Experiencer

may: the breadcrumbs in my journals

The first time I ever heard the word “experiencer,” I was transfixed.

Going back through my journals, I can see little breadcrumbs I left for myself as I entered the UFO/UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon) conversation. Little scribbles of words in May 2021.

Extra- dimensional. 1947. A note asking which Non Human Intelligence the Egyptians were in contact with. Interdimensional beings scribbled on the side of an entry. I was getting curious, dipping my toe in.

Rune Soup was the gateway podcast that opened me and lit me on fire.

At the time, I was obsessed with my tree, and playing with the dragons in my backyard, trying to name my guardian spirit/angel, Cazimi. This was during quarantine, a time when we suddenly had endless hours to do whatever we wanted. I devoted myself to a deep dream practice, recording and reflecting on my dreams with more depth and focus than I had ever managed before or since.

Every time I tried to get to the bottom of something in the UFO/UAP world, to understand it, I would be humbled by how much there was to grok. There were endless acronyms, cases, and accusations. The deeper I scratched at the surface, the wider and stranger the topic became. There were more accounts scattered across the world and throughout time than I could have ever imagined. Strong opinions, psy-ops, people treated like heroes or gods, and others dismissed as frauds. It seemed like a psy-ops of a psy-ops. Science fiction coming true. it was difficult to tease out who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. It was dizzying. Even though my friends were open to hearing me talk about it, this was, at its core, a solitary pursuit. I couldn’t look away.

june: aliens and artists

In June, a friend of mine from dance mentioned the podcast “Aliens and Artists” and said I should check it out. It was a podcast dedicated to exploring how contact with non-human intelligences and entities impact human creativity and artistry. It was created in 2020, so by the time I found it there were dozens of episodes to discover.

From the first episode I was hooked, in awe, in love. Stuart Davis created this podcast, what a crazy brilliant human being, He began with his own extraordinary story of a mantis encounter, something I had never even heard of before.

Episode after episode, he brought on guests who were brilliant and thoughtful, sharing experiences that echoed one another, not only encounters with giant mantis beings but also stories of ghosts, orbs, intuition, dreams, and other strange currents running through their lives. I was fascinated. This was stranger and more gripping than anything on the news.

Each story ignited my imagination, but because I had never thought of myself as an abductee, I wasn’t searching for affirmation. Just overwhelming curiosity. Notes in my journal documented my curiosity about the block universe, the past, present, and future in dialogue, time beings. Notes on The Day the Earth Stood Still, the Brookings Institute, John Mack, Art Bell.

And then I saw the trio of lights on Mt. Tabor in June. This sweet sighting gave me confirmation that somehow I was on the right path, I didn’t understand why but the message was clear. Keep going.

july: the bath

A month went by of study. Random notes in my journal about underwater lakes, ultra-terrestrials, multi-dimensional beings, merpeople, sea beings.

The very next day, in early July, the bath that changed my life. The book idea that consumed me.

november: the reckoning

I remember that moment clearly. I was in my backyard, listening to an episode that explained that ethnogens don’t make an experience any less real, and I flashed on my Witch duck lane experience. I had always dismissed that experience, but why?

I thought of the question that changed my life- What is your Intuition Story? and the terrifying things I had seen and felt as a child on Oak Drive. I started to connect these moments of terror that I had been collecting- the Everglades, the Bigfoot, Witchduck lane, the dragon in the clouds. I thought of my plea to the universe, “I don’t want to see you.”

I learned that often beings come to you in the ways that you can see. My mind flashed on my bamboo dragon. George.

I started to question these moments not as singular, but connected.

It felt like a new ontological shock, one that shook the foundations of everything I thought I knew about my reality.

Was it possible that I too was an experiencer?

Memories rose up, the monsters in my closet, the moments of unexplainable terror I had been investigating in last year now all seemed bound together by an invisible thread I had never seen before. Were these connected?

One by one, new understandings of old memories emerged. Every few days brought another realization. There is something called Shadow beings? I wasn’t the only one haunted by them? There were others like me?

Each time, I had to examine what I remembered, the story I had told myself about it, and then see it through a different lens. Psychologically, we do this to protect ourselves. Our minds reshape memories, softening the terrifying or uncanny into something whimsical or harmless. I had a way of painting each memory as playful, when in truth they were frightening. Every time a memory surfaced, I had to revisit it with this new understanding, peeling back the layers my mind had built to keep me safe.

This process is part of what makes being an experiencer so complex. High-strangeness events often happen early in life, leaving lasting impressions that do not fit neatly into memory or conventional reality. Our minds protect us by reframing or muting them, but revisiting these experiences carefully and reflectively can reveal the true depth and significance of what we encountered. In that sense, memory, perception, and psychology are not obstacles. They are tools that help us make sense of the uncanny, showing us that reality is stranger and more layered than we usually realize.

The realization that I too was an experiencer turned me into an archaeologist of the weird events in my own life.

All those odd little chapters now seemed connected.

This blog is my attempt to sift through the fragments and make some sense of them together.