A Remote Possibility

The evolution of America’s favorite gadget, the remote control, is unparalleled in the annals of human history. A mere 60 years ago the first longinquus gubernare crawled out of the technological muck and sauntered into the living room of modern society, forever changing the way we watch television and open the garage door. Nothing good can come from a species that evolves so fast.

My first remote control was as large as Captain Kirk’s console on Star Trek and almost as dangerous. It was “remote” by virtue of a 30-ft cord which ran from the television to wherever I happened to be sitting, and during the holidays some intoxicated relative was always tripping over the cord and yanking the TV off its precarious perch atop a stack of milk crates. It had three rows of buttons which I am convinced would’ve deployed nuclear submarines to Cuba if pressed in the correct sequence. I know for a fact that pressing down three buttons at the same time unlocked the adult channels for free. The images were blurry and crooked, but the imaginative mind of a pubescent teen is undeterred by issues with the vertical and horizontal hold.

The beast we know today has grown smaller and more intelligent. With elaborate cunning it has managed a scientific miracle. For every evolutionary jump forward the remote control has made, man has regressed in direct proportion. Our society is fatter, lazier, and dumber than it was fifty years ago. I blame it all on this Luciferian abomination called the remote control. The remote is bent on world domination through lulling its oppressor to sleep. While we’ve been fast forwarding through the latest Go Daddy commercial, the remote has been plotting our demise.

According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, “childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and tripled in adolescents in the past 30 years.” The remote control is the icon of a sedentary lifestyle. The reason our children are so fat is because they have yet to find a way to DVR sit-ups and play them back while they sleep. Kids would see their butts married to a polyester sofa before they would walk a hundred yards to watch a gnat eat a John Deere tractor. I’m even willing to bet that many teens today lack the ingenuity to press down three buttons on the remote at the same time in order to get the adult channels for free.

Young people aren’t the only ones who have suffered the wrath of the remote control. The average hours worked by adults have been steadily declining since 1960. In a period of 35 years (1964-1999) the average hours spent on the job dropped 11 percent. After all, who has time to work when the remote just issued an alert that Dog the Bounty Hunter will not be recorded because someone else scheduled three conflicting programs?

While the remote control has been getting smarter, the average IQ of humanoids peaked in 1950 and has been migrating south ever since. One study (Lynn and Harvey, 2008) claims that the world is getting dumber because smart people are having fewer children. That makes sense. Smart people know that children will attempt to monopolize the remote control.

The evidence is clear. Barring a significant change in our sedentary habits the remote will conquer civilization as surely as the Visigoths dismantled the Roman Empire. In the meantime we can only hope that it will grant us an ability to rewind our cats when they miss the litter box by six inches.

Works Cited

CL, Ogden, et al. “Prevalence of obesity and trends in body mass index among US children and adolescents,1999-2010.” Journal of the American Medical Association (2012): 483-490. Print.

Kirkland, Katie. “On the decline in average weekly hours worked.” July 2000. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Document. 8 May 2013.

Singh, Gunjan. How the world’s IQ is in decline. 31 July 2010. Article. 8 May 2013.

One of the most frequent things a sensitive hears is, “If you’re so psychic, why don’t you tell me what I had for dinner last night?” or something similar.

Two things. First, if a “psychic” agrees to reveal your gastrointestinal activities over the past 24 hours, you might want to save the $50 he will charge you for the information and proceed directly to your next meal. This individual very likely has the psychic ability of a Louisiana crawfish.

Secondly, does that information really benefit you? The psychic who abides within the Great Porcelain Throne will give it to you in a few hours for free.

I’m being humorous, but my point is that genuine psychics respect the serious nature of their work. To understand exactly how they view their psychic ability, one need look no farther than the Bible.

In the Old Testament the Israelites worshiped God in a temple which followed them wherever they went on their journey out of Egypt. When this temple was erected it consisted of several sections. The innermost section was referred to as the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies, or Most Holy Place, was separated from the rest of the temple by an elaborate veil. Within the Holy of Holies the legendary Ark of the Covenant, considered the very throne of God on earth, was kept from view.

No one was permitted to enter the Holy of Holies except the High Priest, and even he could only enter once a year to offer sacrifice on the Day of Atonement. If all of this sounds like serious business, it was. The penalty for stepping behind the veil without the aforementioned permission to do so was immediate death.

How does this relate to psychic ability? Because both the Holy of Holies and psychic gifts are meant to be approached in the same way. Whenever I look behind the veil of our five sense reality, my reasons for doing so better be damned good. They need to be unselfish and in the spirit of helping others. My point in all of this is that looking beyond the veil is a humble acknowledgment of the gift you have been given. It is nothing less than offering yourself up as a servant of the Most High.

The same is true with paranormal investigation. Those who participate in it should do so in a serious way. I am blessed to be associated with a group of people who understand the seriousness of looking beyond that veil and serving others in this regard. Don’t get me wrong, we have a wonderful time on investigations, but each and every member of the Red River Parish Paranormal team never loses sight of the fact that they are being given the privilege of looking behind that veil.

Please don’t ask a psychic or a team of investigators to enter the Holy of Holies on your behalf so that they can tell you what color of underwear you have on.

In my very first investigation with RRPP my sense of duty was tested. We were investigating a cemetery known as Butler Hill in Red River parish. I was given very little information prior to the trip. We work this way to preserve the integrity of our investigations and not pollute any impressions I may receive.

We were in the oldest part of the cemetery where the team had previously experienced some significant phenomena, and the team began to conduct a dowsing session in an attempt to establish communication with any beings present. Christy Ezernack was holding the dowsing rods and asking questions when I saw the first grainy images of something I sensed had been observing us for some time. What I saw broke my heart.

For me the things I see are often like the images of an old silent film. They are almost always in black and white unless the presence of color is significant to the message being conveyed. Standing just to Christy’s side and staring up at her with a look of childish curiosity was a young boy. He was watching her hold the rods and paying very close attention. At least once he raised his wispy hands in an attempt to touch the rods.

Christy had established that a being was present, and she asked all of us if there were any questions we would like to ask. Hesitantly, I told Christy to ask if the being was a child. I knew the answer but I wanted us to confirm it in an unbiased way.

The rods said yes, and the boy took his eyes off of Christy long enough to give me a quick smile. We proceeded through a few more questions…painful questions…which told us that the young boy had witnessed his mother being hurt by an abusive father. When the last question was asked the boy looked toward Candie Huber who was standing near the fence which surrounded the grave. He asked, forlornly, “Where am I?”

I spun and quickly left the gravesite, hoping that my personal anguish was not visible to the rest of the team. I knew that it was because they were feeling it, too. Will Vaughan had already expressed his discomfort and no one was in a particularly cheery mood. My wife, Sharon, was very quiet and Josh Cook was visibly shaken as he and I walked with Will to another grave site.  The image of that little boy, alone and looking at Christy with his big eyes, will remain with me for many years. I’m not sure I will ever forget it.

It would have been so much easier to simply lie and tell the team I saw something else or nothing at all. I could have removed myself under the pretense of examining other areas of the cemetery. But that would have been sacrificing the integrity of our team, and that is something I am never willing to do.

As Sharon and I left the cemetery that night I sent Will a text message.

“We have to go back. That child needs peace.”

The things we encounter as a team are sometimes heartbreaking. We do what we do for free, without any expectation of personal gain. Every member of Red River Parish Paranormal must be willing to bear the sadness and loneliness that is inherent in what we do. I love every member of the team for their willingness to do that.

Children may present us with the greatest likelihood of documenting psychic ability. Unfortunately, psychic phenomena in children is often attributed to a vivid imagination or other mundane causes.

Over time this suppression of psychic ability dulls the psychic senses as the child grows into an adult. These individuals have been conditioned to believe that such phenomena does not exist, and so the vast majority of adults never recover their psychic abilities.

The loss of innocence in this regard is very slippery. It creeps in at various moments during childhood, the result of interaction with a world that is based on a five-sense reality. Allow me to provide some specific examples.

When I was seven years old we lived on a rather large farm in Texas. Behind the house there was a very small stream of water which ran from a larger pond at the far back of the property. By the time the stream coursed through our backyard it was no more than two inches deep, but the water constantly moved along on its journey toward another pond.

One day I decided to go fishing in this little stream. It didn’t matter that the stream was two inches deep and could barely support the existence of tadpoles. I was simply a child at play, pretending that I was on the banks of a mighty river. With no brothers or sisters, such imaginative moments were not uncommon for me. They allowed me to entertain myself.

As I sat there with a pole and line, waiting for something to swim down that stream, a teenager who lived down the road came by and saw me sitting there.

“Have you caught your whale yet?” he mockingly asked.

I don’t remember ever playing that imaginative game again after that day. In one brief moment the taunting words of someone else had snuffed out my desire.

Our first grandchild will soon be two years old. If, from the moment he was born, his parents constantly referred to the color blue as red, he would’ve become conditioned to believe that. By the time he entered kindergarten he would have referred to the sky as being red and identified other blue items in the same way. It is very likely that he would be able to get away with this for a little while.

By the time first grade begins, this conditioning becomes a problem. Other children begin to take note of his error and tease him about it. They might begin to call him stupid, or even harsher things. At some point he will then associate what he believes to be true with pain and humiliation, and he will conform to the more widely held beliefs that surround him.

Our brains operate on the principles of pain and pleasure. We are hard-wired to avoid pain and seek out pleasure. Therefore, when we are subjected to something that is painful we will do whatever we can to avoid it.

Man tends to regard psychic phenomena as an imaginative flight of fancy. He cannot see beyond the five-sense reality in which he functions. There may have been a time when he could see beyond those five senses, but conditioning has suppressed any psychic ability he may have once had.

Parents should encourage a sense of wonder and imagination in their children. Let them fish for a whale in two inches of water. The world will be along soon enough to harpoon their innocence.