October 31, 2000    
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What is the most other-worldly experience you have ever had?

Towards morning during one of the first nights I was doing security (wasn't  used to third shift and was still working UPS in the evening)I put my head down for a second while standing next to a filing cabinet and dreamed I saw an older gueard saying something to me but it seemed like a ghost because I was fading in and out of sleep and the dream took place in the same room from the same viewpoint.

Alias Irrelevante

I'm not sure I understand the question, but physically it is probably visiting the Arizona deserts, which have an unearthly beauty.   Psychologically, it was when my daughter collapsed from carbon monoxide poisoning just two weeks after my son had been killed in a road accident. I felt I had fallen into an evil alternative universe. Later, I realized that the feeling was enhanced by my also being overcome by CO. Fortunately, Pam and I both recovered quickly.

Jane, 60
West Linn
, OR   USA

My school had a lame ass pork hotdog party. I was devistated because I don't  eat pork. I thought I told my parents but I guess they forgot. I was starving. My parents brought us KFC box lunches just when I gave up hope of them coming.  Then they saw how lame the party was and took us to an amusement park. My  parents rule!

Jami, 27
Lowell
, MA   USA

we see rabbit ears

this one memory i have always doubted: on eight-year-old legs i wander among green and gray metal folding-chairs and stretches of garish foods placed on glassware with precise symmetry. my mother has meshed and vanished into the masses of taller people that sway like trees, and soon i put the murmuring room behind me, and my little brother is behind me, following as if i were pulling him in a wagon. out in a hallway, doors with shining golden handles slide past us until one looms in front of us, and the thing of interest at our level is a polished mailslot that matches the handles and hinges. our hands touch and open the gleaming lip at the same moment, tacit curiosity arcing between us, and peering through, we see rabbit ears, a foot-long each, furry, poking above the top of a high-backed armchair, its back to us. opposite the chair, a fireplace displays a calm exhibit of burning logs, but the flickering fingers of shadows are lost on us; the hallway now slants down, away from the door whose slot we now grip, gritting our teeth, not wanting to go. a timid squeak escapes the slot then and the ears shift, as if the head beneath them cocked at the noise - a pause, and then they move again, and seeing them rise detaches us from the door; we run with the declined hallway back towards the arboretum of adults. at the entrance to their chamber, we pause, leery against further strangeness; we poke ourselves through the doorframe despite our fears and find normality again, with great relief.

the memory ends there, like a reel of film whose other half never survived; the first part was retained, perhaps, for value of oddity, and now it is saved as a souvenir of more imaginative days. it was probably a dream, i begin telling my brother, more than a decade later, but two sentences into my recollection, my brother takes the tale from my hands and narrates it to me, how he followed his big brother and saw what he saw. we sit in over- stuffed chairs, illuminated by a mute television in a dark den as he tells me how we saw rabbit ears and suddenly i feel like i am staring, at him, at everything, through a slot again.

Jesse, 24
Bowie
, MD USA

If we are talking about ghosts and the like...When I was about 3, I was sleeping in the same bed as my mother and I woke up in the middle of the nite with a some boys in a group at the foot of the bed staring at me. I just turned over and faced the other way. Then when I woke the next morning and went to play in my room, I noticed a huge black smudge on the wall. As if someone had taken a big black paintbrush w/ black paint and made a big swipe on the wall. I got blamed for it by my mother and I didn't know any better so I just let it go. I didn't actually realize the whole story till I talked to my mom. SPOOKY!

Stephanie, 24
TX   USA

I guess that would have to be de ja voo (spelling?)...I get it so bad sometimes that it scares me! I'll be somewhere I have never been and talking to people I've never met, but my brain is telling me, "You've been here, met these people, and said the same exact things you are saying right now." It's FREAKY!!

Tracy, 24
Ocean City
, NJ  USA

My parents died 7 years ago, about 3 months apart. Obviously I had some serious grief issues to deal with, especially with my mother. My father had died first and my mother talked a lot about missing Daddy and being ready to die, without him she was lost, etc etc. So when she died 3 months later, I was hurt and angry.

About 6 months after my mother died I had an extremely vivid dream about my father. He was still alive and I was visiting him at the hospital. My mothe rand my brothers and sisters were nowhere to be found. Daddy wanted to take a spin in, what we called, The Barcalounger, those easy chairs on wheels that you see in hospitals. We went all over just talking and laughing, but we didn't see any other people at all. When I brought him back to his room, Daddy reached back and put his hand over my hand and said, "Honey, I asked Mommy to join me. I missed her and she missed me. Tell your brothers and sisters that we love you very much but we love each other more."

I haven't had a dream where I saw either of my parents since then.

Laura, 35
Lowell
, MA   USA

About a year ago, I was getting ready for work and I heard someone call my name. Everyone was asleep so this couldn't have been anyone I knew then I heard a woman in my kitchen screaming and moaning like she was having a baby. I freaked out and ran outside and waited until my father came and took me to work. I used to hear whispering and talking in my house and once in awhile they will set off the fire alarm but, it doesn't bother me anymore.

Savannah

Somewhere in Dublin there is a Cajun restaurant owned by a man who also reads a couple of customers' palms for a lark each night. For free. He read my palms when I was there and was so amazingly and insightfully dead-on accurate about so many things it scared me. And I know what sort of "tricks" some fortunetellers use. This guy used none of them whatsoever. And then concluded by telling me that for a few minutes he had almost decided not to give me a reading because he was getting a feeling I was psychic myself.

Kim, 30
New York
, NY   USA

This experience I would classify as "weird." One night, several years ago, I had a "out-of-body experinece." I had one of my death dreams at night, when I woke up, it was like I was watching myself as a separate person, and wasn't in control of my body. Then, I became convinced terrorists were going to kill me outside the house, and I went back to bed, and had another death dream.

Mick, 30
Chicago
, IL   USA

Finding out that I had married a wife beater and child abuser. This realization was a great jolt to my notions of reality.

Jill, 59
Saylorsburg
, PA   USA

While studying in Kenya I was at my urban homestay with a very nice couple who lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood.   The first night that I stayed at their place I had this very real out-of-body experience.  At first I seemed to sink and then the next thing I know I was walking from the bedroom to the living room.  I felt very awake, but not at all connected to my body.  It was short but very meaningful.

Felicia, 34
Lowell, MA   USA

Both my twin and I are psychic and I sometimes read people and their auras professionally.

Jami, 27
Lowell, MA   USA

(I don't understand this question. . .(but I'll try. . .)) Perhaps when I was doing LSD at Woodstock '94 and believed sincerely that this whole festival was the harbinger for the end of the world. . .

mothmc, 36
Los Angeles
, CA  USA

I attended a seance when I was an older teenager....I thought the whole thing would be just a big hoax, went into it with an attitude and a sense of humor...some pretty weird things happened. To this day, I don't believe anything had been planned and even the host was genuinely shocked. What's that expression? "Be careful what you wish for?" Kinda gave me the creeps...but my left brain wants me to dismiss it all as coincidence.

Fisch, 45
Preston
, CT   USA

I saw a ghost about a year ago. We were on this path to a haunted cemetary which winds through this forset preserve. About a quarter mile down from the entrance, we began to see this strange glowing thing in the distance. The glowing got brighter as we walked along... we rounded a curve and there it was. There was this shrouded shape on the side of the path. It had this odd glow to it and was sort of hovering above the ground. We stared at it in shock.... then ran like hell when it started down the path towards us. I have never run so fast in my life!!

Maggie, 20
Sandwich
, IL    USA

I used to see shadows that aren't actually there when I was younger. There used to be these shapes in the light that shone against my curtains in the night. They used to reassure me and make me feel better. I don't know what they were, but I think I was probably just hallucinating.

Shanna, 15
Cardiff   ENGLAND

Once my mother saw me astro-voyaging, when we were on holidays. One time I was lying in my bed at two in the morning and i heard this sliding noise.  Outside my room there was a sliding door, and i figure that was what was making the noise. Anyway whenever I got out of bed, the noise would stop. I think that house was haunted. My mum saw ghosts there once. Also, we once went to a "haunted" bridge and in one of the photos we took of it there were flames in the background.

Gavin, 15
Sydney  AUSTRAILA

LSD related late-night hiking

Anthony, 25
Baton Rouge
, LA  USA

Before her marriage, my beautiful mother studied to be a classical pianist and though she gave up her dreams to be a wife and mother, her love of piano music lived on. We had an inexpensive piano on our sunporch and when I was very young (1-3 years old) my mother played her favorite classical songs on it every afternoon for hours at a time. When she wasn't playing the songs, she was listening to them on records. I don't remember this period but last week something happened that showed me those years were imprinted on my brain. I had a repetitive, monotonous job to do at work so I brought a portable CD player and earphones from home, along with a CD of classical piano music that my mother had given me but that I had seldom listened to. For the next three days, I must have listened to that CD 50 times, never tiring of it. The end of the third day, I just closed my eyes and let the music flow through me. In my mind's eye, I could see my mother in the sunporch playing the piano...I could 'feel' her thoughts. And finally I was overcome with a feeling that wherever my mother was, (she had died the previous year) she was happy.

Reba, 50
Rockville
, MD   USA

Running through the O'Hare airport to a plane we were already late for, passing through a tunnel with flashing lights like lasers all around, going really fast because of those conveyor belt thingies. . .

Karen, 21
Marshelltown/Ames
, IA  USA

It wasn't exactly other-worldly, but it's close enough... My brother, my mom and I were driving on the highway, and as we turned a curve, we hit a patch of ice... we were about to hit the barrier and would have gone off the freeway but my mom said it felt like someone was helping her pull  the wheel

Jeremy, 13
Highlands Ranch
, CO   USA

I once had an out of body experience. I was sleeping, but then I was floating above my self and looking down at me on the bed. A voice (I can only assume it was God) was asking me if I want to join him now or stay here on earth. I told him I wanted to stay here on earth for now.

Janet, 42
E. Brunswick
, NJ  USA

Oija board. BAAAD situation. Very scary. And that's all I'm gonna say.

Firelady, 22
Dallas
, TX    USA

I have really powerful "deja vu" for lack of a better word. Sometimes my dreams come true. I predicted (through dreams) my grandfather's and great-grandmother's deaths. Sometimes I dream about people I've never met, and meet them two months later and have the exact conversation with them I had in the dream.  It's really a strange feeling.

Amy, 23
New Orleans
, LA  USA

Yesterday / Tomorrow