Trance Healer Ray Brown and 'Paul' in 2016

A previous blog article presents links to videos chronicling the case of Ray Brown and 'Paul,' who regularly uses Ray's body to work as a spiritual healer in a process sometimes referred to categorically as 'channeling.'  Thousands of people have been successfully treated by Paul over the years in private clinics and public healing demonstrations.  The videos document healing sessions as well as discourses offering Paul's perspective of metaphysical aspects of life.  Brazil's John of God is another trance healer whose techniques facilitating healing are  documented in videos. 
  
In the summer of 2016, Ray and his wife Gillian are continuing to help Paul in his work.  It has now been 48 years that Ray has been a trance medium for Paul, who sometimes shows his sense of humor while being filmed for video documentaries, including making quips about Ray.  Among other blog articles about this case are "Trance Healer Autobiography:  A Mere Grain of Sand", "Intricacies", "Raymond's Other Guides" and "2015: Ray Brown and 'Paul' vs. 'Assumed Imperative'".  A 4:25-minute video "Ray Brown Healing — An Introduction" is available at the Ray Brown Healing website and at You Tube.
 

There is a new DVD documentary available from the Browns.  Filmed and edited by Denise Perrin, the title is "Healing with Paul through the Mediumship of Ray Brown" (Disc One) with the subtitle "Followed by Q&A session held in Lutterworth Leicestershire" (Disc Two).
 
Disc One begins with two introductory sentences: "This video follows Ray and Gillian Brown during one of their clinics.  Patients agreed to share their stories for the benefit of others."  Paul was filmed working with patients suffering from a variety of conditions. 
 

Paul explained:
 

Now and again if I'm doing surgery and it's in-depth surgery and I need another surgeon, I just bring Gillian over because she's been trained to, shall I say, allow the doctor to pass through and use Gillian's hands as an extra entry point into the body.

  
The difficulties of patients seen in the video include nerve disorders; a hereditary foot condition; maladies diagnosed as 'diabetic bowel neuropathy'; a dangling left arm; and extreme postpartum pelvic discomfort.
 
Paul explained about the treatment for a multiple sclerosis (MS) patient:
 

What actually happens is that we take cells from one part of the brain which is healthy and we plant them into the areas where the scarring is, which makes a channel and so that the signals can get through.  And that takes time but it's very successful.

  
Paul mentioned that he tries to transplant over at least 20,000 cells at a time.  "Most people find that once we get maybe 60-70,000 [and] over, that's when they really start to feel the benefit . . . the idea of the exercise really is to get you creating your own cells so I don't have to keep putting them in . . . We cannot cure MS and I'm not saying we can but we can alleviate a lot of the problem MS is.  We can get the MS into a remission stage.  That is the object of the exercise."
 
Paul specializes in neurosurgery and is able to "place the nerve properly" within the body for some patients.  While treating a breast cancer survivor named Susy with damaged nerves, Paul is seen directing Gillian to place her hands on the patient's face: "This is Barbara now because Barbara is the surgeon that's doing the work.  I'm just assisting at this point.  I'm the neurosurgeon but she is the ears, nose and throat, eye specialist.  ("SO")  She is now making sure that we've done it right.  When she's happy, she will withdraw her hands or ask Gillian to withdraw her hands . . ."
 
'Barbara Lane' has been identified by Paul as being among his healing team in Spirit.
 
An available clip from the new video is entitled "Anita and David's Story."

What is seen in Disc Two was filmed at an event of Fellowship Day of the International Church and Healing Fellowship, the organization headed by Paul with Ray as President & Trustee.  Paul participated in an afternoon question and answer session.  Paul talked about studying in the spirit world prior to coming to the Earth plain to work as a neurosurgeon spiritually.  Paul recounted originally working with Ray when he was five years old.  "And it wasn't until he was 21 when I started working through his body . . . it's taken all these years to advance to what we are today."
 
While discussing his work with MS patients, Paul is heard to compare his techniques with those of doctors operating on our side:
 

They know what they want to do but it's the delivery that is their problem.  I have no problem with delivery.  

 
. . . I  can pass through matter.  The surgeon has to open up your skull.  He has to pass in to the brain — into the areas which need the cells.  And they can't pass anything in to the brain because they damage tissue and damage the brain.  But we can.

 
Paul's comments about spiritual healing are expressed using such words as 'rays.'  "Normally if you get a patient and you do the healing the way we want it, the rays will pass through the nervous system right through the body and go to the places where it's most needed."
 
An audience member mentioned stem cell regeneration and asked, "Can you ever envision a time when it may be possible to regenerate arms and legs that have been amputated?"  Paul responded: 

Yeah.  That is already being looked into in America and Sweden now.  Regeneration of parts.  And therefore — the liver, for instance regenerates itself.  The lungs don't but they have got stem cells that can help regenerate parts of the lung.  They've got stem cells now which they can put into eyes and they're experimenting with that.  And they know that it works.  And they have got stem cells that they can get into the spinal cord for people with back injuries and it's working but it's still under experimental [conditions].  This is why I say that it [will] probably be another fifty years before they can say, "Yes, we can regenerate lots of things."  But it's a long way off.  It will happen.

 
Here are some statements from Paul about the afterlife.
 

No one moves on in the Spirit World until their relatives are there with them.  No one.  I've not known anyone to move on because they want to see their relatives.  Or their closest relatives.

 
As far as I know—and I'm dead—on each level there are four dimensions.  Each dimension is a step forward.  When you first pass over [to Level One], you will go into that dimension.  You do not move on until you decide to clear up your karma.  Until you decide to clear up your karma.  Lots of people are frightened to death to clear up their karma so they stay on that level.  Mothers, fathers, aunties, uncles — they all stay as a unit and they normally stay in that realm. 

 
The moment you decide to do your karma and the karma is cleared, you are then on your way to the next Level, Two.

 
Mr. Adolf — he's still on Level One in the same area that he passed in.

 
Some people say, "Well I think I want to reincarnate.  I'll have another go at it."  You have to do the karma.  You have to go through that karmic field.  You have to clear all your karmic debts.  No matter what they are.

 
Children [that] have been born into this world and lived — doesn't matter how short a life.  They've lived it.  They are brought up in Spirit the same as everyone else.  Those children that are placed — or the souls that are placed and the child dies in birth or never actually reaches the Earth plane — that spiritual soul has touched the Earth so that soul has no karma — has nothing to — so we take it straight to the level where they are brought up in Spirit — taught the spiritual laws because they are not on the Earth plane.  So they are brought up in a spiritual atmosphere in love and light right through until they are a age where they can choose whether they wish to reincarnate or go on in to Spirit.

More details concerning this case may be read in the brochure below.  Click on it twice for an enlargement.

 

Ted Serios and the Lehrburger Sequence

The July 10 article at this blog considered one of the anomalous occurrences involving masks in a recently published case study.  The 'mask' is a metaphor found in transcripts of transcendental communication.  A previous blog article also considered parallels in anomalous case studies concerning an oceanic ship.  This article presents an introductory paragraph along with photographs and a passage (originally consisting of two long paragraphs) from pages 128-135 of The World of Ted Serios (1967) by Jule Eisenbud, M.D. to show another correlation concerning the oceanic ship metaphor.

 

The book about Serios has been described as: "A doctor's own brilliant report on an exciting series of experiments in psychical phenomena—the subject, an 'unemployed Chicago bellhop' with the uncanny ability to project his mental images directly onto photographic film. . . ."  This description is incorrect as it was witnessed that the anomalous photographs taken in the presence of Serios could at times show images that had no obvious or simple correlation with his own thoughts and intentions.  During his investigation, one of Eisenbud's stated purposes became to inquire also into what factors were there behind what he noticed among colleagues as 'avoidance' reactions to learning more about the case.  He witnessed "this obvious resistance to disturbing facts is peculiar to the type of data that psychical research deals with . . ."
 
Upon contemplating the Force involved in the creation of these photos, Eisenbud considered the involvement of Ted's 'unconscious' yet didn't consider how humanity shares what might be described as an omnipresent subconscious and 'Superconscious Mind' (a point made by considering the data in many articles at this blog).
 
The 'gismo' used by Serios is a device that, as  Eisenbud found out, "never failed to arouse darkest suspicion on the part of uninitiated observers and that indeed I myself felt called upon to examine closely on the spot."  The author continued:

It consisted on this occasion (it was later modified) of a half-inch cut section of the plastic tube which carried the chemically impregnated squeegee for fixing the prints after development.  Ted claimed that this device, which he held between his thumb and index finger, or between his thumb or index and third finger, and placed more or less flat against the outer lens, was originally adopted to keep his fingers away from the lens (this didn't make too much sense to me, but I didn't argue the point) and at the same time to limit the amount of light and surrounding imagery (this I could see).  He had gradually become more or less habituated to the thing, he explained, so that now he felt very uncomfortable working without it, although he would do so, he hastened to assure me, if I desired this.

To see enlargements of the following photos, click on each photo.  Here is the passage about Ted Serios and the Lehrburger Sequence.

An instructive sequence of pictures that emerged when Ted was in no contact with the camera occurred at the home of Dr. Henry Lehrburger.  (Present: the Lehrburgers, their five children, three neighbors' children, my wife and I.)  Ted started by holding  and snapping the camera and getting mostly blackies.  On number 6, one of the children was given the camera to hold and trigger while another held the open gismo over the lens.  The picture that was pulled showed Ted's face (which was entirely normal with the open gismo) and one of the Lehrburger children, curiously unattentive, in the background (fig. 42).

(Fig. 42)

On number 7 Ted took the camera and got another blackie.  On 8, Ted designated one of the little Lehrburger girls, Florrie, eleven, to snap the shutter while he held the camera and gismo.  A faint beginning of some kind of form (the notes read "? squarish form") could be discerned.  This became a little clearer, after a perfect blackie on number 9, on number 10 (fig. 43), Ted having meanwhile moved to a couch a few feet away, where he again sat under a lamp.

(Fig. 43)

On number 11, Carl, thirteen, the distracted child in the background of number 6, held the camera and the gismo while Florrie snapped, and what appeared to be the squarish form on number 10 emerged over a still-visible light source in the center as a fairly definite structure (fig. 44).  For the next six shots the same team worked at holding and snapping the camera.  On number 12 some kind of a new theme emerged, as yet not too distinguishable (frequently the form and structure of unclear images could only be definitely made out in the light of later images of the same thing), but definitely something.  Thirteen, with one of the other children designated to give the signal for Florrie to snap, was a return to a dark version of 11 (fig. 44).

(Fig. 44)

Fourteen was the new theme, a bit different this time but still not really identifiable, of which number 15 (Carl and Florrie still manning the camera) was the first clear statement (fig. 45).

(Fig. 45)

Sixteen was a blackie with only a trace of fogging on it, and 17, where one of the other children was called in to pinch-hit on the gismo in an effort to revive the magic (they were all howling with disappointment as the images began to recede, but Carl and Florrie bravely stuck to their camera) showed Ted's face again.  At this point, the insubstantial pageant having faded (leaving not a wrack behind), Ted took over, but it was not until number 31, with himself holding and Florrie snapping, and with several formes frustes of the two themes in between, that Ted got a fairly clear version of the to-this-day-unidentified structure in number 11 (fig. 46).  It is as if this had been shot from a slightly different position from the image shown in fig. 44, if the directions of the parallel lines near the top of the picture are compared.

(Fig. 46)

On another occasion at the Lehrburger home—same conditions but with no neighbors' children present—Ted started out by getting what appeared to be a ship emerging from the mists on number 14 (this is something he had been supposedly aiming to get) with Florrie holding the camera and gismo and brother Gerry, twelve, snapping (fig 47).

(Fig. 47)

On number 26, with another theme (dancing figures—see later) and a few blackies and whities in between, Ted got a clearer version of the ship (fig. 48) with Carl holding and triggering the camera and Dr. Lehrburger holding the gismo.  (The camera used on this one had been delivered by Dr. Paley only a few minutes before, after having been subjected to examination)

(Fig. 48)

The ship finally revealed itself as a Matson liner by the fairly clear M's on the smokestacks on shot number 32, Dr. Lehrburger on camera and Ted holding the gismo (fig 49).  (The children had just requested that Ted give them some positive identification of the ship.)

(Fig. 49)

A normal shot obtained during this session, and given here for comparison, shows a very interested child (Gerry) behind Ted (fig. 50).

(Fig. 50)

My Transfiguration

I am briefly describing in this article some of my own experiences upon returning to Los Angeles in August 1995 following the eventful research trip to Oklahoma for interviews with a family experiencing so-called 'talking poltergeist' phenomena.  (Excerpts from interview transcripts with the family may be read in a blog article while other articles in the 2015 blog series offer photos, family notes and other data documenting the case: 1, 2.)
 

It was never a plan of my own to lead an 'over-the-top' life.  A case study book of the beginning of my bizarre yet metaphysically revealing spiritual awakening Testament was published in 1997.  A unique aspect of 'The Centrahoma Poltergeist' case is family testimonials that the manifesting spirit communication had involved not only people but also aliens from Saturn.  One mysterious entity was called 'Leader.'

This is a photo of my Echo Park condo (second and third floors, fourth from left) where I was living in August 1995.  On the hillside below the building can be seen the brown remains of the two clumps of bushes that inexplicably went up in flames on two separate occasions during the summer of 1994.  During this time in my life I was working as a publicity writer for  Paramount Pictures.

The date was August 14, 1995, a Monday in Los Angeles.  After the short trip in a shuttle van from Los Angeles International Airport, I (birth name Mark Gordon Russell) was again at home in my condo on the western hillside overlooking Echo Park Lake and Angelus Temple.  The strange things that had happened to me in Oklahoma would take time to place in perspective.  Something unconsidered was that the anomalous occurrences would continue to manifest in my presence.  Upon realizing this, I began making notes and continued keeping an audio journal via tape recorder to maintain a record of what happened.  
 
Those first days after returning to Los Angeles, my perspective of earthly reality underwent a momentous change.  It was a contemplative period as I considered possibilities and attempted to form conclusions about the unexpected yet metaphysically revealing turn of events.  Not all of my spontaneous impressions would be of lasting inportance, yet the unadulterated audio journal descriptions in Testament chronicle a process of discovery that each person must experience to some degree during one's Earth life. 

This is one of the Oklahoma family's photos documenting the phenomena.  Maxine's notation reads: "Rocks & pennies that hit inside my house Dec. 1st, 1990"; at other times family members would find small amounts of their own money missing.

Upon turning on my recently purchased state-of-the-art television monitor in my living room, a minute or so later it was startling when the screen suddenly went dark.  Although I’d never had any problem before, the TV set began going off shortly after whenever I turned it on.  Scrutinizing the device on one of these occasions, there was still a hum audible from inside although the screen was devoid of any picture.

 

There was a startling telephone conversation with my friend Marie.  I’d originally met her when she worked at the Ruth Webb talent agency as a temporary office assistant (where I worked before becoming a publicist).  We occasionally went to dinner and screenings together.  What she said jolted me.  She sounded frantic as she told me that her bank account had suddenly been cleaned out for no known reason.  Some of her checks had bounced as a result of this and an urgent meeting with a bank representative had been scheduled.  I told her something like: “When I was interviewing the family about their entity 'Michael,' they told me he was always taking small amounts of their money but do you think it could be conceivable that he could also do something like this?”  Marie agreed to come by and look at the photographs and other articles I’d collected documenting the existence of this enigmatic being named Michael.
   

Upon calling my friend Fiona—who worked as a Tarot card reader at a New Age Bookstore in the San Fernando Valley—to tell her about some of the unexplained phenomena I’d witnessed, I was flabbergasted during our conversation when she exclaimed, “A magnet just flew off my refrigerator."
  
I was accustomed to regularly telephoning my mother, feeling sorry for her in leading such a reclusive life after retiring from her career as a hospital medical records technician due to ill health.  On the phone, I told Ellen about the visit to Oklahoma, Marie’s odd situation with her bank and that a magnet had just flown off of Fiona’s refrigerator.  Then I said with growing curiosity: “Michael, if you’re there, give me a sign.”  
 
My mother responded by irately complaining that I was talking about nonsense.  Anything that could be equated with the ‘paranormal’ in any form beyond the movies was something fit for scoffing as the alternative was obviously something she had no intention of considering.  “Well there’s nothing happening,” she declared but then the following moment she said, “Just a moment.  There’s a wasp . . .”  She momentarily put down the phone as she gave her attention to the insect for a few moments.  I was reminded of the wasps that had been found inside the Mc Wethy house during my visit and informed my mother that this too could be construed as a signal from Michael.

I found myself in a quandary where this supernatural being 'Michael' was concerned.  Certainly, it was beyond any conceptualization of a ghost or an alien to have any influence upon the minds of insects.  Yet words such as spirit, ghost and alien are vague in themselves.  I was still coming to terms with just what was 'Michael' and what He wanted from me.  At times there were undeniable indications that an unseen being was mysteriously cohabiting with me.  These circumstances made it impossible to consider doing any of my usual publicity consulting work for the time being.  “Michael, please don’t talk to me,” I preemptively declared aloud, “because then people will think I’m hearing voices and diagnose me as a schizophrenic."

I recalled that as a child around the age of five, I'd woken one morning to hear a disembodied voice calling my name while my twin brother and mother were still asleep.  In recent years, there had been another occasion of voice hearing when in my condo one night as I began going to sleep, there suddenly was a soft male voice that said, "Father I have waited so long."  I've discovered that a vast number of people have related having a similar experience of hearing their name called by an unseen presence at some point in their lives.  Many Friends and acquaintances have mentioned this to me and when this happened to Sigmund Freud he called it a 'hallucination' as he wrote in Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901).  A Google search on this topic (paranormal people hearing name called) brings numerous results.

 

In July 2016, I don't remember the precise sequence of occurrences yet the transcripts published in Testament help me remember what happened.  An example of how some of my spontaneous analysis and deductions were hasty is seen in the first two sentences of the following journal transcript excerpt of my comments when I spoke on the telephone to Barry, one of the paranormal investigators who had visited the family in Oklahoma. 

"Michael seems to be the spirit of an eight-year-old boy [at times] whose mother decapitated him.  The reason why he can have conversations with people is because of reincarnation . . . I'm not quite how to come to terms with the alien aspects because I don't know how they tie-in . . . I live in Echo Park right across from the Angelus Temple.  Get it — Angelus Temple.  Plus I live on Clinton Street [I'd moved there before Bill Clinton became President].  I mean the synchronicity to this is just amazing.  I've realized that it had been leading me all my life to do research in terms of the unexplained."
 
Transcribing the tapes by playing them on the same small machine I’d used to record them, I realized it was essential to find a way of listening to the tapes so that the contents were as distinct as possible.  A new type of unexpected spirit communication was experienced when I found words on the computer monitor’s screen that I hadn’t myself typed:

Are you nervous?

 

On another occasion, a second message was found that I didn't remember typing myself.

I'll help you.

One of the first times that I experienced the television malfunctioning was one night when I decided to take a break and watch TV for a few minutes while having a snack.  One of the shows I regularly watched was on, MTV’s “The Real World,” although I’d missed the start of the show.  I’d seen the previous episodes of this documentary-style series that brought together a group of youths as roommates, this year in a city of great appeal for me, London.  I started to watch and I realized that one of the roommates was complaining that their telephone had suddenly stopped functioning and he commented about how frustrating he found the situation.  As I remembered what Twyla had told me about the battery of the video camera going dead a moment before the rock had struck the car, I realized that Michael could affect technology.  My TV set then suddenly went off.  I thought that Michael had made Himself clear that He didn’t want me watching television.  He apparently wanted me to work on the case study of my recent experiences so that I could share the process implemented in revealing Himself to me.

 

Another program I tried to watch was the telecast of Barbara Walters interviewing Christopher Reeve after his paralysis.  As the program began, an opening clip from the interview showed the actor commenting “Something wonderful is about to happen” and then my TV went off again.  I accepted that it should be left off.  When I went against this policy, the result would be the same with the television soon shutting off.

 

One afternoon, there was a new development when the TV came on all by itself.  Colin Powell was shown on the screen yet in a few moments the television went back off, mystifying me as to the purpose for Michael identifying Powell in such a manner.
 
I felt that the intimacy with Michael wasn’t something new; it was only my awareness of Him that was new.  The condo now seemed even warmer than usual and I considered if this possibly had something to do with Michael.  Many extraordinary little things were constantly happening in my life.  One night, I was half-asleep in bed when it felt as if someone grabbed my leg.  It was obvious that Michael was letting me know that He was here with me.

  
One afternoon, the TV suddenly went on and I saw and heard what sounded like a portion of a commercial with a commentator’s voiceover saying “Love is the only religion.”  And then the TV went back off.  The TV going off and on occurred at other times, including eventually on New Year's Day when there was shown a Rose Parade float with an environmental theme.
 
I recalled some of the things that happened in Centrahoma as I considered past occurrences in my life.  Nobody had ever been able to place the 'talking poltergeist' cases into perspective in relation to other forms of anomalous phenomena and suddenly this outlandish data had become pivotal information for me in attempting to make sense of my own life.   Through contemplating these circumstances, the existence of a omnipresent Creator Spirit and Intermediary organizing Consciousness were becoming comprehensible.  I reflected that humans like animals and even extraterrestrial beings for that matter would all have in common having an individual consciousness as well as sharing influences from those mysterious mental states known as the ‘unconscious’ and ‘subconscious.’
 
I thought about the numerous times I’d watched the mountain and stars appear as the studio’s logo at the beginning of a Paramount movie.

These images seemed a modern portent reminiscent of Moses’s mysterious trip to the mountain (and Muhammad's for that matter).  And then I remembered the burning bushes outside my condo.  Even the materialized nail that had bounced off my head in Centrahoma could be construed as offering a parallel in Christian symbolism.  The two times that I should’ve been injured in altercations on the Hollywood Freeway yet wasn't now seemed to have been confirmed as having a miraculous interceding aspect.  Eventually there was no other conclusion possible than a Loving and unlimited creative Superconsciousness or spirit being/emissary had found a way of revealing participation in my life.  I could only estimate that the predicament had something to do with reincarnation.

I felt joyous at the realization that all living beings from Earth, other planets or ascended realms are each a single aspect of the spiritual Source finding expression.  I now was able to distinguish the relevance of the term 'Holy Ghost' in signifying the Spiritual Force manifesting the Divine Will of God.  I decided that the mysterious Michael who had made His presence known to me could only be equated with the enigmatic Archangel Whose manifestations had inspired diverse cultural lore.  For decades, psychical researchers had estimated the diverse ‘poltergeist’ phenomena as somehow tying-in with the subconscious mind yet they seemed to have overlooked a simultaneous Superconscious aspect. 

I referred to a paperback on my bookshelves entitled A Dictionary of Angels including the fallen angels (1967) by Gustav Davidson.  Here are some excerpts.

Michael (“who is as God”)—in Biblical and post-Biblical lore, Michael ranks as the greatest of all angels, whether in Jewish, Christian, or Islamic writings, secular or religious.  He derives originally from the Chaldeans by whom he was worshipped as something of a god.  He is chief of the order of virtues, chief of archangels, prince of the presence, angel of repentance, righteousness, mercy, and sanctification; also ruler of the 4th Heaven, tutelary sar (angelic prince) of Israel, guardian of Jacob, conqueror of Satan . . .


In Islamic writings he is called Mika'il.


In Jewish lore (Ginzberg,  The Legends of the Jews II, 303) “the fire that Moses saw in the burning bush had the appearance of Michael, who had descended from Heaven as the forerunner of the Shekinah.”


In mystic and occult writings, Michael has often been equated with the Holy Ghost, the Logos, God, Metatron, etc.

On Wednesday, August 15, I called my friend Cheryl, the current head of the Paramount Pictures publicity department and hoped she was somewhat prepared for what she would hear as I’d left her the Fortean Times magazine article about the Oklahoma case to read prior to my trip.  “Cheryl, I’m going to have to take a sabbatical for a while from doing any publicity work.  I have major supernatural phenomena going on.”  She asked me what was happening.  I answered: “Time and space mean nothing to this Entity.  He could destroy our world in an instant.  He just cleaned out Marie’s bank account.”
 
“Why me?  Why me?”  I recall telling her.  I attempted to explain how the Spirit had proven His powers to me.  I knew that Cheryl was accustomed to me being very reasonable and unemotional.  I knew that she probably thought I was acting a little crazy yet there was nothing else for me to say.  She reminded me that I was still her ‘womb-mate’ (she was born on August 8 too) but said she was late for a meeting with William Friedkin (director of “The Exorcist” who was at that time involved with “Jade”).
 
The entity seemed to be manifesting in ways that wouldn’t alarm or upset me or anyone else.  When Marie dropped by to see the photos and hear more about ‘Michael,’ she was sitting on a chair in the living room when she felt her lower right leg being tickled.  Thinking about the agency where I'd worked for seven years, I realized that here too was another symbol.  My expectation continuously was that I would be there only for a few more weeks but this occupation lasted for more than seven years.

Setting out to determine what opportunities were available for the clearest listening of the interviews and spirit utterances on the microcassettes, I decided to contact a local company called Group IV Recording and see what information regarding this matter was available.  My call went through to a sales representative who answered, “This is Angel.”  We talked a bit and he referred me to another company.  I soon decided the most reasonable alternative was to purchase high quality Dictaphone transcribing equipment that utilized a pedal and headphones.

Upon closely listening to the interview tapes, there were sounds and voices audible on the microcassettes that hadn’t been heard among interview participants in Centrahoma when the tapes were recorded.  I wondered how it could be conceivable for there to be spirit utterances heard on the microcassettes.  This startling recognition first came to me as I was listening to the third tape I’d recorded in the Mc Wethy house.  A succession of prominent and unmistakable words were audible in voices that were more emphatic than the usual human timbre.  These spirit messages included “SOUNDS GOOD” and “NICE” — they seemed to be commenting on my discovery of this audio phenomena. I’d never let the tapes out of my sight since recording them.
   
In 2016 just about every time I listen to radio interviews on NPR there are easily heard EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) instances of the word "NO" audible during interviews, overlapping the conversation.  These utterances are just as clear as the speech of the interviewer and guest.  One can only deduce the reasons that no one talks about this consistent anomaly in unedited radio and TV broadcasts.  Perhaps nobody knows what to say about the phenomena.  It seems that when the EVP word "NO" occurs frequently during someone's commentary during an interview, he or she is not expressing things correctly.  There have been previous blog articles on this topic (1, 2, 3, 4).

 
One Friday night, my brother and his friend James dropped by to see my trip souvenirs.  While standing in my condo, Mike suddenly grabbed his leg and said “Oww” as he rubbed it.

 

“That was Michael,” I told him.
 
Mike replied rather uneasily, “It was a muscle spasm.”
 
As they sat on the sofa, I was sitting on the floor talking to them when something mind-blowing happened.  When adjusting my position, there was a slight ‘swoosh’ sound in the air and a penny bounced off my foot and landed on the carpet.  I had actually seen this happen with my own eyes.  "Look,” I told James and pointed at the penny as more proof of Michael.

“Oh, that just fell out of your pocket,” James insisted.  I put the photos and other mementos away and then noticed a dime at the corner near where the penny had been found.  James saw it too and with a startled look said, “Well that wasn’t there.”  At one point during the visit, James reached over to a bookshelf and opened up a book of short stories by Carson McCullers.  We both were amused at the title of the story revealed on the page he had happened to open — it was the title and beginning of “The Aliens.”  

The following day, I drove to my brother’s house for a party and slide show.  Party guests found me in a reflective mood yet eager to discuss my recent experiences.  Patty, an art dealer from New York, and Jonathan, an attorney, were two other friends at the party that I’d met through James.  I was appreciative of Jonathan’s help when earlier in the year Julia Pastrana, the subject of a screenplay I’d written and submitted to an assortment of local production companies, was announced in the media as a project written by another screenwriter.  Following my return from Oklahoma, I hired Jonathan to begin drawing up contracts between myself and the primary interview participants in Centrahoma.
 
At the party, dinner was served in a buffet style and I was seated with Charlotte, Patty and Jonathan when Patty told me that she’d heard something unusual had happened to me on my recent trip.  Becoming a little emotional, I told her: “God revealed Himself to me.”  Suddenly, Charlotte and Jonathan picked up their plates and went to eat in another room.  Jonathan offered a curt, “I don’t believe in that.”  Both Patty and myself were surprised by their reaction.  Patty said that she felt there were no experiences more important than spiritual ones and I eagerly described a few details of my trip.

During the slide show, bits of conversation struck me as ironic in offering parallels with my own trip to Oklahoma.  Charlotte commented about one of her slides: “The man in the Hawaiian shirt was our tour leader.”  A few moments later, Patty mentioned to me: “My new car is a Saturn.”  And then suddenly the lightbulb in the slide projector went out, ending the slide show prematurely because there was no replacement bulb available.  There was an obvious pattern presented with the expressed thoughts in relation to the anecdotes I'd heard in Centrahoma about 'Leader' and the aliens from 'Saturn.'

Returning home, I continued to contemplate my situation.  I decided that what we could only describe with the word ‘God’ couldn’t be a distant, aloof Creator but an all-pervasive Loving Consciousness and thought Source in Whose presence each living creature experienced every moment of their lives.  That night, I was startled as some kind of energy began flowing through me.  There was a sensation along the inside of my lower left leg where it felt as if something like electricity was rushing from me.  I immediately laid down on my bed.  I’d never read about anything comparable to such a condition yet there was a feeling of anticipation as the energy continued flowing out of me.  I considered if something physically was changing within me.

The next morning upon awakening I felt my usual self.  There was no further sensation as I’d experienced the night before.  I was aware more than ever that my recent experiences had changed me yet in addition to my expanded consciousness there now seemed to be an altered physical part of myself in some manner that was impossible for me to understand.

Eager to tell my brother more about my experiences, I agreed to go shopping with Mike and then accompany him to a movie in Santa Monica.  When we were at Nordstrom, the pianist began playing "Oklahoma" as we were on the escalator and I told Mike that this was the type of thing constantly happening to me.  The movie Mike wanted to see was a documentary about fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi who at one point mentioned having consulted a Ouija Board.

 

Among the flurry of telephone calls made as I wanted to see how my friends would respond to some of the unexpected things that had happened to me, I remember calling my friend Larry.  I’d selected Larry to be hired as an additional publicity writer at Paramount and he later was laid off at the same time as me during a major staff reduction.  He became a unit publicist, including for “Fire in the Sky” and "Poltergeist: The Legacy," while I became an independent contractor to the publicity department, working from an office in my home for what seemed to be even longer hours than before.  Larry had grown up in Oklahoma and once mentioned that his late father had worked in some secret military capacity within Oklahoma that he’d never been able to discuss even with his immediate family.  I suspected his work probably involved unidentified flying objects.  Now when I called Larry and asked him if he’d ever heard anything about Coalgate in connection with UFOs, he replied that he still couldn’t tell me anything regarding the matter.  There had been things the family in Oklahoma had told me suggesting a great deal of intrigue about this subject.  I told Larry about some of my experiences in Oklahoma and asked him if he would see what he could find out about his father’s clandestine work but to be careful about it because I didn’t want any men in black showing up on my doorstep.
 
The next time that I met my brother for dinner, the restaurant was The Old Spaghetti Factory on Sunset Boulevard.  While waiting for a table, the names called out before mine were Angela and Christian.  There was also "Happy Birthday to You" sung to a restaurant patron named Michael that evening.  I would later find bumper stickers and personalized license plate symbols and numbers to be frequently meaningful.  It is usual for me to see happy symbols in traffic, such as a heart symbol or bumper stickers with Christian symbols and messages.

 

During a conversation with Marie, I remarked that perhaps I should use an author’s pseudonym for my planned book because of the political satirist seen on PBS also named Mark Russell that people occasionally mentioned while conversing with me.  Soon after that, one morning my phone rang and it was Marie.  “It’s Mark Russell Bell,” she declared.  She described how she’d been crossing Sunset Boulevard at the corner of Laurel Canyon when she heard a disembodied voice say “Mark Russell Bell.”  After taking a few more steps, she looked downward to see a Bell Telephone Book on the sidewalk.  “I knew I had to call you right away,” she told me.

I now had a new pen name without any inkling that the gamut of phenomena I was experiencing was about to escalate in further otherwise unimaginable ways, as chronicled in Testament.  The anomalous events in my life created a pattern showing the importance of each person becoming a 'christed' one and realizing the importance of the decisions that we each individually make in our daily lives.
 

Something that at least one person with whom I've interacted didn't seem to like in relation to Testament was some of my spontaneous commentary involving the nickname 'Mabus.'  As chronicled in the book, I'd noticed my channeled 'Mark Russell Bell' persona of the written page had the anagram 'Mabus' and have sometimes humorously, sometimes philosophically mused about different potential orientations and perspectives related to the archaic metaphor of the 'Antichrist' over the years.  My incessant spoken reflection was intended to keep a record of my experiences.  Usually, like many writers, I’m very quiet and introverted but to analyze and talk about the experiences chronicled in Testament—which I knew could be upsetting to certain people with rigid fundamentalist orientations to their selected dogmas—I usually affected a simultaneously bantering yet aloof manner that became more pronounced in situations that made me nervous.  What was finally presented in a later transcript of the book (Tape #49, Side #2) was this introspection (EVP utterances heard on audio tapes are in parantheses):

. . . ("SO")  Mabus.  Son of Man.  The Antichrist.  Bel-Marduk.  It's like I'm all these entities rolled into one.  But I'm nice.  I definitely am close to the symbol ("OF") of Jesus.  I hope.  I try to be nice and ("YOU KNOW") volunteer for APLA and give money to homeless people.  (sighs)  What else do I do?  ("UH-HUH")  I don't know.  ("I")  I try to always be honest.  Even if I don't know what the right solution is.  ("I MEAN")  I do read the morning newspaper.  You don't know what the solution is to these problems, I mean.  ("BUT")  Everyone has their own opinion.  So people should allow people to have their own opinion. 

In the sequel to the book published in an original Internet edition, I tried to bring further clarity to the predicament of an experiencer of spiritually symbolic and metaphorical so-called 'paranormal' or 'anomalous phenomena.'  The concluding sentence of the book's introductory excerpts is an excerpt from an audio tape transcript that clarifies further my perception that my experiences could be symbolic for everyone  —

"It's like when I'm saying something negative or judgmental I'm the Antichrist and when I'm saying something sweet and pleasant I'm Jesus."  

As I've mentioned before, I don't consider 'Mabus' to designate 'the Antichrist' yet there are some people that may, based upon sensationalized commercial books, etc.  Fear and superstition are known to influence the mass media, influencing the interpretation of news about metaphysical topics.  To some extent, I've had to overcome this indoctrination, myself.  Like everyone else, aspects of my beliefs and understanding are continuously evolving, based upon new information sources and experiences.  My case study shows the spiritual predicament confronting myself—and each human being—in relation to the necessity of one's spiritual development.