could about the theory. And it turns out there are some pretty interesting stories on the subject. For example, It's rumored that Adolf Hitler believed that a pure Aryan race dwelt in the earth's center. He believed it to the extent that, supposedly, he sent an expedition--some say three--to Antarctica to try and locate an opening that would lead to this place. He assumed that this hidden civilization would have superior technology and be sympathetic to his cause. There are those who even go as far as to postulate that Hitler did indeed discover an opening and that he actually escaped into the hollow earth, and lives there to this day. Can you imagine?

Another interesting theory advances the idea that UFO sightings aren't the result of alien visitors from outer space, but are actually technologically superior aircraft that originate from inside the earth; perhaps the descendants of the lost continent of Atlantis checking up on the goings on up here on the surface. This sort of coincides with Jules Verne's vision from his novel, Journey to The Center of The Earth. Except in the book, Atlantis is discovered to be an abandoned ruin. I have even heard some people in the religious community speculate that the lost tribes of Israel were led by God into the hollow earth, and reside there to this day. How cool is that?

Hollow Earth model

The idea is not new; I could go on and on with different versions and legends about a hollow earth. Most cultures and peoples have some sort of variation of a hollow earth in their beliefs, traditions, and mythologies. Most of these traditions deal with the idea existing in a spiritual plane. Hell, for example: a place where the spirits of the damned reside with their master, Satan, in an eternal lake of fire, paying for a life of sin and wickedness.

There are many varieties of Hell or the underworld out there in religion and mythology, but what really gets my attention is the secular side of this subject. The idea of this being and actual domain of our physical world, as we know it, is what sparks my imagination. Hell can wait.

On that note, I'd like to just briefly talk about the incredible story of Admiral Richard E. Byrd of the US Navy, my favorite hollow earth story, and the one that my old man used to spark my imagination on the topic those many years ago.

It's not my intention here to go into an in-depth article on the Admiral himself, his life achievements, background, history, etc. If you'd like to know more about this early twentieth century explorer and adventurer you can check out the Wikipedia article on the man HERE.

Admiral Richard E. Byrd

The story that was told to me was that in February of 1947, Admiral Byrd decided to make a solo flight over the North Pole, just for exploration's sake. In a nutshell, as he was nearing the pole, his compass and other flight instruments went totally haywire on him, and he totally lost his orientation. One second the plane felt like it was in a steep dive, and then climbing steeply in the next.

After a few minutes of this, he quite suddenly found himself flying through a valley of lush, green vegetation. I believe one story claims that, looking from the cockpit window, the lost admiral even beheld a woolly mammoth lumbering along a hillside! According to my old man, it was at this point the compass went all crazy on him again, and the next thing he knew he was back to flying over endless miles of snow and ice. Other versions of the story tell of him actually being escorted by advanced aircraft to a city and meeting with its leaders, but this was not the story that was verbally passed on to me at the time.

He returned to the North Pole at other times in search of this green valley, but never found it again. The general consensus of people who chose to believe his report was that he had inadvertently flown into an opening that led into the hollow earth.

Now, if one were to do a quick Google search on the subject it wouldn't take long to discover that the story and the existence of a secret diary where the Admiral recorded this experience is very much in contention. And for the most part, the whole story seems to have been debunked from what I could tell. But who knows?

Debunked or not, the story itself suits my purposes, because as a fiction novelist, this is the kind of stuff that stokes my creative fires. I don't have to worry about whether the diary exists or if the story has been debunked or not. As an author, all I have to do is ask myself, Yeah, but what if? and my imagination is off to the races!

The idea of a hollow earth has fueled countless stories, myths, and legends. Not to mention even containing major religious themes. And it's no wonder. The Hollow Earth theory has got to be one of the greatest mysteries that's out there. Do you agree? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it in the comments section.

If this post roused your curiosity and you would like to know a little more about the subject, I found a great write up by The Telegraph that provides an excellent little overview on it. Check it out here.