For the last three years, a very generous person who strongly believes in psychic ability and the paranormal opens his beautiful and ethereal Uncommon Garden to the Rhine for a fundraiser. This amazing place is nestled in a community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This year, we were serenaded with music that sounded like the soundtrack to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. I could almost see the misted mountains of China as I listened to them.
The party guests sat on benches along a convoluted boardwalk while the guests of honor spoke. They are some of the most illustrious in the Para- psychological circle. Joe McMoneagle, whom I’ve listened to a few times, is a frequent guest of the Rhine and a member of its Board. His claim to fame was as a psychic for the CIA during the Cold War period. The CIA at the time had information that the Soviet Union was using psychics as intelligence agents and perhaps influencing important people from afar. For twenty years, the program that had become project Star Gate involved several people who could sit in a room and “see” things in another part of the world. If you’ve been reading any of my previous posts, I have described psychic ability as mercurial and not time-dependent. Though some of the intelligence gathered through this method of Remote Viewing had a few things right, some things were not. Perhaps what they saw had occurred many years ago or would occur many years in the future. The time frame for Star Gate was before any reliable technology could be used to gather similar intelligence.
Dr. Ed May, once director of the Star Gate project, was also present. He is a physicist who has been studying psychic ability for many decades. He has continued research into Remote Viewing since the Star Gate program was defunded in the mid-1980’s. One of his latest studies was using the release of liquid nitrogen in an undisclosed location to see if the change in temperature (or energy) would enhance Remote Viewing.
Anita Woodley is one of my favorite people to talk to and is my inspiration for the character Shasta, one of Callie’s psychic friends. Anita had experienced psychic ability quite young while living with her grandmother. Over time, the ability waned as it often does until Anita became pregnant with her son. She began to have these conversations with him before he was born. Concerned that she was having a mental break, Anita consulted a psychologist and a physician. Based on what she said, the physician recommended she go to the Rhine and discuss what she was going through with the experts in psychic ability. Anita is an extremely talented storyteller as well. She has an uncanny ability to embody people she has known or even some that she has just met.
Because I am immensely grateful to the Rhine for teaching me about psychic ability, I worked in the kitchen that evening helping to prepare food for the party. Once everything was out on the table and replenished as needed, I took a turn on the maze-like stone pathways that meander through the walled garden. Though there are plants here and there, it is not a botanical garden. Rather it’s more like an experience of organically shaped stone, metal, and water some of which is shrouded in mist. I entered a small grotto that reminded me of the cave system at the University of Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, Florida. When I was a child of ten, my father would take me to the museum, where he worked as a Curator of Education, and let me wander around. I loved to find the little crevices in the caves where small animals could be found. This grotto has similar little gems though they held Aztec gods or a cache of crystals. I could exit the little cave along the path or go up a slanted walkway to view another amazing rock formation.
If you love dragons or serpents of any kind, this is the garden for you. Several sculptures of stone dragons, snakes and Quetzalcoatl are prominently displayed amongst the trees. One of the most amazing dragons begins innocently as a stone wall along the walkway until you look up about twenty feet to see its head stretched up like a wolf baying at the moon. If you watch long enough, this dragon will bellow fire while mist emits from its nostrils. At its left foot is a partially opened geode and by its right side, a large egg that resembles a face-hugger egg from the Alien movies. Along that same path, a pond extends lengthwise through the center of the garden. One expects to see Koi swimming colorfully through the water but sees the metal shark sculpture instead. Every section houses a little morsel of interest.
When the sun goes down, the garden becomes a mystical arena of light and fire evoking a more sinister feeling, if you have that kind of imagination. Under what appears to be a dancing Hindu god are color changing pictographs that could be from ancient aliens. The Quetzalcoatl heads are framed with torches and the dragon’s fire lights the night. Light from organic and electronic sources peeks out from different rock formations here and there. Even though I was there to work, I left feeling like I had emerged from another world. I can’t think of a more appropriate place to have a Parapsychological party.
