Episode 174: Save The Garden

[music] Welcome to the world. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This story comes from a woman named Mary, who is in her late 60s. She works in sales and lives in Ventura County, California. Having met her, I would say that Mary is a very normal woman, who happens to have a really abnormal story. Like, I think if you were one of her co-workers, and she revealed this to you one day, you'd be very shocked. In fact, she is staying anonymous for that very reason. The story begins when she got married at the age of 18 to an older man, and found herself often home alone at night, all by herself when her husband was away. On one of these nights, Mary had an experience that started a chain of paranormal events that would follow her through the rest of her life. This is a very intense story with a lot of different elements that kind of come together slowly over the course of many years. This episode contains some sections that may be difficult for some listeners, including a description of a miscarriage. This episode is called "Save the Garden" and you're listening to "The Other World". Hello? Is this Bobby? What are you? That it's a core of the science you can't argue with. You don't have a story to bow to science. It's something that's not. It's almost frustrating that it's happened. I'm glitchy, I guess I'm going to die of budget. It's limbs were just like a rock. It's just just that everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name is Mary and I'm in sales. I live in Ventura County. I grew up in Long Beach. My mom was an immigrant from Ireland and my dad was Danish and Heinz 57, which is like such a conglomeration of background that that's what that's what we called it. We said we were Irish Danish and Heinz 57. So yeah, I have a I've grandchildren, I have a son who actually introduced me to this podcast and encouraged me to do this. I'm 68. I do I sing and acquire a church. Big choir. What else? I'm on a non-profit board. I hike, I'm also a recent fairly recent cancer survivor. So my hiking is down to a minimum. I'm working on getting getting back to that. There's pre-cancer and after-cancer things you do for fun. So I'm getting those things back. So I have five siblings and you know we grew up you know on the same street. I still know people from that street. So this I was born in the late 50s and so these are these are people I've known my lifetime. I actually saw one of them night before last. And so I ended up getting married really young and I could get into all the psychological reasons why I did that. But that part of it doesn't really matter. But I was 18. And it was a big mistake and it was very short-lived. And so the experience that I wrote in about happened shortly after the beginning of that six-month marriage. So this would have been in '77. So I was living in Orange County and he worked at like a plant and he was a swing and graveyard shift kind of guy. And he was older than me, a fair amount. I think he was eight or nine years older than me. And now I look at that and I go oh no no, back then you know you just don't make same decisions in 18. So I was at home by myself a lot and at night. And that never bothered me, but you know it was it sort of sets this up. And so we had a we had a couple of dogs, cockroach spannules who can be high energy and kind of difficult at times. But these were actually good good pups. So I would you know I would go to sleep and pretty much I was by myself going to sleep many many nights and the dogs would be on the bed with me. So yeah one night I woke up and I remember looking at the clock, you know those old digital alarm clocks and I remember looking at the clock. And it was like three something in the morning. The dogs weren't there. So that was weird. So I was always on alert. If the dogs weren't there do I have to you know go check and make sure everything's okay in the house. So I opened my eyes and I realized that I couldn't move. I couldn't speak, I couldn't move. I was paralyzed. I was conscious. The first thing I thought when this happened though was that I was dreaming. Shortly after that though within a second or two I realized that I was conscious and that I just I was just staring up at the ceiling and it was really terrifying. I became aware of these creatures and I remember there being you know maybe eight or nine of them and they were around all three sides of the bed trying to trying to get a sense of what was happening was really really difficult. I at some point looked at you know in the doorway of the bedroom and there was a taller creature there but these these creatures were kind of like reptiles in a way. They were they were kind of had that you know skin like a reptile they were they sort of had snouts like you know different kinds of animals we might see like a pig or a you know in Arizona they have habalinas something like that I didn't know what habalina was back then but it they were really frightening and they weren't speaking there wasn't any anything audible but I knew that they were that they were frightening and dangerous and that you know I was at risk. They were probably three feet tall so as I'm laying in the bed there's three on one side three on the other side probably three at the end of the bed so they were literally surrounding me they were sort of stout. If you remember in Star Wars there was sort of a pig like creature in one of those like bar scenes or something and you know they kind of resembled that a little bit so they were very they were you know built like fire plugs they were really like stout and more wide and maybe three three and a half feet tall they weren't very tall they were I would say talking but it wasn't audible they were communicating with each other sort of you know um and I don't remember them moving from one place to the other no hair that I remember and I don't remember teeth and if they were wearing anything it was the same color as their skin so whatever they were wearing would have just blended in yeah the skin was kind of rep it was kind of like a reptile almost or like a frog so it looked it looked slimy it looked wet in a way I don't know if they were or not I don't remember any of them touching me I got the sense that they were taking their direction from the one that was in the doorway and he looked completely different you know he was probably is he was probably I mean these are this was an old house so it was probably a max seven foot doorway max probably between six and a half feet and seven and for And he kind of filled up the doorway. He looked like what I identified later as one of the guys with an oval face and big eyes and that kind of thing. But not exactly. Not exactly like the depictions of that. His face, as I remember, had scales. He had more scales. He was not smooth like what you see pictures of. Or what you might imagine from pictures. He actually had like a scaled body and a scaled face. But he had those eyes and he had less of a pointy chin than what you see online or in books. He seemed to be running the show. He seemed to be communicating with them and directing them. At least that was my sense. And when nothing is audibly happening, this is all based on gut feeling and observation wasn't really helpful either. Because I mean, yeah, they moved. But they may have even switched places a couple of times. And again, my memory of that is a little foggy. And I identified this as have like a hive mentality. They were all tuned into the same channel, if that makes sense. I think my vision was so focused on survival because I felt absolutely threatened. I'm just sort of seeing them surrounding my bed. And it's so out of the ordinary that I don't-- I'm not really processing what they're doing. As I said, I think they may have switched places from time to time, but the amount of time that I was conscious was minutes. I mean, it was not a long time. It was just minutes. And I can't other than the next part of the story waking up the next day. I can't really remember much else from that experience outside of that they were real. I was really paralyzed. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. And I remember there being equal numbers of them. So there was either nine or 12. But I think there was nine of them. Three on each side and three at the bottom of the bed. I did call my mom the next morning. And I told her that they were like trolls. But that's-- yeah, that's how I described them. They were like trolls. So I felt like none of these creatures had emotions, if that makes sense. They were just there to do a job. It would be like us trapping an animal that was digging up our yard. The only thing I can compare it to is that at one point in my life in Los Angeles, I was robbed at gunpoint. And it was similar in that way where everything goes into slow motion. And it is just pure survival. You don't think you're just sort of-- I was physically frozen. But I think emotionally I felt frozen, too. Yeah, I couldn't think anything. I was just trying to figure out how to survive. And I think mentally and emotionally, I was recording some of this. But at the time, I was paralyzed in all ways. I remember as a kid, we met astronauts. Because of my sister's job, we met astronauts. She was working where they had the simulators for the Apollo program. And so they would probably two or three times. They came back to our house for dinner or they came to our house for dinner. And I was a little kid. I mean, I was six or seven years old. And my dad was a pilot. So I would hear them talking late in the night. You'd go sneak down the hallway and listen to these guys talking. And one of them talked about how there was this probe that ended up around the orbital module, I think they called it, and that he couldn't explain it. And I remember my dad saying something like, well, if we think we're alone, then we're the most self-centered species in the universe, something like that. I don't know exactly what he said, but it was along those lines. And so other than that, memory, I didn't have anything about this. And I didn't know if they were from space or if they were someone who had a costume on and came into my house and injected me with something. I mean, I didn't know at the time. And it took a long time for me to sort of sort this all out the best that I could. You really didn't have at that time. I mean, I was still living in the wonder years, basically. If you remember that show, that was sort of how I was raised. And the only thing that we really thought about was barbecues, and I had a bunch of cousins who had immigrated, and we were the center for the family for a long time. And in high school, I worked, and I got pretty decent grades, and I graduated early, and that's all I was really focused on. One of the reasons I knew that I was paralyzed is that I tried to scream, which would be a typical reaction, and nothing came out. So I was like screaming inside my head. At some point, I don't know whether I blacked out, passed out. I, at some point, the memory is gone. There's no memory of anything else from that night. If you've ever had anesthesia, and they tell you to count back from 100, say $199, and then you're gone, it was kind of like that. I've got no conscious memory of going to sleep or them leaving, or I just remember them being there. And then I remember opening my eyes the next day. I had a memory of the night, but I still wasn't sure it was real. Did what seemed natural to me, which was called my mom. So my mom, as I said, was from Ireland. And I described what happened. And she immediately went into the old wives' tails and stuff. And it could have been even a Catholic thing. I don't know where you put salt at all the openings, the windows and doors. When I told her I thought they were like trolls, I mean, there's all sorts of mythology in Ireland about creatures who are not friendly, or how to prevent them from getting near you again. That's the salt at the windows and doors. So I had-- I don't know if you've ever had-- went to the doctor and you had those little cups that would expand, like they'd put medication in there. I filled all of them with salt, and I'm putting them obsessively around my house. And she'd been here for a long time. She'd been here since the mid '40s, right after World War II. But there's a part of you that always reverts back to the mythology of your upbringing kind of. And there's plenty of that in Ireland. And she said, well, maybe it was a bad cheer. Maybe it was a bad fairy. And I'm thinking in Orange County, but it was sort of like-- I just did what she told me to do. And she might have just been telling me to do something. So I would be able to feel like I did something to protect myself and move on. Because moms will do that, too. so she was not, she didn't pass this off as nothing, if you know what I mean. It wasn't like she was placating me, she was, she was trying to help me. And part of that was to take some kind of an action to give myself a sense of security. So I did that, and then I thought, oh god, it was just a bad dream. It was just a really bad dream. And at the time I was not, you know, I was 18, I wasn't like much of a drinker, I wasn't, you know, smoking pot, although a lot of my friends did. I just was too busy to do that. I basically moved on. I went, okay, it was just a bad dream. It was, it was, you know, I just have to put this behind me. It was just a really, really crazy, frightening dream. Yeah, and I, I, I didn't tell the guy I was married to at the time. I did not tell him because I just didn't think that this was something he could even wrap his mind around. I just did my life. I just, I went to, you know, to school. I did my homework. I went to my job. And outside of not being able to sleep very well, that's what I remember. I just remember going, okay, this had to be a dream. Just, you know, call it a day and move on. Because I almost didn't have time for it. You know, it's kind of like I went, oh, a busy girl. I don't have time for this. So I convinced myself it was a dream. That went on for a number of weeks. And I missed my period. So I thought, oh, you know, I knew this, this marriage was sort of difficult. I didn't, you know, I even had the, I had the wherewithal to notice that. And so I went to the medical officer, the clinic at school, got a pregnancy test, and it was positive. I was kind of, you know, a little terrified of my agent and, you know, kind of joyful because I had had some issues. I had one ovary. I had a surgery. I had had tumors. I had had cysts in the past way in the past. So like at 15, 16. So I wasn't sure whether I'd ever get pregnant. So there was a part of me going, array, I'm pregnant. And so I'm, you know, it's early, nobody wants to get too excited with an early, you know, pregnancy. I told my, my mom and probably my sister and they were excited and sort of, you know, planning out ahead. It gave them, I think it gave them a sense that they needed to just sort of accept this, this marriage and calm down. So I went to my own doctor a few weeks after that, probably another six weeks after that. They confirmed with a blood test that I was pregnant. He did an exam and he said, yes, you're definitely pregnant and you're probably, they didn't do routine ultrasounds back then. I know the sound was, I know this sounds crazy, but ultrasound is kind of new technology and they didn't routinely use it. It would be like getting a routine MRI now. But you know, or other ways of telling somebody who was pregnant. He did an exam. He said, yeah, you know, you're probably, you know, 12, 13 weeks. So that was just, you know, three and a half headed towards four months and, you know, first pregnancy. I wasn't showing a lot, but I was showing a little. So a couple of weeks after that, and I'm, you know, sort of now in the planning stages. Am I going to have to quit work? Am I going to have to quit school? Just making decisions like that, thinking about the future. You know, my mom was a young mom. She was 18 when she had her first. So this was not unusual in my family. So that was sort of how it shifted. So again, I was sort of sleeping badly and what my, my go to was to go to sleep on the sofa with the TV on. And I still was, he was still working graveyard and swing shifts, which is why I was alone a lot. At night. So I fell asleep on the sofa. I remember I was watching Johnny Carson. That's how long ago this was. And I opened my eyes and that, that old fashioned, you know, Indian head with the, you know, with the head dress and static that told you that there was no more programming on. This is how long ago this was. So I see that. And I went, oh gosh, okay, I really did crash and I was woken up by the dogs barking like absolutely furiously barking. And they had somehow we had like a screened in porch and they had somehow gotten out of the screened in porch and we're outside in the backyard. And I'm looking for them and looking out there and there's like it looked like, you know, a helicopter light looking for somebody like a looking for a bad guy. And I just assumed that there was, you know, a burglar in the neighborhood or somebody they were chasing and it wasn't the best neighborhood to be honest. So I corralled the dogs back in and got them back inside and got them calmed down. And then I realized that I didn't hear a helicopter. I didn't think about that until later. I didn't realize that until later that I saw those lights and I saw the dogs flipped out running around the backyard. But I didn't, I didn't hear anything like if a helicopter was in your, you know, shining lights in your backyard, you would hear it. So I don't remember whether I went to bed or whether I fell back asleep or I lost consciousness. But from that point on, from getting the dogs back inside, locking the doors, I don't have any memory until I woke up the next morning. So here I had this sort of lost time again. I was on the bathroom floor. I remember because we had pink tile and I remember waking up and looking at the pink tile and trying to figure out, I thought, oh, I'm pregnant, I must have passed out. You know, did I hit my head? What happened? I was just trying to get a sense of it all. And I woke up, I, you know, tried to get myself up without falling over because I was really kind of dizzy and weak. Like, weak need. And I realized that I was bleeding. I actually sat down on the toilet and I thought, well, there's blood. Maybe I'm going to have a miscarriage. I mean, I just wasn't sure. And I was, you know, looking around to see, you know, what was going on and had I passed out from a miscarriage or, you know, I just, it was, I was having a hard time putting it all together. There was no blood on my, I'm sure I was wearing, I think I was wearing sweatpants. I was no blood on my sweatpants. There was no blood on my underwear. I mean, I want to get that, you know, weird about it. But the towels were clean. The floor was clean. It was just on my pants. That's all. And, and when I sat down on the toilet, there was some drops of blood that were in the toilet from sitting down on the toilet. What I thought was that, you know, maybe I was having a miscarriage or that, you know, sometimes you do get some spotting and bleeding when you're pregnant. And it's, it's not anything to worry about. But of course, I worried about everything. And, you know, I just sort of did the next thing. I, you know, I, I had to, you know, I got myself put together. So I wouldn't bleed all over anything anymore. And it was like that it wasn't terrible bleeding. It was almost like spotted at that point. I got up and I, I went, I got myself cleaned up. I, you know, what happens is when you get pregnant, you go, I don't need pads anymore. You put them away on the back of the cupboard. And so I, I, I got one out and I got myself cleaned up. Me sure I wasn't going to, you know, change my clothes. And I went to go out from the bathroom. And I checked and make sure I didn't have like, you know, that I hadn't like passed out and hit my head. I hadn't. And I went out into the living room and the dogs had shit and thrown up everywhere. I mean, everywhere. There was just trails of, you know, of dog stuff everywhere. So that made me sick. I lost it and I got sick. And then I shook that off and I thought, well, I better just, I put a bandana around my face because we didn't have masks, I put a bandana around my mouth and nose. And proceeded to clean up after the dogs. And you know, I thought, God, now I'm going to have to take myself to the doctor and I'm going to have to take them to the vet because something's wrong. But I wasn't putting it together with what had happened weeks before yet. I thought maybe they had gotten to, you know, a gofer or squirrel or rats or something, you know, who knows? I thought maybe they had eaten something outside, they weren't supposed to. You know, I just, I wasn't sure. But whatever it was, it impacted both of them, you know, and they were like one unit. I mean, they went everywhere together. So what one did, the other one did. And so, yeah, I just, I just, you know, I just cleaned up. It took forever. I mean, I had to get a, I'd like a little carpet cleaner thing. So I'm out there on the hands and he's cleaning the carpet and, you know, and he wasn't home because he had done a graveyard shift. And then I'm guessing he, he was a bit of a drinker that he went to the bar after his graveyard shift. So I didn't see him and I may not have seen him at all that day. The dog seemed to be okay after that. I didn't feed them. I just made sure they had water and I thought I'm going to put off feeding them. So as not to have to do this again in a few hours. At one point, I got back to, well, geez, what happened to me? I woke up on the bathroom floor, I must have passed out. I must have something going on with this pregnancy. So anyway, the next morning, I called the doctor and got right in and he said that I had miscarried. And I was like, what, I told him how I found myself. And he goes, he said, well, what happened to the fetus? What happened to the tissue? I said, there wasn't any. And he said, he said, well, this wouldn't have been a little bit. He said, a four month fetus is, you know, three, four inches long. He said, so this wouldn't have been a little bit. This would have been significant. And I went, there was nothing. I woke up. I was spotted. And so he scratched his head and he said, well, you must have been passed out or unconscious and it's, when I looked back at that, I thought, talk about being, you know, having, having a doctor pat you on the back of the head and he had to go, okay, honey, you must not be wearing this right. He made this assumption that I, you know, I, I, I somehow had a miscarriage, cleaned up after myself and then passed out on the bathroom floor. I mean, that was his assumption. But there wasn't a, there wasn't blood on a towel. There wasn't blood anywhere, which was really weird. Because you know, I mean, I had another miscarriage after that. It's not like nothing. It's, it's, it's, it's a big event and the cramping is big. And I thought, well, maybe I just passed out from the pain, you know, and I, you know, you just tell yourself these things. You tell yourself that, that what you saw and what you felt wasn't what you saw and felt to make it okay with your, with your own mind and your own emotions. Okay. We have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with the rest of the story. This year, I have become a bit obsessed with scouring flea markets, a state sales marketplace. You name it for old antiques and if we want to be specific antique light fixtures, honestly, the antique hunting has always been a part of my life in some form, but I have recently escalated it. 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People who understand economics, they make better decisions in their careers, their finances, their relationships in their communities and I want that for you. Listen to and follow Platypus economics available now wherever you get your podcasts. So I didn't question him. I just went okay and I had some sadness about that and talked to my mom again and my sister and so we had some sadness together and it was like well you can try again sort of thing and I think they were probably in a strange way they had a sigh of relief that I wasn't going to be tethered to this guy and so the marriage ended shortly after that. He could be, he had a mean streak, he had a violent streak so I was happy to have brothers, older brothers. I'll just say that. I'll just say that so I did take the dogs to the vet and they said it must have been some sort of you know something they ate, something they ingested because they're fine now they're dehydrated. That was the only thing they were, it was dehydrated. Yeah so I, the marriage ended and I moved back home. After I moved back home because I had had this tumor removed I got a pap smear every six months. They just wanted to keep an eye on me that there weren't any other issues because I had had issues so young. And so not long after that they said well you have, they called it cervical dysplasia which basically means the cells in a particular part of your body are forming badly which is the precursor to cancer. So because I had, you know, I saw the doctor so frequently I mean every six months. This was, this was an early catch. So they called it a, they called it cancer. They, they called it like a stage one cervical cancer but they didn't go well you have to have this in that, you have to have chemo or radiation. I mean none of that. So what they would do is they would do a biopsy about every four to six weeks and basically they were removing any affected tissue which is very painful to go through but that was the treatment at the time. At the end of that. And that went on for probably six months. I had those treatments. They just said, well, we're just gonna have to keep an eye on you so far. You've had a couple of normal pap smears and we just wanna make sure they stay that way. So I had a pap smear after that every three months for probably a couple of years. Whatever was going on resolved itself. But they did tell me that I probably didn't need to use birth control that unless pregnancy was gonna be a big issue. Don't worry about it. So that was kind of what they told me at the time. I didn't go back to school. I had had two years of college and I didn't go back to school after that. And I ended up working. So I was sort of personally a little bit lost and feeling what happened is drinking made me feel comfortable, made me feel like I fit in my skin. It wasn't like an everyday thing or anything like that, but it increased over time. And 80, 1980, maybe even late '79, I met my son's father. In 1984 was the Olympics in LA and we lived in LA and decided to get out of Dodge for the Olympics because it was like, I don't wanna deal with it. So we go to Maine for gosh, probably I think we're there for four weeks, his cousin is who we were staying with and his cousin's wife and I were friends. And so we went into town, I can't remember for what, but we went into town for something. And on our way back, Maine is very sparsely populated and it can be dark, it can be a dark kind of area. And on our way back, she goes, what the hell is that? And we were looking on the side of the car we were driving and there's this light and it would go, it would be like a solid light, like the front light of an airplane that you'd see so like a bigger and solid. And then it would turn into like a firecracker light and it would go way up in the sky and then way back down and then over one side, over the other and then it would turn into this big light again. And she goes, what the hell is that? And I, you know, so we just watched it for a while and then we picked, we went back to the house and we picked the guys up and we went, we haven't followed in this weird light. You gotta come with us so they hopped in the truck and we followed this light to basically a public golf course. And I can't remember exactly which one, but it was kind of open space and didn't have a lot of trees. So 'cause you're trying to see through trees and above trees otherwise. So this area was quite open. So this light literally stops when we parked the car and got out and we're looking at the light stopped in the sky. And so we watched it and then all of a sudden began to grow and get bigger, it felt like it was coming closer. You know, that area is in a major traffic area for aircraft between like Boston and New York to like Gander, which used to be a normal stop for people going to Europe. We were in that flight path. So every time, but by the time a jet would be coming overhead, it would be kind of high in the sky. It wouldn't be like you could see it, but it wasn't like, it wasn't like right over a flight path. It was way up. And so every time one of these jets was coming over, this thing would go from being a fairly good sized light, not as big as the sun, but not the size of a star either. So, and it would just shoot and disappear up into the sky and it would look like a star. And then the plane would pass and it would come back. It was the weirdest thing. So it would go from being really big, just shrinking to this pinpoint and disappearing. Almost like it was avoiding being seen by the big plane. If that makes sense. So, we watched this for a while and that at some point it disappeared and didn't come back. And we went back to the house and Brian says, this was the cousin. We've been seeing these things forever. They come and hover over the harbor. And these guys are up at three in the morning out, getting their boats ready to go out. So he said, no, we've been seeing these things forever. And then they'd also see these cigar-shaped crap that would burn the tops of the trees. So he said this has been happening in Maine for a long time. Now, this is from a guy who has been fishing lobster for his whole life. So we're not talking about some LA person who, you know, you know what I mean? It was just like, if he was saying that it had to be true. I mean, it was like, there was nothing to say other than that. I mean, he's not somebody who would even talk about stuff like this. Anyway, I thought it was just a very, it was a very strange thing. And that is a side thing. But you get a sense that once you've been connected, this is me looking back. Once you've been connected, that there is some sort of psychic connection, that there is a way in which whatever these other beings are, that they know where you are. They know how to reach you. We were all part of the music, not me, but my Devon's dad, music business. And another friend of ours was also in the music business. And he was engaged to this woman who was, as I remember, a psychologist. And one night we were just all talking about we were things that happened. And I think we brought up the main thing. And then I ended up telling the story about the creatures and the pregnancy. And this woman says to me, she said, I have a friend who's got this project. And it's involving this author named Whitley Strieber and his book Communion, which has been turned into a film. And they're filming this. He's going to be a Los Angeles. And he was asking to invite people that we knew were credible to come to a gathering at this house he's got rented up. Like, it was like sunset plaza up that way. Hollywood Hills someplace. And he'd like everybody to come up and meet with the idea that there would be a number of us. And I think there was probably 15 or 20 of us that would basically just say our name and the date of our experience. So don't talk about the experience. It's not going to be in the movie. There was nobody wanted to get paid. And that was the reason for the gathering was to go over this as a possibility. And would we be interested? And we were like, yeah, sure. As long as I don't tell them, I'll say I had an experience what my name was and what had happened. It was supposed to sort of lend not credibility but reality that this happens to real people. It doesn't happen just to people on a random screen or in a book that it's a real thing. So we go up and they have some food and drink and everybody's sort of hanging out. It wasn't like a conversation necessarily about UFOs or anything else. At some point, I ended up speaking with him. And he said, so why are you here? And I think I told him briefly. And so he started asking questions and every question he asked. It was like, OK, so did you feel paralyzed? Did they look kind of like this? Did they? And every time he asked a question, it was like he knew exactly what I had gone through, which was kind of creepy in a way. It was very unsettling. And I had sort of put it all behind me and turned it into a story that was part of my life. I mean, he was so specifically familiar. He asked if they had made noises. And I did have some vague memory, but it was very vague. I couldn't really put my finger on it. He asked me how many of the taller ones that I were there, how many creatures were around the bed. And I told him I only saw one taller one. And then what had happened the weeks later about the helicopter and the dogs. And he asked if I had any evidence of the miscarriage. So it's kind of like he knew my story already, which, again, was sort of difficult, and it brought it all back. And we couldn't do this scene in the film because Sag insisted that we all get union cards and None of us wanted to get paid and we didn't want to have any in kind and you know We just wanted this to be a real thing. So the scene never happened It was supposed to be the last scene of the film and it didn't happen. I Ended up Years later picking up a copy of the book and I started reading it and I couldn't it just brought up too many It just brought up that that fear again and it brought up a lot of This experience which I had tried to put Into a box basically and stuff away on a closet and the upper shelf of a closet someplace It was almost like as I was going through this process I had to get to a point where I would face Sort of this underlying fear that I I think I was putting down with alcohol And I can't say that that's the only thing that had the only reason I drank. I mean, I'm I'm a Irish descent were sort of you know, it's kind of like being an Italian and saying you don't drink wine I I felt like I was starting to get to a point where I could start resolving some of this and so I've 87 or 88 I started doing the work with with Linda So I heard about this lady named Linda. I had met her as part of a larger group of friends. We had at the time She was just very interesting everybody you know tried to call her a psychic, but she said I'm not a psychic She said I don't hang a shingle out. That's a psychic. She said I'm very intuitive. I do a particular kind of work which was a form of regression therapy and Her husband was a photographer and renamed that way until he they're both passed away kind of recently and Linda was just somebody who was really safe and she had heard About my story. I think at a dinner party There was sort of a running joke, you know about the okay, who's got the story about the aliens. Oh Mary does she's gonna talk about the aliens, you know, that kind of thing and it was it was difficult because it was so real to me and She took it seriously and she Asked me how I was doing with it and I said well sometimes I have trouble sleeping and I think I drank a lot over this and I'm sober now and She said to me she said well any if you ever want to you know really do some work on this We can do that so I got more curious about it and met with her and she said, you know, I don't do She said it's not like I said they're into a reading with you or something like that She said you're gonna be doing the work and she explained to me the kind of work that she did which was a form of regression where You're exploring your body memory which she said And I want to say this correctly was not as influenced That your body memory was not going to be influenced by your life experience or your opinions or Input you've had that your body will remember what it remembers If that if that makes sense So I did five or six of these sessions with her so typical, you know, typical little house I mean, it was not nothing no big deal and she had a room and the room was really comfortable and she had a big chair and She started out by just you know creating a really safe space and Saying that you know, I had to remember that I was in her room that nothing could harm me nothing could come in Nothing, you know, that we were just gonna have our body remember What happened and then our body could lead us to a more realistic memory of Of these things that were you know, had caused me trouble So what she would do is she would get me relaxed and put me in sort of a meditative state and then She would she would ask me where where my body was I tense, you know, she said Is anything holding your arm is anything touching your arm? Is there you know, she would look at the actual physical feeling and try and work backwards from that and then she'd move up. So what's you know Let's go to your elbow is there anything, you know, is there any tension in your and shoot that's how it worked It was a little odd and different So it wasn't like we'll go back in your mind and try and remember anything like that so in in that process and I don't I don't have entirely specific Memories of the process because it was in fact in a meditative a very deep kind of meditative state I did I think for I think I did five of these sessions and they were all about an hour long in her home and The first one was me kind of getting the sense of how this worked because your mind wants to Take over in a way, you know When it when it comes to trying to remember You know fearful or frightening Things that have happened you it's almost like your mind wants to take over in your mind. It ends up coloring What the memory is your body is a lot less subjective or a lot more objective as as I found out in this experience and so the first session or maybe two I was almost getting used to Seeing through the lens of my body instead of seeing through the lens of my mind and you know, it did take some doing I and I kind of imagine it's sort of like, you know, remembering something that you know happened that was traumatic as a child You may not remember it in the way that it happened or you may not remember it Completely or maybe your mind wants to block certain things because it's too frightening So by either the second or third session I started having recollections of things and when this happened where she she regressed using this technique of Moving through different parts of my body That were tense and she finally got to my eyes and she Told me to open my eyes that I was in my room that these things were surrounding the bed and that this larger creature was at the door and that I could Safely open my eyes because I was not there anymore. I was in her room in her chair in Los Angeles and So I did I opened my eyes and I was not in my bed anymore. I wasn't sure where I was but I was Not in my bed. It was not my room and not my home and I was sort of in a it was almost like a like you would imagine a An old-fashioned surgical theater. It was kind of like a round room lots of really bright lights and The the small troll light guys were no longer there It was all the taller guys and I can't remember exactly how many of them were there, but I know there were at least three or four I'm not laying flat From my waist up. I'm kind of at an angle Which is the only reason I could see what they were doing because I couldn't you know, I couldn't move I don't remember being cold or hot. I don't remember any of that I just remember Being very fearful of the noise from whatever that drill was and being very fearful of That you know scalpel being afraid they were gonna cut me open and I had no anesthesia I mean I remember thinking that that you know, they're gonna they're gonna cut me open and I've got no anesthesia and I'm gonna die here So it was not like a memory. It was like I was there It it was not like I was separate from At all. I definitely felt like I was there because the fear would come back and the fear was real and and it was it was obvious. It was You know on the surface. It wasn't something that I was having a memory of Although that's what we were doing. We were dealing at that point. We were dealing with memories and I remember hearing Something that sounded like a drill And when I tried to look at it It was it was almost made of of glass like if you can imagine uh A scalpel that was transparent It looked like the the what I was hearing Was a drill like you'd like if you know if you've ever looked on on any of the medical shows and and they're drilling it at some These skull it was like that kind of sound but It was not it was not made out of metal none of these it nothing that they seemed to have was Anything we could relate to She had me try to look Down on myself, which was harder, but I sort of was able to to See what was what was happening not from above because I was never able to do that but from Where I I had you know some sort of visual and it could have been my body remembering and not my mind again, but I Saw them using this tool like a scalpel, but it didn't cut and bleed like you would imagine a scalpel would it was almost Like a hypersophisticated laser or something. It's the only way I can and that's from today Trying to describe what I saw back then So it whatever this tool was it disappeared into my body. It didn't it didn't cut my body. It disappeared into it and this would have been it in my abdomen. I do remember having some kind of you know Long instrument put inserted into my nose and just having a lot of pressure in my abdomen That's what I was remembering in this process with her. I don't remember having any pain But a lot of fear and a lot of panic and Again, back to that animal comparison if you know, I don't know if you've ever had to take an unwilling cap to the vet And if you have it can be quite traumatic for you and the cat, but It it was sort of like that feeling of helplessness that I was so out out manned and out numbered That there was nothing I could do except be there and be kind of conscious and Not know exactly what was happening to me That's all I remembered from those moments that this I distinctly remember this this sort of instrument that looked like it was you know some kind of tool like surgical tool, but it was not solid and It disappeared into my body rather than cutting my skin and having whatever that was in my nose but the timing of that and the timing of the later pregnancy and I didn't put all of this together until I met Striever, but it was almost like the timing of all of this began to Have a through line it makes sense They wanted something from my reproductive system I don't know whether it they you know whether I got pregnant whether they took the bit I mean, I don't know that's what's been reported by other people, but I don't know that I just know what the evidence says What the experience says Just so you know the purpose of me seeing her and the purpose of me doing this work was so I didn't have to live in fear That was really the reason. It was not so I could have you know some you know memory and write a book You know, it was really so I didn't have to live in fear and and it accomplished that The work with her accomplished that I have not had the you know any of these things come back to me in the past say 35 years or so That was like grippingly fearful The way that it was and I've done that without drinking so so I That's what I set out to accomplish with her and that maybe why I didn't keep copious notes and I was okay With my memory being a little foggy because I never thought that I would you know want her need to remember it or Have it other than something that happened to me in my past The last thing that we did together was sort of like and again, it was weird She did the same thing. She put me in a meditative state and I remember saying to her You know asking if her husband was in the room because when your eyes are closed, you're sort of sensing and she said no And I said it feels like There's someone in the room And I said, oh, it's just no big deal, you know, I kind of passed it off and She was sort of sensing something too, but I think she didn't want to make me uncomfortable or fearful so she asked me what was happening and I Immediately, I mean, I didn't have to go through the process of going from one part of my body to the next to get where this was happening But I told her as I said I feel like Somebody has opened my skull and they're feeding me at high pressure like if you open a fire hydrant information data If you know and I use these words, but I don't know You know, I'm never had you know, I've never had this information come out of you know yet But it was like physics and and mathematics and and formulas and and music and it was like An entire like a civilization's data Got jammed into my head Now have I ever seen it again? No But at the time that's what it felt like it felt like I was being filled with Information and tools and things that I was supposed to You know, maybe call on later and they kept repeating in my head I kept hearing them say save the garden Save the garden save the garden. That's what I kept hearing and she She asked if this was a single person or was it and I said no It doesn't feel like a single person, but it feels that and this is again weird feels like a single entity It feels like a single voice Maybe from many and she said what it what it can you ask you know if it would identify itself And so in my head I did and it said that its name was raw And again, I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know who it was. I later looked it up And the only thing that I could come up with was some Egyptian God of some sort That was like the I think it's like the the creator the Egyptian creator and And again, I none of this has ever happened again. It didn't happen before I've never you know, I've never sat down at a piano not playing piano and play piano You know what I'm saying? It's not like I ever Called on this information, but at the time at that moment that sort of felt like it felt like I was being like My I was being filled with information that I could not even comprehend I mean, I have some advanced math, but it wasn't even on that same level And that was weird this whole thing has been it was weird So they were telling me that they were giving me the tools that I needed To save the garden The law of so much is its information that I can't comprehend in other words You know, I mean I took calculus. Okay, I don't remember calculus I don't I took a several semesters of calculus. I don't remember any of it. I remember geometry I remember you know Algebra I used that periodically. I remember statistics, which I took at UCLA. So it's like I and those things are you just like a foreign language. You have to keep using them That this was it was it was so fast. It was like Stuck in my head for For a rainy day or something. I mean, I just don't No, I don't remember anything specific. I remember it was It was everything it was like You know, it's math and science and physics and and Everything almost that if I had more time in my life, which I haven't been blessed with I haven't been blessed with a lot of free time You know, maybe it's something I would have called on or might in the future But I don't I've never I really haven't done any garden saving Honestly, but I know of So the end of this session she's winding down. She's starting to bring me out after all of this sort of you know intense Part of the session and you know, I'm kind of like half conscious and I go God Linda is there a skunk outside or something? I go separate, she goes, "I smell it too. I don't know what it is." And it was kind of like, you know, like rotten eggs, like sulfur almost. I mean, if I remember going to Hawaii, you know, that Buckingham National Park thing, and you can smell the sulfur, and it sort of smelled like that. And she goes, "Let me check with," you know, she said, "Let me check with my husband." And so she yells outside her husband and says, "Are you smelling anything?" And he said, "No, no. Everything's fine out here." And she said, "Well, walk in the room. Okay, so he walks in the room and he goes, "Whoa!" So whatever this smell was only in the room, it was not outside. It was only in the room. And she said, "Okay, thank you. Just wanted a little confirmation, and he walks out the door, and we're there, and we're trying to sort of make sense of what had gone on." And then, and the smell is still there, and she goes, "Man, I don't know what that is, but it's pretty awful." And I said, "Or I said, it smells like a teenage boy's dirty clothes hamper." You know, I mean, it was like we were both making jokes about it. So we're just talking now, just sort of, you know, just talking. And then we both felt like there was electricity, like this intense electricity in the room, along with now this terrible smell. And then inside the room, it wasn't outside. It didn't come from the outside, and it was inside the room. There's this huge like bang and power. And then the lights went out for like three or four blocks in both directions in the Fairfax district. It was like an implosion, not an explosion. It was like an implosion, and it was a loud bang, and this time her husband heard it, because he came in, because he thought something had fallen, or, you know, broken, or, you know, and seconds, literally seconds later, after this loud bang. The lights went out. The power went out in for several blocks in both directions from there. And this was in LA. They actually called the Edison the next day to try and find out if there was some sort of, you know, power outage. And they said, "Well, we see the power outage, but we're not sure what it was. We're not sure what the source was." And they really couldn't give them any more information. So we all sort of left that with, you know, we have no earthly idea. She had a supposition that whatever was feeding me this, you know, data or information, that this was an actual, not a memory, but a helper of some kind, and that when they left the room, that the power of them leaving was what we experienced. That's what she said. "I have no earthly idea. I don't know." But that was the end of our weird experience. I waited for about half an hour. She lit some candles, and I waited for half an hour. And the smell was gone, too. As soon as the bang happened and the power went out, the smell was gone. It was a very weird experience. I got back on my car and drove home. And checked in with them the next day, and she said, "Edison couldn't really tell us much other than it was, and, you know, they could not find the source of the outage." And that was our last session. I really have not had any experiences since, at least I'm aware of, I do remember when I finally did watch communion, and you can watch it and see this. At some point, there is a scene where the trolls are in it. And the first time I saw that, I felt dizzy and ill and had to run out of the room. I just was like, it was shocking. It was like, "Oh my God, somebody else saw these little part of my French fuckers." It was like, I literally had a visceral, physical response, and had to weave the room. And this was during COVID. I finally watched the movie during COVID. You know, I mean, it's a theory. I don't know if this is real or not. I mean, I know what I experienced felt real, but I mean, so what I think happened is I think that, and this is also based on some of the reading I've done, is that they impregnate women. I don't know how they pick the woman, but they impregnate them, and then they take the baby and the fetus. I did have a couple of weird dreams where I actually, and I'm trying to remember when I had these dreams, but I'm not somebody that remembers my dreams. And I remembered this one pretty accurately, where I had, you know, baby in my arms, and I was trying to run away from the round room with the baby in my arms. And now it couldn't be a baby, because I mean, all this happened when, you know, I had a four, maybe four and a half month fetus. So, yeah, I think that, and in the process of removing the baby or the fetus, they create a physical circumstance where you end up with some kind of cellular changes. And that's a guess, but the fact that I had these dysplasia, and then it went away on its own, I didn't have anything other than biopsies, is odd. And, you know, maybe when they were done with me, they were done with me, I don't know. But I had to cut the cord, if that makes sense, it's almost like had I stayed attentive, or in some cases, I've seen people become kind of obsessed with these experiences, that I would retain some sort of connection. And I didn't want that. I didn't want to have a connection to this experience anymore. I wanted it over. I didn't want to live in fear. And, you know, by and large, I have not lived in there, you know, had a pretty, pretty unremarkable and good life, despite having cancer for real, which I am now in remission for more than a year. It's, you know, that time of my life was seemed to be fraught with a lot of drama and a lot of, a lot of fear and a lot of angst. And, as I got through, you know, my 20s, and I got, I got sober at the end of my 20s, 29. That seemed to be the kind of the jumping off point for me, where I was like, okay, what I got is today. I have today, what can I do with today? I wouldn't have a problem connecting with whatever it was or whoever it was that I connected with in that last session with her, because they were different. They were not, they were benevolent. In fact, they were more than benevolent. They were like helpers. It was a completely different energy for lack of a better word. It was a different energy. And I wouldn't have a problem being connected to them because they're not out to, out to get me, you know, strangely enough, the cancers I had to that I did have are considered gynecologic cancers. So all these years later come back around and I, again, I don't know if they're connected or not, but I did get over them pretty quickly, which was a big surprise to my doctors. So I really, I really do think it, I had a physical experience at 18. And I really do think that it is odd that I had a pregnancy at that point in time where I'm actually showing not a lot, but I was showing that people just don't have miscarriages and have no evidence of that happening. You don't, you don't, you don't clean up an entire, you know, bathroom and yourself and everything else and dispose of evidence, you know, you just don't do that. But when you're, you know, passed out, you know, so that never made any sense to me. So I mean, I can conclude things, but the truth is is that I'll never know. Not really. At the end of the day, I just won't know. And so I had to find a way to live with not knowing for sure. [Music] Thank you again to Mary for being so willing to share the story that is very personal to her. For me, I can't stop thinking about that message that was given to her in the vision or flashback or whatever you think that was. I am always really interested in moments like that where a person is given a message during an experience like this, especially a message cryptic enough where the person receiving it doesn't understand it. I do think some details of that download she described and the messages will stick out to some listeners who are into this type of thing, people who are well versed in UFO and supernatural lore. With that said, I know that Mary is not one of those people and I think I like her own interpretation of the messages. I also think it's kind of crazy that she ended up meeting Whitley Striber in the way that she did and was nearly in the movie version of his book Communion, which she only read one third of, which I think is really interesting. Honestly, even though it's such an unlikely way, I think it's great that she was able to meet some people who had similar experiences to her. Honestly, it's too bad that they did not make it into the final version of that movie. But if you ask me, I think Mary deserves a movie version of her own story. It's definitely wild enough. If that happens, I guess we'll just have to remember to use only screen actors guild, card carrying union experiences if we want to incorporate any kind of documentary element. Thank you once again to Mary for sharing her story. This episode was called "Save the Garden" and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner. Our producers are Theoshafer, Theocrants, Haley Persen, and Nikki Kate Delgado. Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by North Americans and Juice Jackal. Our artwork is by Koldisak Studios. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a 5-star review, and telling your friends about the show. If you want to hear bonus episodes of Otherworld, you can become a patron at patreon.com/otherworld. Our social media is @otherworldpod. Thank you to the team at Odyssey, Leah Restennis, Laura Curran, Josephina Frances, Eric Donnelly, Kate Rose, Colin Gainer, and Hillary Schuff. Follow and listen to Otherworld now for free on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And finally, if you or somebody you know has experienced something paranormal, supernatural, or unexplained, you can send us your stories at [email protected]. [Music]