OUT OF BODY WITH JAMIE
The ghostly figure "put forth the form of a hand and took me by a lock of my head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heavens" (Ezekiel 8:3).
Out of his body, Ezekiel said he was taken to the city of Jerusalem. Because no one could see his invisible astral form, he was able to visit numerous places in Jerusalem where religious leaders were practicing scandalous acts behind closed doors. Ezekiel believed he was privy to these out-of-body revelations because he was supposed to expose the evil deeds of the religious leaders.
My friend Jamie's hair-pulling astral excursions did not go quite as smoothly as Ezekiel's bodiless journey, however. On numerous occasions, while watching TV, Jamie would feel a strange sensation come over him. Then, suddenly, he would be yanked out of his body by his hair. He would find himself in a dark corridor lined with small rooms. The people in these rooms were deranged... strapped to their beds... terrified... screaming... drooling... and insane.
Every time Jamie visited this frightening place, he came to a room with his last name on it. He saw his mother sitting in the room... strapped to a chair... staring blankly at the wall.
"J, please help me!" Jamie said. "Please find a way to stop these out-of-body nightmares!"
"It's happening, J!" he said to me on the phone one night. "That strange feeling is all over me right now! It's going to happen soon! Get your ass over here right away!"
Jamie was "gone" when I got there. He looked like he just fell asleep in his chair. He was breathing normally... pulse was fine... but I could not wake him up. Not even a deluge of cold water snapped him out of it.
Three days later Jamie still had not returned to his body. He was checked into the hospital for observation, but doctors could find no physical explanation for his coma-like state. They pondered whether it might even be a sleep-trance coping mechanism for some serious psychological problems he might be experiencing.
My phone rang that night at 3:07 a.m. Amidst all of the static I heard Jamie's voice screaming in total terror. "J! J! J! Oh God, J! They locked me in the room! Get the key! Get the key!" Then our phone link was abruptly disconnected. When I called the operator to have the call traced, she said, "I'm sorry sir, but no incoming calls have been made to your number in the past 4 hours."
I have not had great success in my own attempts to travel out-of-body, but I knew I had to try for Jamie's sake. I had to find him! I had to bust him out of that astral room!
I finally managed to exit my body. I found myself standing outside a towering psychiatric facility. I recognized it to be a mental institution in Gowanda, New York. Unfortunately I jolted back into my body at that moment... and I wasn't able to re-enter the astral plane again that night.
The next day I went to the Gowanda mental facility (with my body). To my shock I discovered it was no longer a psychiatric hospital. It had been shut down a couple of years earlier and turned into a prison facility.
I talked with Jamie's father that afternoon. I didn't tell him what I was up to, but I asked him if there were any family ties to the now-defunct Gowanda mental institution. A little surprised, he said, "Yes, Jamie's mother had serious mental problems and actually died as a patient there." Chills went through me when he said, "She resided on the third floor where the seriously deranged are kept. Jamie never got over the feeling that she didn't love us enough to get better and come home."
That night I successfully left my body again. This time I found Jamie's room inside the mental institution. Like his mother before him, he was strapped to a chair, staring blankly at the wall. It was a weird parallel! I could not snap him back into his body on the material plane... and I could not snap him out of his trance in his astral psychiatric quarters either!
I could feel myself being pulled back toward my body. I had to concentrate hard to stay anchored with Jamie. I kept asking myself, "Where is the 'key' that will release Jamie's spirit from this place?"
I moved the small bed away from the wall as I searched around for a "key". That's when I discovered the words, "Mommy loves Jamie so much" scratched into the wall.
"Look at this, Jamie!" I said. "Your mom wrote you a love note."
Jamie's trance broke... he read his mother's words... and with the sound of a loud "CRACK", I jolted back into my body. I immediately called the hospital where Jamie was still under observation. I was told he just "came to" and was frantically asking to see me.
Detail for detail it became clear we truly had shared the exact same astral experience in the mental facility! Mind blowing!
"Now I know my MOTHER was pulling me out of my body each time," Jamie surmised. "She wanted to reassure me that she loved me 'so much' even while sitting in that room too ill to come home."
Jamie and I called the former psychiatric hospital (now a prison correctional facility) and asked if we could visit the room in question. Our request was denied for security reasons, but the guard we talked to agreed to find out if anything was actually written on the wall (we didn't tell him what we thought he would find). 45 minutes later he called to say, "It's a little hard to see because it has been painted over, but as near as I can tell, the words, 'Mommy loves Jamie so much' are etched into the wall."
It's kind of interesting! We often hear paranormal reports of ghosts visiting the living, but rarely have I heard of the living be pulled out of their bodies to visit ghosts! But then again, who's going to argue with a mother who grabs her son by the hair and drags him where he needs to go!? Certainly not Jamie!
This experience has made a big difference in Jamie's life. It freed him from the hurt and resentment he felt about his mother for so many years. Making peace with deep-seated negativities like this is crucial if we want to be truly happy.
As for me... I'd rather stay physically anchored for now, thank you. Spending too much time out-of-body creates enough chaos to get us all strapped to a chair in a mental institution.
