Core-Experiences

That very evening after his core-experience, Paul met myself and three of our friends at a nightclub as prearranged. The three were Ken Ward, Martin Tiedman an old school friend of Paul’s and James Hannington our band’s drummer. (Martin Tiedman's UFO sighting is mentioned here)

  I remember Paul being extremely excited, which was not like him, and that he continually talked about what had happened to him that day – in fact it was his main topic of conversation all night and unlike the others, I was listening to him attentively.

  The other guys heard what he was saying but were not really listening and didn’t really understand. We all accepted that Paul had been through something he believed had happened, because Paul would never make up such a story. Everyone knows that Paul is very sceptical about these things, and this seemed stranger to the others than his experience. As I said, he kept on about it all night and I could tell that he was extremely frustrated with us, and seemed partly distressed because we couldn’t share it with him.

  More happened the next day that appeared to be related to the initial experience .

The Following Day and Night

Paul:

"The next day I told my wife about the experience I had and she could partly identify with what I had gone through. She told me that she has had similar experiences just prior to my one – not the physiological energy experience that I went through – but experiences that are very much the ‘Out of Body’ experiences I had read about. She has sometimes woken up in the middle of the night to find that she is outside her body. It was later found that her experiences are inter-related in some way with my own.

"Later that day, I was lying down on the sofa again while my wife was putting the washing out to dry. She had the door open, and as I was lying there, I felt this numbness creeping over my body again, as if I could easily ‘black-out’ . . . I fought against it, because this time it felt really weird.

"That night in bed, I suddenly woke up . . . I don’t know why but it looked as if the light was on. There’s something really vague about that night . . . really vague . . . it was as if we had the light on, but the light wasn’t on! My wife Yvonne was fully awake and talking to me ordinarily, and I said something like “I feel really weird” and she said “Oh try and get some sleep” as if she knew what I was going through. What I felt was totally weird . . . the same tingling feeling all over, but without the vibration. I felt I was glowing with light, and the light was coming from inside my head. I told Yvonne that I couldn’t get to sleep.

  "I then went downstairs to the living room, and slept on the sofa. It seemed like a lot went on that night, but for the life of me, I can’t remember. It was a strange night . . . one of those nights that seemed very dream-like and surreal, as if I had dreamt the whole thing.

  "This was the first indication that I felt something even stranger was happening after that initial event the day before on June 7.”

Red Circular Mark

Paul:

“Several days later I kept feeling an itch in the very centre of my chest, and I kept scratching at it. It kept irritating me, but I never bothered to look until a few days later. I had just had a bath and as I passed my wife along the hallway she said “What’s that mark on your chest?” I then went and looked in the full-length mirror in my son’s room while my wife followed me. And there in the centre of my chest was a bright red circular mark, it was tinged with brown, it wasn’t a spot, it was completely flat as if I had been branded with a one-penny coin . . . a perfect circle. In the middle, the skin was peeling off like sunburned skin. Anyway, I didn’t make a thing of it . . . I just thought it was strange. I didn’t know where it had come from. At the time, I had made no connection concerning this mark with what had happened. I thought that my experience was only related to ‘out of the body experiences’.”

Gary:

At this time, Paul used to come in to work with us on occasional days before he started again full time. He came into work one morning and he showed me the circular mark on his chest. By this time I knew all about his previous experiences, but I was immediately amazed at this because I had the same complaint. I tore open my own shirt to reveal to him the proof of what I was saying. Where Paul had one large circular mark on his chest, I had several circular marks but mine were much smaller; and had scabs around the edges where I had been scratching, because they were always itchy. I thought that it may have just been a skin complaint, and this could still be a possibility, but we both had this at the same time and not since – and it also coincided with Paul’s first experiences. At that time I had never experienced anything like Paul’s ‘Core experience’ which we will call it for now. As I said, it was to be more than two years later that I had an experience that resembled his in almost everyway.

  Again, the only thing strange about this is that we both had this at the same time, but as an interesting aside – and something I will go into in more depth later – after reading his article in the Daily Mail, which was publicising his new book, Alien Dawn, (Virgin 1998) I wrote to veteran writer Colin Wilson in April 1998. I sent him these same accounts of Paul’s experiences along with accounts of my own subsequent experiences.

  In Alien Dawn, Wilson had written about an “unknown energy” that Man possesses but does not yet know how to access or utilise. Colin Wilson then sent me a four-page letter saying how interested he was in what I had written.

  Regarding our experiences he wrote:

  ‘As to the experiences themselves, I am almost inclined to wonder – on the strength of the ‘red mark’ experience – whether an abduction experience may not lie at the root of all this . . .’

  Colin’s last statement was interesting, and though I couldn’t agree with him about the red marks as there's the possibility that this was merely a skin complaint, his mention of a connection with abduction or UFO phenomena supported some of the connections I myself had already made with this ‘energy phenomenon.’

Invisible Hair

Paul:

“Some weeks later, I was at home and because it was such a hot day, I was walking around my house with no top on.

  "I kept feeling hairs on my shoulders, on my back, and on my arms. They felt like long strands of hair . . . thick enough to make me feel really uncomfortable, especially when I couldn’t see them.

  "Every time I looked, there was nothing there . . . nothing on my skin at all. I could see my arm clearly, but also felt this sensation of something wispy on it . . . but nothing was there! I was so exasperated I kept laughing, trying to find something that was invisible.

  "It was almost like cobweb but much too thick. It was such an irritating feeling. This was happening almost nightly for a good two weeks. This was very unusual, but again at the time, I never made any connection with my earlier experience. I was just annoyed and exasperated at not being able to see what it was.

  When I mentioned it to Yvonne she said that she keeps getting the same thing – but on her face. After a while it subsided. I then did a lot of reading at this time, and borrowed more books from my brother. I was searching for answers. I consumed anything I could get my hands on concerning ‘Astral-Projection’.”

Gary:

Now as regards this cobweb affect, I remember Paul telling me that he could see a link between this ‘invisible hair’ and the so-called ‘Angel Hair’ which sometimes accompanies a UFO sighting. Later in my conversations with Mark Dunn (an Urban Shaman) when telling him about this, Mark replied, “No that’s not it . . . well not a direct explanation anyway. I have experienced this,” he said “. . . the Hairs of Shiva! You see after this enlightening experience, one is more open to additional information and so now one can feel the strands or filaments of energy via which one is connected to everything in reality – trapped like a fly in a web.”

  A few years after Paul recorded this account I picked up a book in a second-hand bookshop. The book was Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them by Hereward Carrington. I was surprised to find references in this book to many of these experiences under the heading ‘Early Signs And Experience:’

‘At this phase of the development the subject may feel cool breezes blowing upon his hands and face from various directions – breezes which appear to be perfectly physical in character.

  He may also experience a peculiar sticky sensation on his hands and face as though cobwebs were applied over the bare skin, which is exposed. This cobwebby sensation is very common, and is not limited, as many think, to mediums who obtain materialisation.’ [1]

Some several months after Paul’s experience, I watched a B.B.C.2 programme called Video Diaries, which featured Maurice Grosse, a well known researcher of the paranormal and a member of the Society for Psychical Research, (SPR.) Maurice is best known for the part he played in the famous “Enfield case;” one of the best documented cases of poltergeist activity. In this programme, Maurice investigated an unusual case in Yorkshire.

  A couple, who had recently lost their teenage son in a road accident, had captured on photograph the image of their dead son. Also, they claimed that his face had suddenly appeared on their TV screen . . . apparently when the TV had been switched off!

  But what surprised me most and gave the family’s claims some validity was what the boy’s mother had to say when she told Maurice how this and their other experiences first began. (She spoke in a broad Yorkshire accent :)

“It started in October . . . like a freezing cold presence came round me. Then like, I could feel like something on my legs . . . like touched me on my legs.” “Cobweb.” (The husband interrupted) “Yeah, and I like get this like cobweb over my face and that.” [2]

She then went on to say that she would sometimes feel someone – a presence whom she believed was her son – touch her hand. To my surprise, Maurice never commented on the “cobwebs.” Paul also saw this programme and we had a discussion about it.

  I mentioned that I found it strange that a researcher like Maurice Grosse didn’t show any acknowledgement of the “cobweb” effect – surely he must have heard of this many times throughout his years of research?

  Also, I thought that if he did know the significance of this effect regarding psychic and paranormal phenomena, then he should have informed the viewers of this, as it would have lent some weight to these people’s claims and also that of the paranormal.

  It may seem a small detail, but it’s these small details which are very important because not many people are aware of them. Only someone who researches this phenomenon would know of its significance as a correlating piece of information. It’s these small details and the underlying pattern they make which makes the phenomena more real and acceptable. Of course, many researchers like to keep some of this correlating data to themselves so that people cannot use the information to back-up their experiences. Maybe the less said about these things the better as regards further research into correlations that are not common knowledge.

  When Paul first told me about this “cobweb” affect or “invisible hair” it was something I had never heard of before and I was quite familiar with paranormal literature. Paul had no interest in the paranormal before his first experiences and I’m sure he never read about this anywhere. This is the significance of these small details – especially when you read that someone else has mentioned the very same thing and in the same way. But again, people always tend to ‘miss the point,’ and if our researchers have overlooked this, it seems then, that even some of our best researchers cannot put one and one together and so the significance of these things can be lost for a very long time.)

References

1. Taken from Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them. Hereward Carrington. (Aquarian. 1976.)

2. Transcripted from the BBC TV programme Video Diaries 1992.

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