Chapter 1

Journal Prologue:

OK, this is all very complicated, so bear with me while I try to explain. I have no idea how it happens, I just know it does. I've searched the Web, checked out books on paranormal phenomena from the library, everything I can think of, short of consulting a shrink. I haven't dared go that route yet, for fear she or he will confirm that I'm some kind of a nut case, hallucinating, sliding off the edge. I'm aware there are people out there who claim to possess the kind of thing I'll be describing, but I'm pretty sure most of them really are nut cases. As for bringing up the subject with friends or family, there's no way in hell!!

See, I've never bought into any of that ESP, clairvoyance or sixth sense stuff. When somebody says they knew something bad was happening or was about to happen to someone they knew four states away, they may truly believe it but I think they're deluding themselves. People think bad stuff is happening all the time, and when it does, when the thought and an actual event happen to coincide, they jump to the conclusion that they had prior knowledge, that they were in some sort of mental or spiritual contact with the person.

I guess I can understand why they might be inclined to believe that because people tend to think in terms of their own small circle of family and friends rather than millions and millions of possible bad things happening to millions and millions of people. But, to the best of my knowledge, no credible scientific studies have shown that kind of mental communication takes place.

More directly related to my conundrum, when couples say they can read each other's thoughts, what they're really saying is that they know each other so well that they can often accurately predict what the other may be thinking under certain circumstances and in certain environments. Parents often know what's on their kid's minds and visa-versa because they've been in the same situation hundreds of times before. It would be a greater mystery it they couldn't make a fairly accurate prediction about what was about to happen or what was about to come out of someone's mouth. That isn't mental communication, it's experience.

All of which leaves me somewhat at a loss to explain what's been happening to me over the past few months. I just can't. Not yet, anyway. That's why I decided to keep this journal; so I'll have a clear, chronological account of all my weird experiences if I ever decide to go public, or if I meet someone with whom I feel comfortable sharing my story. For the time being, I think it's best to just keep it under wraps. If I never find an explanation, then, what the hell, maybe when I'm in my dotage, some starving hack will consent to ghost-write my book and I can at least make a few bucks off of it, leaving me a little wealthier but still wrapped in ignorance.

To begin the journal, I have to go back and recall my first few experiences from memory because it took me a while to realize something very strange and rather creepy was happening to me and that I should probably be writing it all down, although the memories are so intense, so indelibly imprinted on my brain, that it's unlikely I'd forget many details.

I said I have no idea how it happens, but that's not quite accurate. I know now how to make it happen, but I don't have any idea why it happens. I don't even know if it really is some kind of paranormal thing or if there's some arcane body of science that can explain it. I'm not aware of anything like that, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Government agencies have certainly investigated it in the past, giving up when they decided it was a dead end and a huge waste of taxpayer dollars. (Not that wasting taxpayer dollars has ever been much of a deterrent to government spending.)

Before I go any further, maybe I should try to explain what the it is. About seven months ago, I downloaded an album of crystal singing bowl sounds onto my iPod. That's right, crystal singing bowls. A Buddhist or someone who's into meditation probably knows what I'm talking about, but a lot of people don't. I'm neither a Buddhist nor a meditator; I just like the sound.

A singing bowl is a cylindrical bowl, usually made of some kind of crystal, designed in such a way that, when you strike it gently with a mallet, it will ring and reverberate for quite a long time with the most beautiful, mellow sound. The tone and timbre depend on the size and shape of the bowl, as well as the quality of the crystal material it's made of.

Anyhow, the album is just sixty-four minutes of several crystal singing bowls being struck somewhat randomly, producing sounds and harmonics that are incredibly relaxing to the brain for some reason I can't explain. When I'm feeling tense, if I've had a hard day, or even if I'm just in the mood for some peace and quiet, I stick my iPod in the dock, lie back in my recliner and play it on my sound system. Almost immediately, I can feel the tension melting away. Often as not, I fall asleep.

What's interesting about the sound, at least to me, is that after the first minute or so, you're not actively listening to it like you would a piece of music; it just fades into the background and your brain, or rather, your mind just totally flows with it and drifts into oblivion.

Well, after a few sessions with that album, it's like my mind was programed to respond to it like a yogi would respond to a mantra; a few seconds into it and I'd be under, my thoughts somewhere adrift in the ether.

I couldn't know it at the time, but those sounds must have been having a profound effect on some area of my brain. In fact, it was only after some weird things happened repeatedly, that I was able to make any connection at all between the sounds and the events. I'm pretty darn sure it doesn't happen to everyone who listens to singing bowls or it would have long since been a huge news story. All I can surmise is that there's some peculiarity in the wiring of my brain that makes it vulnerable to those particular sounds.

Well, enough preamble. Here's what happened:

First event: April 6, 2014, 5:15 PM:

It was late on a Thursday afternoon. I stayed home from work because I was building up too many vacation days, and the personnel director called me the day before and told me to use 'em or loose 'em.

I've done nothing worthwhile all day, just putter around the apartment in my underwear, snacking on unhealthy food, surfing the Web and reading everything readable. Probably more out of boredom than anything else, I thought I'd take a short nap before dinner. I put the iPod in the dock and pushed back in my recliner, closed my eyes and just let my mind drift.

I fell asleep (or so I thought) and had this incredibly vivid dream. One might be inclined to call it a nightmare because the images flooding into my mind were so shockingly real, but it wasn't at all scary. In fact, it was anything but! It was hot, and I don't mean temperature-wise!

It was like I was another guy ... no, it was more like I was inside another guy's mind; seeing, hearing and feeling everything through his body. He (I) was peeling off his (my) clothes as he (I) was gazing upon a luscious looking naked female lying on a bed. She was holding out her arms and smiling up at him (me) with a look that left no misunderstanding of her expectations. I'm pretty sure she was a hooker, but I can't say that for sure. After he (I) stepped out of his (my) underwear, he (I) rolled a condom onto his (my) dick, grabbed his (my) stiff weenie and gave it a couple of strokes as he (I) climbed onto the bed and positioned himself (myself) between her legs. There was no foreplay, so I guessed they charged extra for that. He (I) just pushed into her and started fucking away like crazy!

You know what? All this he (I) and him (me) stuff is just too damned clumsy! I'm sure you get the picture, so from now on, I'll write it like we were one and the same person because that's what it felt like. I'll use the first person singular as much as I can to avoid all this parenthetical clutter, but from time to time, I might drift back and forth between first and third person. If it's a little confusing to you, imagine how I feel!

So, back to the dream: She was amazing! I mean, think of your best ever wet dream and multiply it by a hundred! I felt everything! I smelled everything! When I kissed her, I tasted her lips! I heard every moan, groan and scream as we went at it like a couple of horny teenagers! And the action wasn't fragmented like dreams usually are, it was smooth and continuous, from penetration to climax!

After maybe ten minutes of our grappling and thrashing about, having raw, animal sex, she trembled and cried out, "Ohmygod!" two or three times (I hoped it was an orgasm, but with a pro, how would you know?), and I blew a monster load into the condom. A couple of minutes later, I pulled out and rolled onto my back, still trying to catch my breath. As the intensity of the moment began to drain away, I raised up on one elbow and leaned over to kiss her tit, but before lips could meet nipple,

Poof!, it was all gone! I was me again!

I lay there in my recliner, looking at the ceiling, my heart still pounding from the intensity of the dream. I felt it in my shorts and on my belly, and when I looked down, there was a wet spot spreading out from the outline of my still-stiff dick. I hadn't had sex that good in ages!

Damn! What a dream!

Well, of course, it wasn't a dream at all, but I didn't know that at the time.

Comments:

Several times after that, I tried to recreate that dream when I did my relaxation thing but, of course, I couldn't do it. Ultimately, I reasoned it must have happened because my sex life was in its nadir, i.e., I wasn't getting any. I concluded that my sex-starved mind just created that very realistic release to relieve a prolonged stretch of accumulating sexual tension.

What I needed was to to start dating again, to find a woman to have sex with on a regular basis, because masturbation, no matter how inventive or elaborate, just wasn't ever gonna take the place of the real thing. The problem with that plan was that, even after nearly two years of living the single life as a divorcee, I just didn't feel ready to get back in the game. Truth is, I'm a bit gun-shy about women and relationships for fear I'll go overboard and find myself remarried on the rebound. That thought is enough to give me the cold sweats!

It's not like I don't have opportunities. I don't mean to brag, but I've been told I'm a pretty good-looking guy, and I think I'd be successful at finding a bed partner if I put my mind to it. In fact, there's a woman in our office that comes on to me all the time like she'd share my bed in a New York minute, but she has that 'huntress' look in her eye, like I'd be a nice trophy to hang on her wall. She has a reputation.

After a few days, the dream faded and I filed it away as a (very pleasant) one-time event.

April 18, 2014, 7:45 PM:

I had a killer day at the office. The boss was leaning on me to put together a financial proposal to submit to the feds in a bid for a new government contract. That's what I do, by the way; I'm the CFO at a commercial genetic research lab. Julie, my secretary, called in sick that morning, so I spent more than half a day sorting through computer files and her filing cabinets, trying to gather up all the stuff I needed. I was making a hash of it, so I wound up calling her at home to ask where a bunch of documents were. I felt terrible about disturbing her because she had some kind of bug, and she sounded on the phone like she was feeling absolutely miserable. You never properly appreciate your key assistants until you need something and they're not there to save your ass.

By mid-afternoon, I'd found everything and managed to organize it into a presentable package. Then I had to work late to catch up on the other work I'd been neglecting all day.

It was after seven when I got home and all I wanted to do was relax. I kicked off my shoes, tossed my jacket on the couch, opened a beer, hooked up the iPod and pushed back in my recliner for a little peace and rest before deciding what to do for dinner.

As the relaxing tones of the singing bowls wafted through the room, the tension eased from my shoulders and I felt myself being set adrift from the harsh world.

With no warning whatsoever, I was a woman, or rather, I was in a woman's mind. But I really wasn't aware of the person so much as I was aware of being incredibly pissed. The object of my anger was standing a few feet away, looking just as pissed as I felt.

How do I explain this? She was arguing with her husband and I was feeling her anger while listening to the argument from inside her head. Does that make any sense? Well, whether it makes sense or not, that's what was happening, and this is the argument they were having, starting with her (me) (us) (shit!):

I held up my little digital camera and said, "You can't lie your way out of this one, Ron! I followed you from your office and got a very clear picture of you and that cunt receptionist of yours going into the motel room. That would be room number 17 at the Mesa Motel. Ring a bell? You were there for exactly one hour and twelve minutes. So tell me, ace, what were you doing for the hour and ten minutes you weren't fucking her?"

"Oh, that's real cute, Carol! That's just ... wait! You were following me? How the hell did you ... I mean, how could you have ... FUCK!"

He kicked the end table over, shattering the large ceramic decorator lamp sitting on it. He shouted, "You know what? You can just go fuck yourself, bitch! If you hadn't turned into a goddamned ice queen, I wouldn't have to go looking for strange!"

"Oh, come off it, asshole! You've been cheating on me since our wedding day! You don't think I know all about you and Heather? Well, I've had enough! I want you out of here, and I mean today! Just pack your bag and hit the bricks, buster, because we're finished! I'm filing for divorce tomorrow, so you'd better start looking around for a good lawyer."

"You know what?" he spat out, "That suits me just fine 'cause I was planning on dumping your frigid ass anyway!"

I laughed at him. "As if you'd have the balls! And by the way, I already cleaned out our savings and checking accounts 'cause I knew damned well that's the first thing you'd think of, and you'd leave me without a penny if you got the chance."

"You what?! Half of that money's mine, god damn it!"

"And your half will arrive at your office tomorrow or the next day in the form of a cashier's check. I guess I have a little more moral fiber than you, huh? And you know what else? I canceled all our joint credit card accounts so I won't be getting any bills for your motel trysts! Now, pack up and get your cheating ass out of here!"

We just stood there glaring at each other, both of us livid with rage. Then he took a step toward me and raised his fist, hissing, "Why, you miserable bitch!"

I backed up a step and warned him, "You hit me, you sonofabitch, and I'll have your ass in jail before the end of the day!"

He grinned and said, "You know what? It'll be worth it!"

SMACK!!!

I flew backward into the wingback chair, the whole left side of my face stinging from the blow. When my ears stopped ringing and I could focus my eyes again, I saw the look of horror on his face at what he'd just done.

I wiped a trickle of blood off my lip with the back of my hand and sneered, "Yeah, I figured that'd be the only way you could deal with it, Mr. Articulate! But, hey, that wasn't so bad. What else ya got, Sluggo?"

He turned and bolted from the room, slamming the door behind him.

I picked up the phone and dialed 911. "Hello? Police? I want to report an assault."

And it was over.

My pulse was still racing as I sat upright in my recliner, taking a few deep breaths to suppress the anger still surging through my chest. I raised my hand to my face to feel where I'd been punched. Nothing hurt, of course, because it hadn't been my face that got punched.

What the fuck! I thought. What happened to wet dreams?

Then it occurred to me that I knew that guy! Well, I didn't really know him, but I knew who he was. He and his wife lived in an apartment down the hallway from mine! I saw them in the exercise room and the pool from time to time. I remember thinking what a good-looking couple they made.

Comments:

That's when it began to sink in that something very peculiar was happening to me, something that demanded some serious attention. Those weren't dreams! They were something much more than that. I felt the need of a long walk around the park to try to figure it all out, to try to fathom what the hell was going on. I slipped into my loafers and grabbed my jacket and my keys. When the elevator door opened on the ground floor, two Denver cops stepped on as I stepped off.

Two days later, I shared that elevator with the woman who's personal life I'd intruded on for a few minutes. I was pretty sure it was her because the bruise on the side of her face was still visible, even thought she was wearing a scarf over her head and had on dark glasses. We just said 'Hi'.

A little personal background information:

For anybody reading this journal who doesn't know me, I'll provide this very abbreviated bio. My name is Charles (Chuck) Duncan. I was born in 1978 in Sterling, Colorado and grew up on a farm a few miles out of town. There was nothing unusual about my upbringing; I worked the farm with my dad, played football in high school, got an academic scholarship to the University of Colorado and graduated cum laude with a BA in economics.

I met my wife-to-be after a football game when a bunch of us went out to mourn the drubbing the Buffs suffered at the hands of the Cornhuskers. We hit it off in spades and wound up living together while I went for my MBA and she finished her senior year, taking a BA in art history. We were married a week after graduation.

I was incredibly lucky to find a position in the company I still work for. I worked hard at my job and they were generous with their promotions and salary increases. Before I reached my thirtieth birthday, I'd already advance to the CFO position and a six-figure salary. We bought a nice home out near the little town of Watkins and settled into what we all hoped would be a very comfortable, semi-rural lifestyle.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long after that, that things started going south between my wife and me. I won't go into details, but after a lot of tears and agonizing, we decided between us that splitting sooner rather than later would save the kids from being the victims of any bad feelings and growing resentments. Neither of us believed staying together for the sake of the kids had any validity, since that plan almost invariably created even more resentment and wound up causing more harm than good.

I've been living in my apartment for almost two years, ever since my ex and I split up. It's on the ninth floor of a high-end luxury tower, right off Cheeseman Park in the Capitol Hill area of Denver. As I said, I earn a very nice salary, even after paying very generous child support, so I feel I deserve to indulge myself in a relatively posh environment when I'm off the job.

Five years earlier, my place would have sold for over one and a quarter million, but because of the crappy economy, I bought it for much less. Good for me, bad for the previous owner. Now that the economy is bouncing back, the apartment is already worth almost a hundred grand more than I paid for it.

The tenants are mostly older people like senior executives, well-to-do retirees, etc., but there are people in my age range, too (thirties and forties). There are even a few families with kids, all teenagers because children under twelve aren't allowed.

After the divorce, my ex and the kids moved back east to live with her folks in Braintree, Mass. while I stayed in Denver where the job was. I sold the house in Watkins and split the money with her. The worst part about the long distance between us is that I only get to have the kids with me on alternate Thanksgivings and Christmases, spring break and for two weeks in June when school lets out. Life really sucks, sometimes, and those bad times are usually of our own making.

Speaking of broken marriages, I haven't seen the guy who punched his wife since their big blowup.

May 26, 2014, 5:50 PM:

Nothing happened in the 'weird' department for several weeks, possibly because, even though I had no rational basis for associating the singing crystal bowl album with my strange trips, I stopped playing it. I knew I was grasping at straws, but it was the only new thing I'd introduced into my relaxation routine, so I eliminated it. You know, just in case. There have only been two strange incidences, but they were a bit frightening in their intensity. I haven't been all that anxious to repeat them.

But I really miss that addictive sound when I need to come down after a hard day's work, and after two or three weeks without any of those little side trips, I got to thinking, That's just silly. It couldn't possibly have that kind of effect on my brain. It's just singing bowls, for pete's sake!

That was my rationale, but deep down, I really couldn't resist the possibility of taking another one of those uninvited pokes into someone's private life. I think there's a little voyeur in all of us, don't you agree?

So this evening, I played it again. I felt a little anxious as I lay there listening to the beautiful tones and waiting for something to reach out and grab me. Nothing did. That was no surprise because both of the previous events were totally unexpected. I didn't really think I could make it happen on demand. After a few minutes of nothing, I could feel myself relaxing and I closed my eyes as I pushed the button on the remote to start the album over again.

I might have jumped immediately or I might have fallen asleep, but the next thing I was aware of is that I was in a dark place. Somehow, I knew it was a closet. I could feel the clothing hanging around me and I was squeezed in among some boxes, smelly shoes and other odds and ends lying on the floor. I knew I was male and very young; perhaps thirteen or fourteen.

There was a mixed bag of emotions crowding my mind; guilt for what I was doing, fear that I might be caught, and intense sexual excitement over what I was looking at through a tiny hole in the wall in the back of the closet. It was a hole that I'd carefully gouged out over the past couple of days when my sister was out doing whatever she and her dorky friends did to entertain themselves.

I actually had to cut a pretty good size square out of the wallboard in the back of my closet to get to her side of the wall. Mom isn't what you'd call a world-class housekeeper so I wasn't too worried about her finding it. But just in case, I stacked a couple of boxes in front of it when I was at school. I had to sneak into my sister's room to clean up the gypsum dust that had fallen onto her carpeted floor when I finally punched through.

Spying on her was really awkward. I had to lie on my side, propped up on one elbow, and push my face hard against the wall to get my eye close enough to the hole to see well. My sister may have been a stone bitch and the sibling from hell, but she was seventeen years old and built like a brick shit house. Her body was all I was interested in. She usually went straight to her room and locked her door when she got home from school, and stayed there, usually until Mom or Dad got home. I was pretty sure she was doing naughty things. Now, I was about to find out.

She was sitting at her desk, gazing at her laptop. Her jeans and shirt were on the floor and she was sitting there at her desk in her bra and panties. I couldn't see all that much of her because I was mostly looking at her right side and back, but I could see enough to know it was a woman's body and not a little girl's. And I could see well enough that I knew she was doing things to herself.

On her computer screen, I could make out a woman with monstrous tits blowing some guy with a dick the size of my forearm. I couldn't see exactly what my big sister was doing but it was a good bet that she was rubbing herself off, judging from the way her arm was moving and the way the side of her tit was jiggling.

My jeans and jockey shorts were around my ankles and I had had my right hand around my stiff weenie, stroking slowly up and down and trying hard not to come too quickly. But I almost creamed when my sister stood up to pull down her panties and get rid of her bra, tossing them onto the bed behind her. For just a couple of seconds before she sat back down, I got a good look at her pubic hair and her gorgeous tits. Nice! Very nice!

She started really getting into it. She leaned back in her chair, spread her legs wide and went to work on her pussy. The couple on the computer were fucking now, and my sister was getting a major turn-on watching the action. I could hear her groaning and moaning louder and louder as she rubbed harder and faster with one hand while she pinched and rubbed her nipples with the other.

I was stroking my weenie like crazy and I guess I was doing a little grunting and groaning of my own. Twice, I froze and my breath caught when my sister looked over toward the wall real hard for a few seconds before she fixed her stare back on the computer screen and commenced to work herself into a sweat. In minutes, she was thrusting her fingers hard into herself as she slid her butt back and forth on her chair in rhythm with her grunts.

I just couldn't hold it any longer! Before I could manage to get any control over the situation, I started pounding my weenie hard and shot globs of stuff all over the floor, then dribbled the leftovers all over my hand. I guess some loud sounds must have escaped my mouth when I started shooting, because my sister whirled around in her chair and said, "Kevin? Is that you, you nerdy little perv?! Where are you?"

My heart sank when I saw her eyes fix right on the little hole!

POP! I was back. Again, I could feel the evidence of my experience running down my leg. As I calmed down, I couldn't help but smile at the intensity of a teenage orgasm. There's nothing like it! What a shame it's wasted on teenagers.

Comments:

Once rational thought held sway again, I began to make some connections. For one thing, I was now pretty darned sure it had something to do with the sounds on the singing bowls album. For another thing, it only seemed to happen when the person I temporarily possessed was experiencing an intensely emotional event. At least, so far, I hadn't popped in on anybody doing laundry or clipping their toenails.

So, what was going on? What caused it to happen? Did the sounds of those crystal singing bowls trigger something in my brain to seek out a mind to connect with? That didn't seem likely, but maybe it relaxed my own mind to the point that it was receptive to any strong feelings floating around in the air. I know brain activity is electrochemical, so maybe my own brain was sensitized to those signals and was able to home in on them, somehow.

And that raised another question. Was distance a factor? Was I just making contact with people who were in close proximity? I didn't get any sense of what the kid looked like, but his sister looked vaguely familiar, like I'd seen her on her way to and from school, or maybe in the pool. Well, maybe not in the pool. I think I'd remember a body like that in a bikini. So, was physical distance one of the limiting factors? I guess time and further experiences would answer that question, and I had every intention of trying for further experiences.

One thing I know for sure is that popping in and out of someone's mind can be pretty darned entertaining stuff! Well, except for the time I thought I'd just been punched in the face. It might be addictive, too, because I find myself anxious to locate another vulnerable psyche to invade. The problem is, I don't seem to be able to exercise any control over it. How would you control something like that?

That, in itself, is a question worth investigating. I went online and looked around for things like possession and ESP and astral projection, anything that might imply out-of-body experiences. I couldn't find anything useful in the general category of psychic phenomena, but when I started reading about meditation, I found some ideas that seemed to hold out some promise.

It seems people who meditate a lot can attain that singular state almost immediately and whenever they choose. They're not really in any kind of trance, even though they might appear to be; they're just extremely focused. I don't understand what all of it means, but according to what I read, practiced meditators show some interesting changes on EEGs recorded during the meditative state. Apparently, there's a marked increase in alpha and theta wave activity, implying the person is profoundly relaxed, but with a heightened sense of awareness. That heightened awareness sounded like what I should be aiming at.

Chapter 2 »