My own experiences of the Unexplained
Me in the red one, age 3. Sebec, Maine, USA
I’ve enjoyed listening to Telepathy Tapes and Otherworld, both podcasts having to do with experiences that defy materialist explanations—the paranormal, supernatural, and otherwise unexplained. My earliest memory is supernatural and as a child it wasn’t unusual for me to have pre-cognizant dreams and other experiences of non-ordinary reality. I used to keep these stories to myself, not only from fear of people not believing me, but because I used to not like it when people imposed a meaning on these experiences.
For years now I’m at a place where I don’t care if people believe me or not, nor do I care if they feel the need to interpret my experiences a certain way.
While listening to an Otherworld episode a couple months ago while bopping down the sidewalk in Oaxaca, I stopped in my tracks and tears sprang to my eyes. It’s Episode 12: Caretakers, and it unlocked something related to my earliest memory. For those of you who don’t know that story, here it goes.
I don’t know exactly how old I was, but probably around three. I was standing at the top of the stairs in my home, looking down. I raised my arms and as I did, a feeling of euphoria started in my chest and slowly expanded. You know how sometimes you feel really good when you stretch in the morning after waking up? It was like that because ever after this event, when I stretched I remembered. As the euphoria grew, I was lifted off my feet and I started to drift slowly down the stairs.
A man appeared at the bottom of the stairs and his arms were open to receive me. He was fairly young—maybe thirty-five?— and very handsome, with dark hair and a full beard and mustache. My own father would later grow a full beard and mustache but at that time he was clean-shaven and had been since I was born.
When I saw this man, my euphoria grew. He was someone I recognized and I knew he loved me very much. I knew he would protect me and keep me safe. When I arrived at the bottom of the stairs I floated into his arms and he embraced me.
I recalled and thought about this event every day for years because it felt much more real than “real” life. Later, I told my mother about it. I was a little older and I think the reason it came up at all was because I started to suspect that what I had experienced might be unusual. I remember telling her that I “flew” down the stairs, and there was a man with a beard, etc. Understandably, she tried to make me see that this was a dream and no, I didn’t really fly down the stairs. I was disappointed and frustrated by the conversation because I knew very well I wasn’t asleep when this happened. I was standing at the top of the stairs, fully awake.
Still, as I grew older I discovered that people weren’t supposed to fly so I stopped talking about it. At some point I learned about mystical visions and fever dreams, and I decided this must have been what happened to me. I was a kid with a fever who wandered out of bed and had a hyper-realistic waking dream, a mystical vision, at the top of the stairwell.
And I’m not saying that’s not what happened. But what I heard in this Otherworld interview made me wonder anew. Until I listened to that episode, I had never heard of anyone else floating down the stairs. In Caretakers, adult siblings tell the story of being at a family gathering where folks were reminiscing about the past, and for the first time one of the twins told about his experience of floating down the stairs as a young child. His twin sister spoke up saying that she’d done the same but had never told anyone about it. They think they were three years old when they did this on a regular basis. They moved to a different house when they were four, and both remembered trying to float down the stairs at that house and not being able.
What made me stop in my tracks and cry was when they described how they did it and the sensation. They would raise their arms and feel themselves lift off their feet. As they floated down, they had feelings of intense love, safety, and reassurance. Both felt like they were being carried or accompanied down the stairs by someone who loved them deeply. Displayed in their home was the photo of a dear friend of their mother who had passed shortly before the twins were born. One of the twins always felt that it was that man in the photo who was carrying him down the stairs.
I don’t feel the need to decide if I physically floated down the stairs or if it was a vision. In fact, I love the mystery.
I know a lot of people have had unexplainable experiences but they fear talking about them. No one should feel any pressure to share and if it doesn’t feel safe, they shouldn’t. Because I’m not afraid, I feel that I want to and should. I was going to share some other experiences in this post but it got long. More to come.
