occurrence, might I be the cause of it? What if I set something in motion over which I had no control? What if this thing got out of hand?
Nonetheless, I took a deep breath... closed my eyes... and waited for a thought-picture to begin forming as before.
Nothing happened.
I waited for a considerable time, and nothing kept happening. This special, increased awareness simply told me that it was cold and that I was extremely tired from all that had come my way since Friday morning. I decided to abandon this outpost on the edge of weirdness and go inside to bed.
As I ambled through the house turning off lights, for absolutely no apparent reason 1 began to think about playing tennis. I thought it odd since I had no particular interest in the sport. The more this idle thought occupied my mind, however, the more I noticed that the court surface I mentally pictured was painted an odd green color.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, unloosening my shoes, I realized that there was only one pair of feet on this court. Unusual, I thought; it was my understanding that it took at least two players to make the game work. I concluded they were female feet because the socks had those cute, fuzzy little balls dangling from the back. The feet, one of which was wrapped in something like a support bandage, seemed to float up from the court and drift off to my left.
Though I attempted to dismiss the though t, the picture kept reappearing in my mind-an odd colored court and a pair of feet with one apparently injured, floating up, up and away...
I wasn't "seeing" it like I see a book or painting. It was more like a nagging thought or idea lingering in the back of my mind while I tried to focus on something else. This thought was locked in now, repeating over and over on the projection screen in my head like a stuck loop of film.
As I turned off the last light and snuggled into my bed, the scene continued to replay. After reviewing the reruns repeatedly, I gave up trying to sleep, slipped on my bathrobe and returned to the back yard where my preoccupation originated. Nothing much had changed since I had left, other than it had gotten colder.
Then I got it!
The court that I had been visualizing actually existed in a nearby neighbor's yard! Although it was usually only observable from my vantage point in the daylight, it could be seen at this time of year when the leaves began dropping from the trees.
I peered in the direction of the court to verify the odd surface color in the dark. It occurred to me that judy, the woman whose court I was seeing, would most Likely wear the cutesy tennis socks I'd seen in my "vision."
In a flash I was in my house, searching for her phone number in our neighborhood pool club directory, remembering that she was also a member. If it were her feet, perhaps she could give me confirmation about the bandage. It was late, but I could not wait until morning. From my position I could just make out a light on in her front room , so I assumed she was still up and about.
I realized that I would have to provide some plausible explanation for my unusual call because I would risk losing my credibility in our social circle if I were wrong. It's not often that one makes a telephone call late on a Sunday night to confirm a full-on vision! Vision-wasn't that what the guys in the Old Testament used to have? But I phoned her anyway, apologized for the lateness of my call, and gave her a condensed version of what I had experienced.
After what had to be a millennium of silence, she began to chuckle in the wonderful way one does when something is suddenly understood. Without even questioning the highly unusual nature of my late call, she laughed a second time.
"You know... "She paused.
"FUNNY YOU SHOULD SAY THAT... !"
She went on to describe the events of her weekend, relating i n great detail how she had sprained her ankle the day before... playing tennis on her court! And, if that were not , she added that she and her husband had just concluded the purchase of a new house. They would be moving as soon as they could sell their home!
My mind could hardly accept what I had just heard! Her ankle had been sprained (the bandage) and they were going to move from their house (feet leaving the tennis court)! Furthermore, the new home was located in the same direction-as seen from my back yard-as the feet had drifted in my psychic visualization.
It had happened again!
Hanging up the telephone, I decided I was not about to go outside again; if I did, I just might encounter one of those scary things that as a kid I knew hid in the shadows...
And I didn't think I could deal with that just then!
CHAPTER 7
Why Me?
The validation o[!his second psychic experience left me more confused than ever. The vision of the feet, one ankle bandaged, floating off the odd-colored tennis court had definitely been authenticated by both the sprain and the house for sale!
I began to desperately search for the commonality between the two events. I realized that my .first psychic knowing, the choking scene in the restaurant, involved a situation which had not yet occurred. I somehow knew that the woman in the red dress was going to choke before it happened. Yet my second paranormal experience, the tennis court scene, was quite different; I knew on some psychic level what had occurred well after the incident. Were these simply two isolated incidents? Would such episodes recur? Although I was confused and apprehensive, there was an inner desire for another psychic experience.
It wasn't until years later that l realized how my reaction to these initial para normal experiences had set the course for my continued psychic opening. I would learn that two requisites are necessary if one is to continue to develop the natural psychic abilities each of us inherently possesses.
The first requirement is acknowledgment-acknowledging that a paranormal experience actually transpired and could not be casually dismissed with a rational explanation. The second is acceptance-accepting not only that these unprecedented experiences happened, but also accepting that they could be the precursors of future encounters with the unexplainable. Not an easy assignment, given the natural fear that I somehow had activated a mysterious, inner power or force that I could neither understand nor control.
As you might expect, I had become somewhat paranoid, almost expecting to hear strange voices or the weird music indicating that I was entering "The Twilight Zone."
Yet I was pragmatic and could generally count on my rationality and logic in new situations. Even as a kid I often accurately anticipated the ending prior to the last reel of the Western movies I faithfully followed. I invariably solved the murder mystery before the last chapter of the Hardy Boys, the adventure books .I read in grammar school. Most likely I would have been ahead of Nancy Drew as well, except that she was a girl, and boys wouldn't be caught dead reading Nancy Drew.
Now, Freddy the Pig would have known what to do-he was the best of the bunch!
For those of you whose education is incomplete and who have never met Freddy the Pig, Freddy was the hero in a series of books I remember reading in my early, learningto-read years, immediately following the adventures of Dick and Jane and their beloved dog Spot Freddy was cool; he casually stumbled through life much like Peter Falk in the "Colombo" series on television. He always seemed to have the solution well in hand; he was always in control. There is an old saying, "Never mess with pigs... you'll just get dirty and they love it."
But sometimes, one is too close to a situation to really understand
