Countless people remember living in their mother's womb.

Researchers say that a Pre-Birth Experience is the memory someone has of an existence before he or she was born.

Amazingly, some of these individuals recall living in a beautiful spirit world where they were able to select their future parents.

Even more remarkable, 53 percent of people reporting PBEs say they have memories that start before they were conceived. 

Heatherleen Glade
Student/Teacher
Past-Life Studies
Edgar Allan Poe Community College

A ventriloquist's dummy talked me into marriage.

His name is “Benjamin Byrd” and I love him more than words can say.  Because of this wonderful woodenhead, I’m now the mother of three healthy children and the wife of a hardworking provider.

   
It all started the day I met Ben’s shy, soft-spoken human pal “Cliff.”  We worked together in different departments of a huge corporation.  I first noticed him in the hallway:  tall and good-looking with a boyish quality.  I tried my girlish best to snare him into talking, but had no luck until we rode the elevator by ourselves one lunch hour.

   
Cliff sputtered and stammered but was finally able to ask for a date.  I was elated.  Unfortunately, the evening became a disaster when Cliff could barely get a word out and spilled his drink on my new dress.

I wrote off the dress and the relationship until Cliff nervously invited me to play Frisbee with him and a friend in the park.  I decided to give him one last chance, and an hour later met him sitting on a park bench.  There was a patent-leather suitcase beside him.

“Looks like your friend is late,” I noted.

   
“No, he’s right here,” Cliff stammered.  Then he eagerly opened the expensive-looking case and lifted out a wooden dummy with wavy hair, a bulbous nose and a goofy expression on his shiny face.

   
The dummy’s mouth opened.  “Hi, doll!  Benjamin Byrd here.  What’s a pretty thing like you doing with old stone face?  He this week’s charity case?”

   
I chuckled.  “Don’t say that.  Cliff’s a very sweet fellow.”

   
“He’s sweet, all right,” Ben cackled, “sweet as a freakin’ lemon.”

   
I laughed again.  Amazingly, I then proceeded to enjoy an hour’s conversation with Ben, whom I found to be witty, charming, and quite a wonderful companion.  I was impressed that Cliff’s lips didn’t move the entire time.  He was very talented.

   
Over the ensuing weeks and months, Ben and I talked endlessly almost every day.  Through Ben, I came to know Cliff very well.  This magic time climaxed when Ben asked me to marry Cliff.  I’ll never forget Cliff down on one knee with Ben perched on the other.

We were wed in a quiet civil ceremony, with Ben, of course, the best man in a tiny tuxedo I sewed for the occasion.

   
We’ve been married for eight years now, with three happy kids.  (He may not be much of a talker, but there are some great things Cliff can do on his own!)  Sometimes, when we really want to get romantic, Cliff, Ben and I snuggle under a blanket in front of the fireplace—not too close to the roaring fire, of course!  Cliff and I let Benjamin do all the talking while we kiss and cuddle.

by: Anonymous
as told to Doc Paranormal

I Fell Madly in Love with my Abusive Husband's Cadaver.

It was a silly little mistake. I was trying to nail my husband’s favorite selfie to the wall when the hammer slipped and I pierced his forehead with the claw. He was standing immediately behind me, micromanaging as usual.

He collapsed on the apartment floor, the claw embedded deeply in his thick skull. Placing one foot on his cranium, I wiggled it out.

This, in turn, produced copious bleeding, like a water bubbler gurgling above his left eye. All of which saturated the Persian rug he’d insisted we buy with my already overextended Capital One credit card.

Determined to limit the damage to the apartment (and my security deposit), I dragged him into the bathtub, where he, at last, bled out.

Pitying him for once, I gave his pale body a sponge bath, cleaning him thoroughly in a way he seldom did himself.

Weak with shock, I filled the bath with hot water until it covered us both to our chins. I, of course held his up.

I stared my husband for hours that turned into days. His visage collapsed and his body stiffened. I lost my fear that he’d grab me by the throat as he often had when I’d done something “bad.”

Then things got weird:

I fell madly in love with the bastard again. Still and cold, he was the man I’d always desired but never had. He was always home, never asked for money and never complained.

The bathtub, with its squalid water and terrible stench, became our cozy little love nest. Frankly, it was the best time we’d had together since he’d lost the key to our honeymoon hotel room and hadn’t been able to rape me again that night.

No one, not even family, came to the apartment door. My husband’s boasts and tirades had alienated everyone, including the Grubhub and Doordash delivery guys. I subsisted on peanut butter, bread and my new-found peace of mind. My husband, of course, required nothing but a daily oiling to help preserve his drying skin.

But, as the philosophers say, all good things come to an end. The police will be coming soon. I can almost smell it. And my neighbors have probably started smelling my husband, too.

Perhaps, just perhaps, before I’m jailed, the cops will let us renew our vows at a funeral home or crematorium. I can just see his urn now, atop the wedding cake.

Hopefully, things will work out better between us next time.

But that’s the beauty of loving a corpse. If you get tired of one, you can always disinter another.

Bang! Bang!

“Open up!”

Cops at the door threatening to kick it in!

“Just a minute. I’m not dressed,” I dragged my husband into our bedroom. It wasn’t hard. He must have lost a hundred pounds.

“You have three minutes, lady. Then we’re breaking it down. The building manager asked us to perform a welfare check. The hallway stinks. Are you all right?”

“Better than ever,” I shouted, pulling on my old wedding gown. Thank goodness, it still fit. Guess that was the silver lining to my starvation diet of the past few weeks.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

“Almost done!”

Crash!

Moving like lightning, I stuffed my husband into his tuxedo, pulled him to his feet and worked his mouth into a beaming smile.

The cops spilled into our marital bedroom, stopped and stared.

My mind whirling, weeks of isolation shattered, it seemed appropriate to ask, “Is the limo outside?”

“The what?” the closest cop asked, finding his voice. His badge said he was a sergeant.

“The limo. To drive to us to the wedding. We’re renewing our vows.”

“Uh…”

A female officer, mature and wise, pushed her way to the fore. “Sure, honey. It’s downstairs waiting. We’re the police escort. We’ll be clearing the route.”

She turned to the sergeant, softly tapping finger against her temple. He nodded.

This irritated me. “Oh, so you think I’m crazy?”

“Darlin’, what woman isn’t on her wedding day?” She offered her arm. “C’mon, let’s walk downstairs. The sergeant here will help your husband down. He looks a little peaked. We’ll that’s a man for you. Strong as steel, except when it comes to walking down the aisle.”

Slowly, with great majesty, I descended the stairs. The street was empty, but for multiple cruisers and flashing lights.

“The police escort?”

“You can call it that,” the policewoman answered. She was so kind.

A long, black Cadillac pulled up. Two grim men exited and removed my husband from the sergeant’s arms.

“Are you the limo drivers?” I asked.

One of them, an older man wearing blue plastic gloves, eyed me quizzically. “Lady, we’re from the mortuary.”

The policewoman intervened before I had time to react. “They had the only limo in town that wasn’t booked. Your husband will be riding with them. You’re up here with me,” she said, guiding me towards a grey four-door sedan.

I began to squirm. For the first time since I killed my husband, something seemed off. “You mean we’re riding separately? Never heard of that.”

“It’s the latest trend, Bride magazine says,” the policewoman replied. She tightened her grip.

I slapped her face.

The two cops and the driver of the grey sedan wrestled me into the back seat. They strapped me in with a seat belt and wide leather straps. A gauzy hood came down over my head. I bit it with my teeth. A torn label flopped over. It read Property State Hospital.

“We’re not going to a chapel! You’re committing me!”

“You’ll have you own private room,” the policewoman said. Her lip was bleeding and her cheek was red.

“It’s called the honeymoon suite. After you,” the driver cracked. He put the sedan in gear.

“Why?”

“It’s the same locked room you occupied after you hammered your first husband to death ten years ago,” the policewoman said. She adjusted the hood so it was easier for me to breathe. “With a ball peen, that time.”

It all came back now, the secret I had tucked away, after they’d freed me on conditional release. My pervert dad. My volcanic anger. My bad taste for very bad men.

I screamed. And kept screaming every moment of every day, for years and years.

To ensure that my voice, and the voice of all mistreated women, was finally, truly heard. 

By: Anonymous

As Told To: Heatherleen Glade

The Ghost Ate Biscuits 'n Gravy.

The foul, rotten egg smell seeped into the front room of Frank M.’s apartment.

“Why does the pilot light always go off with 45 seconds left in the fourth quarter?” Frank asked, slamming the TV remote on the couch. He rose woozily to his feet.

Eight Budweisers in two hours made it hard to walk straight to the kitchen. Bending down, he peered into the oven. The pilot light burned bright blue.

So what had caused the smell?

Frank wondered about that as he staggered back to the living room and passed out face first on the couch.

He awoke Monday at noon. What a heaping mess his life had become. Tears disappeared into his tangled beard, just as they had at his brother Duane’s funeral two days before.

Duane had died doing what he loved best; duking it out in a bar fight. He’d thrown one punch—just one—and had missed, the momentum carrying his 376 pounds and empty head into the solid brass foot rail.

“F**kin’ miss you, bro’,” Frank blubbered, slowly sliding off the couch. He kept doing so until he heard several rapid-fire reports, like a braking Peterbilt.

Frank tensed. Fished for the tire iron he kept between the cushions, stood up and got ready to break bones.

But then the rotten egg smell returned and Frank smiled for the first time since Duane had died. Because an unseen presence had come to vanquish his grief.

His brother Duane’s ghost.

“Talk to me, bro’, talk to me,” Frank screamed. “They must have biscuits and gravy in Hell, because I’d recognize them farts anywhere!”

He inhaled the pungent air like it was life itself.

“C’mon, blast me again,” he shouted when the scent began to dissipate. “I can handle the stink. Don’t forget, I slept in the same room as you when we was growin’ up, dude.”

Draining Bud after Bud, Frank waited in vain for Duane to detonate. “Oh, I get it,” he chuckled uncomfortably. “You ain’t gonna do another—just ‘cause I asked. Still up to your old games, hey bro’? Well, f**ck, you, too. Maybe you’re better off dead.”

Frank spent the next hour cursing loudly at Duane, until the cops showed up on a noise complaint. Pissed that even as a ghost Duane could pull his chain, Frank tackled the nearest uniform.

Surrounded by blue, Frank was hauled downtown and booked.

Three days later, as soon as he returned to his apartment, Frank again began yelling at Duane. This continued until he was evicted, the living room ankle deep in empty cans.

When last spotted, Frank M. was in a sleazy Phoenix bar, cursing a ghostly Duane the assembled bikers, dealers, pimps and hos couldn’t see.

They laughed, they grumbled, but did nothing to further disturb the ranting man. Because Frank was 6’6” and 402-pounds.

And because the biscuits and gravy stench he raved about hung so heavily in the air.

reported by:

Doc Paranormal

Adjunct Professor without Portfolio

Edgar Allan Poe Community College

It's Raining Men.

“No, no, please don’t doctor! For the love of god. Don’t play that tape again! You’ll kill me!” I screamed.

“The sound of a little lightning and thunder isn’t going to hurt,” my psychiatrist chuckled. He was completely bald with a full white beard and an unsettling twitch in his right eye. “Especially now. You’re safe. So take a deep breath. Lean back and just enjoy being on my couch.”

He re-wound the ancient reel-to-reel tape, preparing to again unleash the hellish crash and boom that caused me, a full-grown man, to cower with fear. The nightmare cacophony that had transformed me from a healthy boy of six, electrified by the imminent return of my long-absent soldier dad, into the haunted wretch I am today.

 

“You have no idea what that sound does to me,” I yelled, pulling against thick leather restraints. I was strapped to the plush designer couch, heavy black belts cinched painfully tight over my wrists and ankles. Even my head was restrained, leaving me with no option to stare helplessly at the fly buzzing around my nose.

“Oh, yes I do,” the psychiatrist answered, the shrink I’d been assigned to under the government insurance plan for indigents. Even brilliant, overqualified indigents like me, brought to their knees by mental distress. “Which is why I had you undergo desensitization therapy. Exposing you repeatedly to the noise complex that distresses you should have reduced its ability to unnerve.

“After twenty-seven exposures, a thunder crack should now be just that, a thunder crack, not an apocalyptic event that threatens your very sense of self. But you have not improved. You remain a disturbed man. Therefore, I’m going to subject you to an experimental procedure I’ve dubbed Desensitization Therapy Plus+.

“I sensed initial befuddlement when I asked you to bring along audiotapes of your family’s voices; the tapes you said helped calm you when you were in crisis over past traumatic events. Well, now you’re going to find out why I asked. For your twenty-eighth treatment, I am going to play those calming voices in one channel while continuing to transmit thunder and lightning sounds through the other. Though the treatment will again be a painful experience, the psychological halo of the calming voices will, when all is said and done, negate the troubling noises, essentially neutering them.”

I pushed against the restrains, but it was useless to try. The leather straps were thick and my entire body was in full view. There was no way I could try to break free without the psychiatrist stopping me as soon as I began. So I gave up, saving my energy for a better time to strike.

“So you really believe it will work?” I asked. “The voices of my family mean everything to be because of what we went through.” Indeed, I played them in my ear buds when I meditated, an ever-repeating loop culled from various sources of my mom, dad and sister saying, “I love you.”

“DTP+,” he said with a tight grin, “will free you to laugh at a lightning strike, run with joy through the hardest rain. You’re not crazy, you’re not mentally ill, as your previous therapists have maintained.” He pointed to the stacks of file folders spilling across his polished teak desk.” I’ve immersed myself in your case and can say, to use a decidedly non-clinical term, they were full of bulls**t. I’m a full-blown Ivy League M.D.—a psychiatrist. Those others were a bunch of low-grade master’s degree social workers who wouldn’t know the DSM-5 from a coloring book.”

He balled his hands into fists. “I know of what I speak. You, dear sir, merely suffered a childhood trauma that I am going to eradicate today with my ground-breaking technique.” With that, he donned a pair of sound-deadening earphones, punched a button on the reel-to-reel, and twisted the volume dial to the far right.

Into one ear came a furious storm, into other, the soft voices of my loved ones.

The psychiatrist leaned back in his Eames chair, opened a leather-bound notebook and scribbled with a gold Cross pen as I shrieked in pain, until drooling, I returned to the long ago time when my childhood ended. And my benighted adulthood began…

“Mommy! Mommy! You’re so mean! Why can’t Darlene and I go out to play?” I shrieked with all force a six-year-old could muster. My lips were flecked with spittle, I’d been carrying on so long.

“There’s a terrible storm coming. Can’t you hear it?”

Indeed I could. Distant lightning flashed, followed by an ominous rumble. But I was too excited to sit still. My father was coming home from the secret war today after months overseas! Scuttlebutt had it that he was among the two thousand troops being transported back in the massive bellies of C-130s disguised as Fed Ex cargo planes.

Reports had been sketchy due to what my mom called a “news blackout.” All I knew was the war was still a fierce one, with one side gaining the upper hand before the other seized it back. It was a grim, never ending story told in flesh, blood and steel.

But today I was joyful. Daddy’s unit was flying back to our remote island home-away-from-home, rotating out of the front lines for overdue R&R.

Thunder boomed. Closer now. My mother ripped the living room drapes shut.

I could no longer see out. The playground set in the front yard. The makeshift pitching mound where I stood tall when dad and I played catch. Me, throwing sizzlers, dad behind the plate, flashing signs; two phantom World Series rings on the line. Dad had worked hard to make our assigned property a comfortable place, even though it was on an island without a name. In either the Atlantic or Pacific. That, too, had been censored for security reasons.

“Get down to the basement! Now!” Mom yelled. She was flustered but beautiful, her flaxen hair in an unraveling bun; a sky-blue apron over a sunflower yellow house dress. She was the quintessential mom, always there for Darlene and me, even when she appeared sad, her childhood sweetheart facing death across unknown seas.

I took Darlene’s tiny hand in mine. A prematurely serious girl of four, she depended on her big brother to keep her safe from the dangers that had been omnipresent from the day she had been born.

Little did Darlene know I needed her more than she did me. Her brave, upturned chin, her warm little hand. Wrapping her trembling body in my thin arms, muffling her quiet sobs, she infused me with strength; gave me a reason not to surrender to my own fears.

An unholy thunderclap shook dust from the massive table at the center of my dad’s basement workshop, piled high with cobwebbed hammers and saws, pining away for the touch of my dad’s sturdy hands. Hiding below it, Darlene and I cringed.

Mom clattered down the stairs. “Where are you two? Say something!”

“Here mommy,” I answered, poking out a hand.

“Thank god,” she cried, crawling beneath the table, hugging both of us, cupping our cheeks. Mom and dad were our ultimate protectors. Nothing could go wrong when wrapped within their arms.

It was then storm hit with a vengeance. The house shook. The rafters groaned, as if resisting power forces bent on tearing them apart. Brilliant lights flashed in the crack beneath the basement door. The adventurous side of me wanted to climb the stairs, rip the curtains away from the picture window and behold the awesome spectacle. The cautious part, the real me, wanted nothing more than to remain within my mother’s protective embrace.

Another boom, the loudest yet. The lights went out. I could barely see my hands. And then Darlene announced, “Mommy, I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Try to hold, it darling,” my mother replied, obviously exasperated.

Darlene squirmed. A warm liquid saturated my upper leg.

“Too, late, mom,” I said, “She’s already peeing.”

Darlene whimpered. “I want to be a good girl and sit on the toilet.”

“Okay, okay,” my mom said. “We can’t have you feeling ashamed.” She touched me on the shoulder. “Take Darlene to the toilet down here, in the finished part of the basement. Wait outside and don’t wander.”

I grasped Darlene’s hand. “Let’s move. And be careful where you step!”

“I will,” she answered, “And I’ll hold it until we get there like mommy wants. But please hurry.”

Using my free hand, I felt my way there, but not before nicking my index finger when I bumped into dad’s table saw. I felt blood weaving into my palm. In better times, when it wasn’t storming, I would have shown it to my dad, the stream of blood, evidence that I could sustain terrible wounds and come out smiling. Now, it just hurt.

“Okay, go,” I ordered Darlene when we arrived at the modest bathroom.

Gleeful, she raced in.

“Don’t lock the door,” I warned just as I heard the tell-tale click.

“I’ll be quick,” Darlene said.

I rattled the doorknob, then shrugged. If anything thing went wrong, if the door got stuck, I could easily batter it down with a shoulder.

I leaned against the wall, killing time. It became eerily quiet, as if the storm had passed. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to go outside, see the damage it had done. Maybe when dad got home, he would ask me to help him clear away a few felled apple tree limbs. I could show him my cut finger, which was bleeding better than ever before. I practiced throwing a slider. Strike one!

“All done,” Darlene, emerging from the bathroom, announced. I’d been so caught up in my fantasies, I hadn’t even heard her.

“Wait here,” I said. “I need to go inside and dress my wound.” I figured dad would be even more impressed if I wrapped a thick wad of toilet paper around it that became soaked with blood. I closed the door behind me, figuring I’d take a leak, too.

The toilet paper dispenser was down to a few sheets, so I bent over to find another roll in the cabinet under the sink. Rummaging around blindly, I stumbled across a plunger, a can of Drano, a can of Raid and assorted wrenches and PVC plumbing parts, but no f*****g TP. Finally, I remembered that mom kept the extra rolls in a plastic bag behind the toilet tank. Brushing away cobwebs and grit, I tore the bag open.

 Elated, I was wrapping my trophy wound when a sonic boom knocked me off my feet. I hit my head on the floor, a staggering blow that made me instantly sick. Trying to stand up, I was brought back down by a chaotic drumbeat of similar booms, accompanied by the sound of massive hail crashing onto the roof. The storm had returned, intensified a hundred-fold.

Swooning, trying to steady myself against any handhold I could find, I lurched out of the bathroom. “Darlene! Let’s go back to mom!” I screeched, blindly flailing my arms with the hope that I’d find her head, her shoulders, any part of her.

But then, I saw a rectangle of flashing light—the basement door was open—Darlene was upstairs!

My mom staggered out of the darkness. She’d noticed the irregular lights, too—shocking white, then black and back again. “What happened?” she asked, fingers splayed over her mouth.

“Darlene got away! I was taking a—” Stopping mid-sentence, I flew up the stairs. There was still time for the World Series hero to save the day.

What I saw when I slid into the living room has shaped my life to this very day: The drapes had been pulled back, the view through the picture window a hallucination of jagged silver streaks and snapping branches. And everywhere massive objects were hurtling down from the sky, battering the muddy earth, forming craters.

Then Darlene, her face pressed against the glass, turned to me and, with wonder in her voice said, “Look. It’s raining men!”

Indeed, torsos, limbs and intact bodies were pounding down like human hail, caving the roof of the family car, pockmarking the corrugated steel roof of dad’s workshop until it collapsed of its own accord.

Explosions rattled the firmament, as enemy rockets burst the C-130s, spilling their precious cargo far and wide. Starting out as specks, the soldiers became recognizably human as they pelted the flattened landscape, spewing viscera and mud.

“Oh my god,” my mother cried. She raced past us, flung open the front door and staggered into the front yard, her arms upstretched as she turned round and round.

“Mom, come back,” I implored. “You’ll get hurt.” I hurried onto our covered porch, but couldn’t bring myself to leave its shelter. A body pierced the roof above me, a uniformed soldier with a shredded scalp and ballooning eyeballs jolting to a stop inches from my nose. His dress blues were littered with dangling medals. An insignia stitched to what remained of his right shoulder indicated he was a member of my father’s unit.

I sought refuge in the furthest corner of the porch, pressed my back against the wall, shut my eyes and tried to make it all go away. Until, until, Darlene shook me by the shoulder, pulled me by the hand and said, “Come see. Come see.”

I followed, Darlene looking back every once and a while, her eyes alight, a big smile on her face, a wonderful like I seldom saw. “I have a big surprise. I have a big surprise,” she chanted.

Finally, when we reached the far edge of the porch, she stopped and pointed. “Daddy’s home,” she said.

And there he was, my big handsome dad, wearing his military best, lying in a heap atop a lifeless figure in a sky-blue apron over a sunflower yellow housedress.

No!

No!

Yes.

Mom.

My parents were locked in a final embrace, their broken faces fused in an eternal kiss. Mom’s lips had been sheared off upon dad’s impact. From my vantage point, she appeared to be smiling.

Then the audio tape stopped and I emerged from my reverie.

“And how does my favorite patient feel now?” the psychiatrist asked, his gin-soaked breath overpowering, his smug, bloated face just inches from mine.

“No improvement.” I struggled to throttle him, the thick leather restraints saving his life.

“Don’t jump to a conclusion. Remember, I warned you that this session would cause the same unmitigated pain as the previous twenty-seven. The true test comes now, in its aftermath. If my theory is correct, I can now play for you the storm audio in both channels and you should suffer no harm.” He leaned towards the reel-to-reel. “May I?”

Still reeling from the last assault, I was not ready for another. But before I could object, the tape again rolled. The same earth-shaking blasts, the rumblings, reverberations. But I felt nothing. No childhood terror. No adult fear. Nothing but a feeling of wonder at Mother’s Nature’s grand fury.

“I’m cured,” I bawled. “Cured! Cured! Cured! Oh thank you doctor, for relieving me of eternal pain. You’re a genius. A great man!”

Beaming, he said, “Hold on. We’re not quite yet done.” He rose unsteadily from his Eames chair and undid my straps.

I sat upright, rubbing my swollen wrists and ankles. I felt faint, blood draining from my head. So this was what it felt like to be a liberated man, able to acknowledge suffering while remaining on an even emotional keel.

“Put the head phones on again,” the psychiatrist asked, holding them out.

“Why? Didn’t you proved that Desensitization Plus+ works?”

“There’s a finishing touch. I want you to listen to your family’s voices again. It will smooth out any kinks, cement your gains. I know that sounds like psychiatric gobbledygook, but any job worth doing is worth doing well.” He was drinking Tanqueray openly now, straight from the bottle. But hey, I thought, he deserved to celebrate.

“Whatever you say, doc.” I donned the headphones. He flipped on the recording, and from the first parental, “I love you,” I was in unbelievable pain. “I love you,” said my mother, sister and dad, each word like a .44 Magnum slug piercing my skull. I fought the urge to break the headphones in two, hoping the anguish would subside, but it continued until the loop ended and started again.

“What the hell’s wrong?” the doc asked, tearing the headphones off me, throwing them aside. He finished off the gin.

“I can’t listen to my family talk without excruciating pain. And their voices, their precious voices were all that kept me hanging on.” I rose to my feet, now face-to-face with the stinking, slovenly doctor. How could I have allowed myself to be fooled by him?

“Listen young man,” he said, “I informed you up front this was an experimental procedure. Yet you decided to proceed for unbridled personal gain.”

“Personal gain? You mean to feel well again?”

The psychiatrist took a wild swing with the bottle. “This can all be fixed, if you’d just settle down. Obviously, what happened is an unexpected boomerang effect. You were desensitized to lightning and thunder while simultaneously developing an aversion to your family’s voices. A novel sort of transference. It’s fascinating twist, actually that warrants further investigation.” He shattered the Tanqueray on his teak desk, pointing the jagged end at me. “We’re making history here, son. You and me.”

Adopting a messy fencer’s pose, he lunged at me with the bottle. Missing, he began whipping it back and forth, nicking my finger, the same one that had been bloodied during the storm.

Enraged, I slammed the reel-to-reel into his chest. He fell to the floor. I beat him senseless. The spools of tape kept whirling, going nowhere.

I bent down, found his Brooks Brothers wallet, extracted $140 cash—the same amount he charged for a session—and said, “Hope you feel better now.”

I strode out his door and down the hall, past the other patients, beleaguered by unknown psychic maladies, waiting their turns. “Doc might be a while,” I informed them, “He’s recovering from a heavy dose of anger therapy.”

I hit the street crying. Lord, was I going to miss hearing from mom, dad and sis. But in my heart and gut, I knew I would survive. For the first time ever.

In a weird and unexpected way Desensitization Plus+ had truly worked. 

When the psychiatrist recovers, I’ll recommend him on Yelp.    

by: Anonymous

as told to: 

Doc Paranormal

Adjunct Professor without Portfolio

Edgar Allan Poe Community College

      

American workers to receive pay in form of lottery tickets by end of 2020, declares soothsayer.

Already beleaguered American workers will soon be receiving pay envelopes containing lottery tickets instead of paychecks, a soothsayer revealed in a just-completed seance.

According to the soothsayer, wages will fall to the point that, by the end of 2020, employees will gladly accept lottery tickets instead of cash--with the hope that they can make ends meet if they "hit the jackpot."

This reporter attended the seance at the request of The Lovely Darlene, a mystic who advises several  noted Wall Street hedge fund managers and is unwilling to give out her last name.

The vast corporate boardroom was dark and the accompanying music was appropriately soothing. This reporter was told, but could not confirm, that violinist Leslie Stirling played throughout the seance from behind a wind-swept black satin sheet.

The takeaway:

According to the Lovely Darlene, one out of every thirteen million American workers will become obscenely rich under this new policy. One out of every million will win a loaded 2020 model Toyota Corolla, within which to sit while waiting in a 2-mile-long food line. The remainder will need to remain patient until their next pay cycle and the fresh prospect of a winning ticket.

reported by:
Dawnlee Hope, Jr.
Undergraduate Student
Conspiracy Theories Curriculum
Edgar Allan Poe Community College 

I Weaponized Clinical Depression for a Psychological War Start-Up.

Exclusive to Edgar Allan Poe Community College:

I Weaponized Clinical Depression for a Psychological War Start-Up. Now I Feel Overwhelming Remorse.

Patient #1: “My entire life is a sin, from the moment I defiled my mother’s body in the delivery room to the countless times I forgot to wash my hands before making love.”

Patient #2: “It’s like I’m the world’s most disgusting Port-A-John. People would rather s**t in public than take a dump in me.”

If you think the above quotes are the musings of self-pitying failures, you’d be very, very wrong.

Patient #1 is a retired Air Force Colonel, judged to be of rock-solid mental health after a withering battery of tests designed by my team.

Patient #2 is a superb athlete and Olympic medal winner with zero psychiatric issues.

Until now.

Indeed. As I write this, both patients suffer from major depressive disorder characterized by abject lethargy and constant risk of self harm.

Why? Both interviews were conducted after exposure to Substance X, a compound aimed at triggering in enemy soldiers an acutely depressed state. Yes, hardened warriors lose the will to fight, casting aside their weapons and begging for mercy.

Substance X was created by me. My name is (withheld). I’m distinguished scientist whose moral compass went awry in designing a weapon aimed at ending for all time further “hot wars.” I’m revealing this publicly because my device has fallen into malevolent hands.

The march towards war without death is being perverted by forces beyond my control. Therefore, I have adopted a position similar to that of Daniel Ellsberg, when he released the Pentagon Papers in 1971; wrongdoing must be exposed, even at great personal risk.

That’s why I’m penning this open letter to all American citizens of good faith. Thanks to Edgar Allan Poe Community College for the opportunity to publish it here.

Background: I’m a Nobel Prize-nominated scientist, specializing in the field of psychiatric warfare. I hate war. But after years of watching the body count rise, I was forced to admit that war was deeply embedded in the human psyche. The desire to fight is an integral part of who we are, beginning with “my dad can beat up your dad” and ending with the atomic bomb, the most destructive weapon of war yet devised.

Given that, the issue, as I saw it, was to devise a weapon that allowed nations to act on this primitive impulse, while killing no one. For a long time, it was a low-budget labor of love. Then, as luck would have it, I received a call from a psych war start-up in late 2018. The principals, ex-military, ex-intelligence insiders, had gotten wind of my project. Their stated goal was to determine if Substance X was scalable, and if so, to market the product internationally.

I jumped at the chance to join their distinguished team. Working with these guys, many of whom I knew from previous classified endeavors, would allow me to play an instrumental role in bringing about permanent world peace.

Plus, I was offered a healthy portfolio of stock options that would make me a near-billionaire should the company succeed in going public (that I succumbed to such a base need, I am truly ashamed. I am less man and more earthworm because of it; an earthworm engorged with the rotted fruit of its labors).

I was flown by private jet to the firm’s headquarters. Security there was tight, much more so than at Theranos and other infamous start-ups. How tight? All those entering the building, including me, were required to submit to a rectal exam and a colonoscopy, in order to ensure nothing was smuggled via the lowermost reaches of the digestive system.

After two hours of embarrassing recovery, followed by a gourmet meal, I joined a select group gathered in the otherwise empty company auditorium. They had come to hear my presentation.

I was ushered onstage, outfitted with an omni-directional mic and asked to proceed. Anxious, for I did not know how this elite audience would react, I began my sales pitch: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have entered a new age when the general public is repulsed by wanton killing on a mass scale. Therefore, in order to defeat an enemy while maintaining public support, we need a way to incapacitate hostile troops while shedding minimal blood. But why clinical depression? Why a depression bomb, to coin a phrase? Good question.”

I nodded at a video screen behind me. A slide show had been hastily assembled. The word Schizophrenia appeared, highlighted on either side by red lightning bolts and kaleidoscopic whorls.

“Schizophrenia was ruled out after student volunteers sprayed with my proprietary substance exhibited a wide range of unpredictable behaviors. This I decidedly did not want. A heavily armed, yet erratic, enemy force is not a desirable outcome.

“A bi-polar weapon had similar problems, prompting study subjects in the up phase to feel they were impervious to harm. One individual, in such an agitated state, became convinced that an Army of One (namely him), could defeat a battalion of some 300 to 800 enemy soldiers.

“A dose of clinical depression, on the other hand, instilled in the volunteers a sense of hopelessness, lethargy and abject despair. A quiz administered shortly afterwards indicated that ninety-five percent of the subjects felt that nothing in life was worth fighting for.

“The implications,” I said, as those words appeared on the screen, “are that in a war-time setting, similarly disheartened enemy troops could be taken prisoner with minimal struggle. Once behind barbed wire in outdoor camps, they could be administered a reviving dose of a generic SSRI. Back to psychiatric baseline, they could then be put to productive use in work camps, until all their fellow hostiles were dosed and the conflict came to a swift end. With a clear victor, yet minimal casualties on both sides.”

After a tense pause, during which sweat dripped from my brow in a humiliating close-up on the video screen, the entire audience rose as one. And began clapping and hooting with scattered shouts of “Here! Here!”

“Should I take that as a signal you want to move ahead?” I asked, fighting back tears. My dream of bloodless wars was about to take a giant step towards becoming a reality.

 

“Yes!”

“Yes!”

“Immediately."

“If not sooner,” a former NSA insider cracked wise to gales of laughter from the ebullient throng.

In short order, I was issued luxury living quarters on company grounds, a crack staff, unlimited budget and, yes, stock options, after my attorney intervened. Should the company go public, I planned to donate 50% of my personal proceeds to the National Humane Society in honor of my deceased wife, a dog lover and champion of orphaned pot belly pigs, of which we had fifteen until she suffered cardiac arrest while shoveling a veritable mountain of hog s**t.

Filthy swine! I should have butchered them all!

Sorry, but I’ve been prone to volcanic outbursts of late, for reasons you shall soon understand.

Two frenetic days later, I began the next research phase. This time, due to the top secret nature of the undertaking, study subjects were the crème-de-la-crème of national security personnel. Men and women of high accomplishment and iron will; courageous volunteers willing to suffer weapons-grade despair until the administration of an antidote in the form of a high-octane, inhalable SSRI.

The first session was a failure, which shamed me to no end. I felt like a naked man being laughed at by priests. I’d stationed the volunteers in a safe room equipped with overhead sprinklers that, when an assistant turned them on, emitted a fine spray of Substance X. The same mixture I’d administered college students with heartening results. I’d then waited for the elite military subjects to manifest the symptoms of major depressive disorder.

Unfortunately, I’d underestimated their ability to resist the power of the disheartening spray. They’d become sad, but not despondent to the point of incapacitating self-hate.

The executive team funding my work was not happy. I was informed that, if an effective weapon was not created by the end of the week, my stock options would be halved.

Under monumental pressure to achieve better results, I labored for ninety-six hours straight to develop a fire-extinguisher-type weapon that blasted a thick fog of Substance X concentrate. My lab assistants pitched in to the point of exhaustion.

Fighting back sleep, we donned air-tight protective gear, entered the safe room and sprayed a billowing cloud of Substance X until the makeshift weapon was emptied. We then exited, showered and removed our cumbersome suits. Pulling on slacks, I hurried in my bare feet to an observation window and waited anxiously for the cloud to subside. The project’s future was at stake. I knew that the demanding investors would pull the plug if significant progress had not been made.

I was filled with a strange mixture of elation and sorrow when it became clear that the volunteers behind the glass were overcome with existential gloom. Elated that the experiment had worked. Sorrowful that true American heroes had been reduced to such a pathetic state. They stood catatonic, unable to make eye contact or utter a word. Then one-by-one, as if Substance X was leaching into their very souls, these selfless patriots curled up on the floor, squealing like abandoned piglets marked for imminent slaughter.

I alerted my corporate masters, who raced into the lab, clapping each other on the back. Some babbled on their phones. For all knew, they were ordering fresh Lamborghinis or bigger mansions than they already possessed.

At this, my spirits plunged; I now hated myself for selling a non-lethal, but incapacitating weapon of war to mere profiteers. Disgusted, I wanted out.

However, my corporate overseers had me by the financial balls; I’d already made a large cash donation to the non-profit I’d established in my beloved wife’s memory. If I pulled out of the depression project now, my stock options would be taken away. I’d be penniless and, with my reputation ruined, I’d be unemployable as anything but a greeter at Wal-Mart.

So I answered “yes,” when the CEO asked me to see if I could replicate the results in a variety of novel settings. After choking down a celebratory dinner, I went back to work.

Day followed wretched day. Repeatedly, I was ordered to increase the dosage. As time went by, it became more and more difficult to justify the anguish I was putting my subjects through. It broke my heart to see these gallant men and women beg for sharp knives in order to cut their own throats.

I refused further gourmet meals (aka bribes). I rapidly began losing weight. My face broke out from the unrelenting stress. It was a hellish routine; saturating the safe room with new formulations of Substance X, taking notes as America’s heroes fell apart, then exiting and thoroughly cleaning my protective gear. Mentally spent, I’d trudge upstairs to the executive suite and file my nightly oral report, which always seemed to meet with frowns and muttered disapproval.

I began to suspect that management was taking actions behind my back; a misplaced vial here, a notebook with a page missing. Who was entering the locked lab without my permission? What were they up to? The constant speculation made me weary. Yet, I’d lie awake all night, unable to close my eyes.

My moral crisis reached a peak when a study participant, a highly disciplined martial arts wonder, was found hanging from his Black Belt after another round of Substance X. Fortunately, he was quickly cut down. Coughing and gagging, he survived.

While many in top management high-fived this grotesque display of Substance X’s super-sized effectiveness, I was bothered to no end.

Wracked by guilt, I began staying in bed all day, unwilling to set foot in the lab. My mind became a rat’s nest of racing thoughts. I developed agonizing aches and pains.

And then came the final straw: the antidote stopped working. One night, despite countless doses of inhalable SSRIs, the fallen heroes remained critically morbid in mind and spirit. Management, indeed, had been laboring mightily behind my back to neutralize the effectiveness of any and all antidepressants.

That’s right. Prozac, et al, no longer worked. My top-drawer study subjects had been relegated to eternal mental agony. Many were institutionalized in a private psychiatric hospital owned at arm’s length by the start-up.

I protested to no avail. It soon became clear that the company had misused my intellectual property for its own reprehensible ends. I was of no more value to them than a flip-phone. Neither was my mission for world peace.

While I’ve been allowed to remain in my luxury apartment, I haven’t the energy to rise from the floor.

I live in perpetual darkness with no hope of feeling like myself again.

How can I state that with such certainty? Well, you see, I found a tear, a deliberate tear in my protective suit yesterday. For my perceived disloyalty, I’d been exposed to a toxic dose of the new and improved Substance X, for which there was no cure.

My body, my mind, my soul are afflicted with unceasing despair.

There’s a gun on the coffee table and a pen in my hand. With any luck, I will be able to resist oblivion long enough to finish writing this open letter—to warn you—to warn every living soul—of the true horror to come.

The start-up was just sold to a malevolent consortium of hedge fund managers. I’m now rich man.

But…but…the hedge fund guys and gals, well, I hear they’re quietly equipping hundreds of crop dusters with Substance X weaponry. The alleged goal is to fog major cities. To conduct a war of depression and despair against the American people. To strengthen the grip they have over our lives.

The possibility that someone will read this gives me hope. A reason to keep a firm grip on the pen. To keep writing. To never stop. Until a new day dawns.

Writing is my Prozac.

There’s still time to find yours.

by:

Anonymous

posted by Doc Paranormal

Adjunct Professor, Automatic Writing Curriculum

Edgar Allan Poe Community College