RETURN TO FORTEANAThe Knock At The Door
by Graham Conway
Around 1983 we invited a group of friends to our home in Delta, BC, with the intention of trying to assist a lady who was puzzled by an incident that had taken place during her return from a holiday in the Chilcotins. She, her son and a male companion, had been approached by a red ball of light while driving along a road. They had lost all memory of events from that point on, until quite some time later.
The purpose of our get together was an attempt to recover, with the assistance of hypnosis, the unrecalled events "lost" during the UFO(?) encounter.
Present were myself, my wife, a native Indian (Ojibway) friend, the lady who had experienced "missing time", and most important of all, our experienced hypnotist friend.
The subject stretched out on our chesterfield, with myself by her head holding a microphone of the tape recorder. Facing the subject and positioned by her feet was the hypnotist. My wife and our remaining female guest were sat facing the subject. Our red setter was locked in the kitchen.
Initially, the hypnotist followed an established routine to set the subject at ease, before commencing his count down to hopefully obtain a positive response from the subject.
Events quickly indicated that the lady was responding in a predictable manner. After some time the hypnotist suggested that she return to a possible previous life existence. Her response to this was to provide a description of events that suggested a frightening episode in the Middle East(?) during a past century.
As the hypnotist was bringing her back from this event to an already agreed upon "safe" location they lady looked up to her right, where only a window was located, and said, "there is a man here, he is telling me not to be afraid", . . . . she was visibly shaking. Further questioning revealed that "he" was tall and dressed in a dark scuba diving type suit. As her fear was clearly apparent our hypnotist friend made valiant efforts to return her to the haven of safety and bring her out of the hypnotic state. For some time she seemed not to hear him or chose to ignore him. Needless to say these events had created a degree of tension within the living room.
Suddenly, without any warning, there was a thunderous knocking at our front door. Everyone jumped about a foot into the air. The dog started barking. The only person who wasn't apparently startled was the lady on the chesterfield.
My wife went to the front door to see who was there at this late hour. I should explain that our house which had been built in 1902 had a steep staircase to the front door which became easily slippery in the perpetual wet weather that BC offered. Consequently we very seldom used it ourselves and discouraged others from doing so. Alternatively, we had a paved path to our back door, with good illumination from the driveway. This was our regular route into the house. During the twenty years we lived in this house we only had about two people who ever came to the front door. This was one of them!
On opening the door my wife found a youngish man, dressed, she thought rather inadequately for the damp, cold, fall weather. He was seeking directions to a street number that we knew did not exist locally. She suggested that he try further down although it was not likely to be productive. With that he renegotiated the dangerous steps and set off down the garden even though my wife called out after him that he could not get out that way as it was fenced off. He appeared not to hear her and continued on into the darkness. She closed the door.
By this time our hypnotist friend had brought back the frightened lady to our present time slot. She seemed none the worse for her adventures. We all proceeded to discuss the night's events.
When some time later we played the tape back we could hear all that had taken place up to the "arrival" of the man in blue. That wasn't on the tape. Nor was the thunderous knocking on the door! Despite the fact my microphone was only ten feet from the front door. However you could quite clearly hear our dog barking twenty feet away, despite the closed door.
On reflection it is interesting that this stranger arrived at the exact moment we were seeking information about the man in blue and the circumstances of his presence. Talk about synchronicity.
Not only did this interruption serve to destroy our quest for further information, but we never were able to convene again to uncover those "missing time" events.