My Past Life in Hollywood (Update #2)

This is a third update to my previous blog BEING CAROLE LOMBARD: MY PAST-LIFE IN HOLLYWOOD (click HERE to view). In my last update, I noted some progress I made in terms of finding out who raped me in my past life as actress Carole Lombard. Unfortunately, I have no new developments about the rape at this time. But I do have some other things.

This past Friday, I was driving down a street in Foxboro, MA., and I happened to pass a sign that said "Tarot Readings". I don't know what it was about that sign but I felt it was calling to me for some reason. I felt almost as though it was sucking me in, like it was a magnetic beam or gravitational field or something like that. I thought - hmmmm - maybe I should stop and get a reading. But to tell you the truth I was kind of tired of psychics and mediums and all that jazz. Plus, I didn't want to give out any more of my money to anyone if I didn't have to.

I drove about ten minutes beyond the Tarot place, but the "magnetic pull" became even more intense. I really felt that I needed to go back and get a reading. I didn't know why, but I felt as though I was meant to drive past that place. I don't mean to sound all melodramatic or anything, but it really felt like a serendipitous event.

Anyway, the pull became so intense at one point that I said, "fuck it", turned around and headed back towards the place where I saw the sign. As it turned out, the sign was actually located at the end of a normal-looking driveway. I pulled my car into the driveway and saw a place that basically looked no different than a house, only there was a neon sign on the outside that said "Ten-Dollar Palm Readings". The thought of getting my palm read sounded interesting to me. I never had something like that done before. Plus, ten dollars sounded like a pretty good deal. I decided I would go for it.

So I parked my car, walked into the house and was greeted by an (Eastern) Indian-looking woman named Jesse. She was supposedly a seventh-generation psychic, which sounded like she knew what she was doing, but I would have to wait and see if she was any good.

"What can I do for you?" she asked.

"Um...I guess I just want my palm read."

"OK, come with me."

She led me through a pair of open French doors and we sat in a comfy parlor with some couches and a glass case filled with crystals, figurines and metaphysical-type trinkets.

"Take a seat. Are you right handed or left-handed?"

"Right."

She took my right hand, had me say my name out loud and then had me voice one wish I hoped would come true. So I basically wished my writing endeavors would be successful or something like that, and - only within a couple seconds - Jesse started relaying information to me that (to my surprise) was very accurate. I mean, I always thought palm readings were things friends did to each other at slumber parties; I never thought it was actually a real, legitimate art.

Jesse drew my attention to various lines engraved into my palm that I'd never noticed before. One long, curved line supposedly meant I would live a long life, but at some point I would experience lower body pains (she didn't really elaborate on the nature of those pains). Then Jesse started talking about my career and how my name was going to grow and money would start rolling in, but then people would try to bring me down. She said that I needed to be in Los Angeles because I needed to "go after my dream". The only thing keeping me in the East was family and friends. She also said that California was where my heart was, anyway. "You're an ocean boy".

Jesse eventually flipped my hand over and immediately said something that scared the absolute shit out of me. Honestly, I had never been so freaking scared in my entire life.

"Who's pregnant?" she asked.

"What? Um, nobody, I don't think."

"You have a daughter and somebody's not telling you."

"What??? Uh...no I don't."

"Yeah you do, honey."

I literally started shaking in my chair. I didn't know what the hell this lady was talking about. My fear was that I had gotten somebody pregnant somewhere down the line or perhaps even very recently and I just didn't know about it. But I was pretty sure this wasn't the case. Everybody I had ever had....um...relations...with was still somebody who was in my life in one way or another, even the girls I'd had casual hook-ups with or one-night stands with. And I was pretty sure none of them ever had my child, or was pregnant with my child.

But then a question suddenly came to me, almost within a couple seconds after my initial panic. I don't know why it came into my head so fast or where the question even came from, but all I know is that it was there:

"Could the daughter have been from a past life?"

Jesse nodded her head. "Yeah, possibly." And I was a little relieved, but only a little.

I explained to Jesse that I had been "doing a lot of past-life stuff lately" and that I had discovered I was (supposedly) a famous actress in Old Hollywood.

"As to whether it's true...I have no idea."

Jesse looked me square in the eye and gave me a little smirk.

"It's true, honey."

All right, so there it was: pretty straight-forward confirmation of my Hollywood life from yet another medium, one who was completely unrelated to any other medium I had consulted with.

"OK, then. I guess it's true."

I then explained to Jesse that there was always a feeling in the way back of my mind that I had a daughter during the Hollywood life, but kept the daughter a secret for whatever reason. My 'feeling' mainly arose after I had read a book about Lombard entitled [title omitted], written by a woman named [name omitted] in 2008. The book is about how Carole Lombard secretly had a daughter when she was a teenager but gave it up to her aunt and uncle to raise before anybody other than a few close family members found out. According to [the author], the book is a "story of possibility" filled with content that is supposedly 95% non-fiction and 5% fiction/artistic liberty.

After I read the book, I was very intrigued by the story. I managed to get in touch with [the author] via email and she told me that - as far as I should be concerned - Carole didn't have any child; the plot-line of the illegitimate daughter was a figurative device she used to tell a compelling story. But [the author] also told me something really interesting that I can't repeat here because she wanted it off the record. Let's just say she had access to a 'source' that nobody else has ever had access to when it came to researching Carole's life. And this 'source' was an enormous influence in shaping her work of "fiction". In other words, there is no way to be certain that Carole Lombard ever had a child, but the "story of possibility" is certainly...well...possible.

Taking all of the above into consideration, you can probably see why Jesse's vision of a "secret daughter" lead me to seriously consider the possibility that Carole Lombard did, indeed, have an illegitimate child. I tried to get Jesse to provide more information about the daughter, but all she could say was that she saw the daughter "grown up" and she had my eyes. This was good news to me, because I was pretty sure that - if I did have a daughter in my current life - she wouldn't be very old yet. If anything, somebody may have been pregnant with my daughter (though I later checked with all recent partners and nobody was pregnant as far as they knew).

Anyway, Jesse eventually placed the whole secret-daughter-deal on the back burner and she started discussing my Hollywood life a little more. She said there was a lot of glamour and a lot of success and there were a lot of positive people around me much of the time.

"In fact, you weren't supposed to live your current life," she told me. "You were supposed to accomplish what you are doing now in the former life. But something went wrong. It was a choice you made...I don't know...things didn't unravel the way they were meant to unravel."

Needless to say, I was a little taken aback by what she was saying. "Come again? I wasn't supposed to live this life? That's a little weird to hear." But after a moment, I think I kind of understood what she was saying.

One possibility is that I died too early in the Lombard life (she died at age 33 in a plane crash). Maybe Jesse meant the crash wasn't supposed to happen. I heard that Carole's mother (who also died in the crash) warned Carole that she didn't have a good feeling about the flight and they should take a train instead. Maybe I made the wrong choice by boarding the plane despite my mother's warning. But, then again, how could you really say my death from a plane crash "wasn't meant to happen"? Just because I made a poor choice by boarding a doomed airplane I completely messed up my soul's path forever? I don't really know if that's something that can possibly happen. I mean, talk about the "butterfly effect".

But maybe Jesse was referring to my Poland life, which coincided with the Hollywood life, a phenomenon known as a "parallel existence" (read about this life HERE). In the Polish life, I was faced with a situation where I was essentially tricked - and then forced - into helping the Nazis massacre hundreds of Polish intellectuals. At a certain point during this experience, I was faced with a very tough decision: refuse to partake in the evil and die, or go along with it and live. Ultimately, I chose to go along with it (in fear of dying and being unable to support my nine children), but maybe I was "supposed" to die. Yes, maybe the Polish existence was supposed to end and the Lombard existence was supposed to go forward. But - for whatever reason - the Lombard existence had to be cut short because the Polish existence didn't unravel the way it was supposed to unravel. Maybe Lombard was destined to take her life in a completely different direction, but couldn't do it because of how things panned out in Poland.

I mean, one really has to wonder how two lives influence each other in the case of a parallel existence. Maybe what happens in one life simultaneously influences what happens in the other life. Maybe the Lombard life needed the Polish existence to end at a certain point so it could have more energy or rise to a higher spiritual level and do bigger and better things; but because that didn't happen it was better for Lombard's life to end abruptly and ultimately start up all over again in this current incarnation as Matt Burns (i.e. me). Maybe I am now where Lombard was supposed to be around 1942 when she died. Maybe she was supposed to be where I am now but couldn't be because of how the Polish existence panned out. Yes, I know this is probably confusing as hell for you right now. All I'm trying to do is raise some questions and explore some possibilities. I don't know if there is any truth to these theories.

The fact of the matter is that - according to the psychic Jesse - things didn't go according to plan in the past and I wasn't 'supposed' to live this current life as Matt Burns, but I AM living this life now and that's all I should really be concerned about. Jesse did add, however, that there was a "dark shadow" in my aura because of what went wrong in the past, and it was in my highest and best interest to get a spiritual cleansing before I moved forward with my life. She said this "dark shadow" had the potential of getting in the way of me connecting with positive people in the future. Positive people, she explained, can (subconsciously) sniff out people with negative energy in their auras and they'll keep their distance from them. In other words, the negative energy stuck in my aura could be very detrimental to me forming important relationships in both my professional and romantic life. If this sounds at all familiar, you may have read all about it in the popular book The Secret, which is all about the "law of attraction" (i.e. positive energy attracts positive energy and negative energy attracts negative energy).

Jesse said she had the ability to do a spiritual cleansing for me, but I told her I would sleep on it and get in touch with her later if I thought it was something I wanted to have her do. I actually already knew how to do some form of a cleansing and I wanted to avoid paying money for something I could conduct on my own. In fact, anybody out there has the ability to cleanse themselves if they want to - it's a good way to rid your aura of any negative energy, not just stuff that may have come from a past life. Basically, what you do is stand in front of your bathroom faucet, turn the faucet on with your left hand, let the water run and keep your hand gripped on the handle. Then, you hold a pendulum in your right hand and say the following words:

"I now ask that my high self and my helpers in the light please identify, disorganize and remove all energies within my aura that are not in my highest and best interest to have at this time."

In my case, I wanted to be a little more specific, so I added the following:

"Specifically remove all negative energies I have carried over from my past life in Hollywood and Poland."

If all goes right, the pendulum should start swinging clockwise and you basically just stand at the sink while you get cleared of all the negative energy. It may take several minutes - depending on how much energy is clearing - but you'll know that the process has completed when the pendulum stops swinging and comes to a complete stop. The theory behind this entire process is that all the negative energy from your energy field (i.e. aura) gets washed out of your field and down the drain, all the way into the bowels of the earth where it will no longer affect you. I know it all sounds wacky, but I personally find that I feel lighter and more positive after I do one of these cleanses. It's actually best to do it every couple of days so that any negative energy we pick up from the outside world doesn't accumulate and weigh us down.

But back to Jesse.

I left my "palm reading" on Friday feeling extremely overwhelmed. For one, I still wasn't sure about the mysterious daughter situation and I was still kind of freaking out that somebody was pregnant in my current life. Also, I was concerned about the 'dark shadow' that was in my aura...and whether I would ever get rid of it! And on top of everything else, I felt anxious about how Jesse said I needed to be in LA. Should I be there now? When should I go??? How am I going to make that work? Obviously I shouldn't just go to LA because Jesse said I needed to be there, but, hell, I KNOW I need to be there; I wasn't hearing anything I didn't know already.

As far as the daughter situation goes, right now I'm wondering why I even needed to know I had a secret, illegitimate daughter in the first place. I mean, I guess it's important to know, but it's not like I can try to find her and reunite with her...at least I don't think I can. First of all, it's very likely that the daughter is deceased already, though I suppose it's very possibly there is a granddaughter alive and possibly great-grandchildren. But I wouldn't even know where to start looking for them, and I think they would find me too weird anyway. I mean, what would I say to them? "Um, yes, my name is Matt Burns. I'm a 29-year-old man now, but I have reason to believe I am your grandmother from a past life." Yeah, that would really go over well.

I think the fact of the matter is that the past is the past and I can't really do much about it now. As the saying goes, you shouldn't look back unless you want to go that way. Hopefully a piece of my spirit is still with my daughter/grandchildren - watching over them - but that's as good as things can be right now. Perhaps, in the future, mankind will evolve to a point where we'll be able to reunite with our children from a past life without anybody finding it weird. But that time is not now. I can't really do much about the situation. At least I don't think I can.

Of course, I'll let you know if anything changes and whether there are any more developments in this story. Who knows what else could pop up from the Lombard life? Hopefully it's not any more bad stuff; I'm not sure I would be able to handle much more of that. I mean, to be honest with you, the whole illegitimate daughter thing gave me a feeling of sadness. I don't want to experience any more of those emotions if I don't have to. Then again, if experiencing these feelings is the only way to clear the darkness from my aura, then I guess I say bring it on.

Meeting Hunter S. Thompson and Nathanael West

Perhaps a brief recap of this whole story is in order:

Last January, I was attempting to make a documentary about metaphysics. The film was meant to be a sort of sequel to my short documentary "A Parallel World", which was about a haunted house on Cape Cod (click HERE to view). I didn't know what I wanted the so-called sequel to be about, but I essentially wanted to further explore the possibility of a spiritual dimension coexisting with our physical world, one comprised of spirits (deceased humans), more intelligent energies (what we would refer to as 'angels') and a most intelligent energy (what we would refer to as 'God').

My attempt to film such a documentary ultimately led me to a medium named Liam Galvin. Galvin is renown for his mediumship and has written several books about the so-called "spiritual world". I met Galvin through a friend of mine and he was kind enough to schedule a reading with me, both for the purpose of my documentary but also for my own personal interest. Although it usually takes about three months to get a reading with Galvin (because he's so good at what he does), he was actually kind enough to fit me in within two weeks time.

So on January 25, I sat down with Liam at a place called "The Healing Moon" in Norwood, MA., and it wasn't even five minutes into the reading that I was essentially shocked by what was happening. Not only did I end up talking with my two dead grandfathers but Liam also identified two of my "spirit guides" as being Alfred Hitchcock and indie film director/ex-Hollywood actor John Cassavetes. Liam also said I had a beautiful actress with me from the 1920s or 30s, as well as writers, musicians and philosophers. You can read the full story and listen to the audio tapes of my reading with Liam by clicking HERE.

The night after the reading, I went home and had a very strange experience while in bed trying to fall asleep. The name "Lillian Gish" suddenly popped in my head and then a B&W image of D.W. Griffith flashed in my mind's eye. Gish, if you're not familiar, was an extremely famous actress from the silent film era and Griffith was one of the first big directors of the early Hollywood days (his films Birth of a Nation and Intolerance were among the most significant of the silent era). I didn't know why these two people came into my mind, but, with the help of another medium friend (Jan), I eventually came to identify them as two more of my spirit guides. To read the full story of this particular discovery, click HERE.

After identifying Gish and Griffith as spirit guides - in addition to Cassavetes and Hitchcock - I basically tried to forget about all this spiritual stuff. Although I believed in everything that was happening, part of me was still kind of weirded-out by it all. I mean, it's not exactly normal to be walking around thinking you're haunted by the spirits of four ex-famous people. Though I was excited by my discoveries at first, I felt a little stupid in the long run. Kind of delusional. Maybe even a little crazy. So I basically tried to put it all in the back of my mind in hope of returning to a state of mental normalcy.

But my guides weren't through talking to me. Only a week or so after "meeting" Gish and Griffith, another random name entered my mind: Nathanael West.

West, if you're not familiar, was a big writer from the 1930s. His novel Miss Lonelyhearts (1933) is considered his masterpiece while The Day of the Locust (1939) is considered to be one of the best novels about the early years of Hollywood (the latter novel is often said to be on the same level as F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon).

I actually read The Day of the Locust a year or two ago as research for my own Hollywood novel, so I was somewhat familiar with West, but I found it odd how - all of a sudden - his name kept echoing in my mind. At first I kind of just said "All right, maybe this is significant," but, to tell you the truth, I didn't really care all that much. Maybe Nathanael West was my spirit guide or maybe I randomly had Nathanael West in my thoughts for no significant reason -- the bottom line was that I was more or less tired of all this spirit stuff and wanted to concentrate on other things.

West, however, wouldn't let me forget about him. A couple days later, I was paging through the Boston Sunday Globe newspaper and I suddenly saw the name Nathanael West staring at me from one of the inner pages of the "Ideas" section. Apparently there was a new book that had just come out about the life of West and his wife Eileen McKenney (entitled Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney). I read the article on the book and it gave me a really weird feeling. There seemed to be something significant about this Nathanael West guy. The idea of him being a spirit guide felt a little more possible...but, still, I didn't feel any real need to confirm my feelings. I could have gone to one of my medium friends for confirmation - like I did with Jan when I was curious about Gish and Griffith - but I decided not to. I didn't want to bother her any more.

A month or two passed and West remained in the back of my mind, though my immediate thoughts were on other things. I probably never would have gone to any effort of confirming him as a spirit guide if it wasn't for another development in this whole story. About six weeks later (i.e. two weeks ago), I was polishing my novel for probably the five-thousandth time when a thought suddenly entered my mind. For some reason, I started acknowledging certain affinities between my work and the work of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Then I remembered how Liam Galvin had told me I had five writers with me as spirit guides, which is something that - for some reason - didn't interest me too much at the time (I basically figured the writers were unknowns from way back in the past). But, suddenly, I started to think "Hmmm...maybe Hunter's one of those five."

But, of course, the idea seemed rather far-fetched. First of all, I've always like Hunter's work (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is one of my favorite books of all time), so I kind of chalked up the whole idea of him being my guide as "wishful thinking". Plus, Hunter has only been dead for five years; I mean, he friggin' committed suicide in February 2005, for Christ sakes. The idea of a guy shooting himself and, sometime within a five-year period, attaching himself to me as a guide, seemed like a really wacky idea. So I kind of laughed off the whole thing and tried to forget about it, kind of like I tried to do with West.

But Hunter wasn't going to let me forget about him either. Day after day passed and I had extreme difficulty getting him out of my mind. For some reason, I felt compelled to go on Youtube and start watching Hunter S. Thompson interviews and other video clips. I looked up photos of him on the Internet and read little tidbits about his life. Looking at him and listening to him struck a chord within me. There was something strange going on.

About a week later, I finally came to the point where I started to seriously consider the idea that maybe - just maybe - Hunter was actually with me as a guide, and I stress 'maybe'. Possibly. Conceivably. There was a one-percent chance. But, still, I wasn't quite ready to consult with someone like Jan, mainly because I didn't want to make a complete ass of myself if the answer was 'no'. I wanted to, first, try and confirm my suspicions via a few methods I could perform myself.

The first thing I did was 'dowse', just as I did with Gish and Griffith. I explain the concept of 'dowsing' in my last blog but let me give you a brief explanation here: What you essentially do is hold a pendulum in your hand and ask your spirit guides 'yes' or 'no' questions. Usually your guides start moving the pendulum in a clockwise direction if the answer to the question is a 'yes' and in a counter-clockwise direction if the answer to the question is a 'no'. However, I find that you can calibrate the pendulum in any fashion you want to. For example, sometimes I ask that the guides show me a 'yes' by simply moving the pendulum and a 'no' by not moving it.

Anyway, by means of dowsing with my (home-made) pendulum, I was able to further confirm my suspicions that Hunter was with me as a guide. Basically, when I asked if Hunter was present, the pendulum would move like crazy, without my help or the help of any external stimulus. In other words, the pendulum's movement was entirely 'paranormal'.

Watch the video below for a demonstration of this phenomenon:



So, yes, the dowsing - once again - yielded some interesting results and I was one step closer to being convinced Hunter may have been with me as a guide. But I still had my doubts. After all, the pendulum could have moved from my own subconscious energy, especially if - deep down - I really wanted to believe Hunter was my guide. Clearly I needed more evidence before I drew any conclusions, but I still felt foolish consulting with a third party like Jan. I mean, think about how silly I would have sounded: "Hey, Jan, could you just check and see if the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson is haunting me? Thanks a bunch." And if the answer turned out to be 'no' I'd feel like a royal schmuck. "Who do you think you are, Matt, thinking a dude like Hunter S. Thompson is with you as a guide? Get off your high horse, ya stupid hediot!"

Yes, I needed a little more convincing before I consulted with my medium friend. So I tried one other experiment, a method that paranormal investigators refer to as an "EVP session". "EVP" (if you've never watched the shows "Ghost Hunters" or "Ghost Adventures") stands for electronic voice phenomenon. What you do is basically take a voice recorder and ask spirits questions in hope that they provide answers. Metaphysical theory suggests that it takes less energy for a ghost to communicate through the audio frequency recorded on an audio tape than it does through the frequency we hear with our own naked ears. This means that we may not hear the ghosts respond to our questions, but they may still turn up on the recorder.

Anyway, I managed to get my hands on a digital audio recorder and I began an EVP session by simply asking Hunter to say something I would be able to hear when I played the tape back, so that I would know he was with me. However, after a couple of tries, nothing turned up - no voices as far as I could hear.

So I altered my approach a bit. I began another EVP session where I asked Hunter to knock or click or make two sounds twice, as confirmation that he was, indeed, with me. And it was after this request that something rather interesting happened. About five seconds after I asked the question, I felt as though something flew past my eyes, kind of like a bug, but it wasn't solid. The best way to describe it is that it was like a ball of energy...sort of like an orb, though it wasn't illuminated. And, then, about a second or two after I saw the orb (call it what you will), I heard a noise that I'm still having trouble finding an explanation for. Listen to the audio clip below and hear for yourself:

(Note about this clip: the reason why I specify that Hunter only communicates with me if he is "in the light" is because I was afraid of attracting any kind of negative energy to myself. Hunter, after all, committed suicide, so I was concerned that he may not have made it into the light after passing. Spirits who aren't in the light are not good to have around you, not necessarily because they're negative or evil, but because their intentions are often misguided, even selfish, and they may influence you in ways that are not in your personal best interest.)





Now, the above audio clip is played at regular speed and - to the the naked ear - the noise sounds like it is one single 'click'. However, upon slowing the clip down, the noise is actually two distinct clicks that come right after each other. Here is the same clip played at a slower speed:





So, yes, there seems to be two distinct noises in the above audio clip, but why are they so close together when played at normal speed? Why wouldn't Hunter (if it WAS Hunter who made the noises) have spaced them out more? Well, there is one possible explanation for this. Metaphysical theory suggests that many spirits (especially those who are in the light and not earthbound ghosts) are operating at a higher energy vibration than human beings. What this sometimes means is that their method of communicating can be much faster than our kind of communication. EVPS from these particular spirits will sound sped-up, like they are in fast-forward. In other words, the two clicks in the above audio clip may sound fast to the human ear, but to a higher spirit like Hunter S. Thompson, they may be slower, more spaced out and not sound like they're layered on top of each other. This is a possible explanation.

Anyway, all this talk about EVPs and vibrations may sound strange and complicated to the everyday layman, but the fact of the matter is that I seemed to get an appropriate response when I asked Hunter to make two noises. Surely the 'clicks' could have sounded out of sheer coincidence, but I have to say I never heard the noises again and I really couldn't identify the source of them. Plus, there was that weird orby-thing that flew in front of my eyes only seconds before I heard the noise, which only adds to the strangeness of it all.

Paranormal or not, the results of the EVP session were undeniably interesting. But I STILL was nervous about consulting with Jan and asking her to see if Hunter was with me. The whole idea seemed too far-fetched, and if the answer was 'no' I would have felt like the biggest ass in the friggin' world.

Days passed and I, again, tried to forget about the entire situation. But I had great difficulty doing so. Hunter simply wouldn't get out of my mind, and, eventually, I came to realize that, if Hunter was with me, I really needed to know, one way or the other...literally, for my own peace of mind. I needed confirmation.

So I finally caved and wrote an email to Jan. As I mentioned in my previous blog (click HERE to read), Jan is an experienced dowser with both psychic and medium abilities. Keep in mind that I don't pay her for her services. She is simply a friend kind enough to help me out with my metaphysical questions. She has nothing to gain by telling me what I want to hear.

Anyway, here is our email correspondence. It's brief, simple, and pretty damn straight-forward. Also, you will notice that I asked her about Nathanael West as well. I figured I might as well try and get both names out of my head while I was at it; you know, kill two birds with one stone.

---

----- Original Message -----
From: Matt
To: Jan
Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 3:30 PM
Subject: Re: question

Hi Jan,

Just another question to run by you if you have any free moment. Absolutely no rush.

The medium I went to a while back said I had five writers with me as spirit guides and two names have been in my mind lately that I just wanted to run by you: Hunter S. Thompson and Nathanael West. If you have a moment could you dowse to see if these people are with me as guides, just to rule them out and get them out of my mind? Again, absolutely no rush.

Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the help.

--Matt


----- Original Message -----
From: Jan
To: Matt
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 8:44:17 PM
Subject: Re: question

Yes on both counts! : )


----- Original Message -----
From: Matt
To: Jan
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2010 3:44:17 PM
Subject: Re: question

Wow hahaha. Thanks again for your help! I really appreciate it!!!

---

So, indeed, the answer, according to Jan, was simple: YES...both Nathanael West and Hunter S. Thompson were with me as spirit guides. Now, I'm not saying that Jan's dowsing results are one-hundred-percent accurate, but I do have to say that she's usually right. I mean, her results combined with my own dowsing results (not to mention the EVP session) have basically convinced me that, yes, it's probably true that both Hunter and Nathanael are two of my spirit guides.

Needless to say, this is all pretty crazy. I mean, knowing that a guy like Hunter is with me is a really intense feeling. This is the guy who wrote The Rum Diaries (the inspiration behind my "Natty Ice Diaries") and Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He worked and became good friends with Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro while making the Fear and Loathing movie. He was a pop-cultural icon in the 70s, writing for Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated and covering the disillusioning Nixon era with his unique "Gonzo" journalism. It's very surreal that Hunter is actually with me right now. I mean, he knows who I am! That's a really weird thought.

And then, of course, there's Nathanael West, one of the great novelists of the early twentieth century. The Day of the Locust was an ingenious novel, probably one of the best Hollywood novels I read while researching my own novel. I'm sure he provided a lot of assistance when I was writing my book.

So, yes, discovering Hunter and Nathanael are with me as guides is an incredible feeling; however, what's even more incredible about the whole experience is how, again, my guides were able to telepathically reveal their identities to me (just as Gish and Griffith did). I mean, their names just popped into my head in a very weird way and haunted my thoughts until I finally got some confirmation that they were, indeed, with me as guides. For some reason, they felt it was time to reveal their identities. Why now? I don't know.

What's also interesting about the situation is how both Hunter and Nathanael experienced really tragic deaths at the end of their life, but are now (apparently) alive and well in the spiritual dimension. I mean, Hunter, of course, committed suicide, so it's interesting to see that he made it to "the other side" in one piece and is still doing his thing. And then there's Nathanael who actually died in a tragic car accident while driving to his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald's funeral in 1940.

Hunter's situation, in particular, raises some interesting questions about the concept of suicide. Is killing oneself really the ultimate sin? Was it wrong for him to do it? Was it his fate? Maybe Hunter's helping me out now for Karmic reasons, because he cut his life as a writer on earth too short. In fact, maybe Nathanael is helping me out for similar reasons: that is, because his own life was cut too short (for reasons outside of his control, of course). Or maybe everything was meant to be. They were meant to die when they did. It was all part of God's grand design.

Whatever the reasons, I am honored to have Hunter and Nathanael helping me out. I'm sure there's more spirit guides to identify, but I have no idea who they are at this point in time. Liam said I had three more writers with me, not to mention musicians and even philosophers. It will be interesting to see if these people ever decide to reveal their identities; maybe, over time, they will. But, frankly, I'm happy enough knowing Hunter and Nathanael are with me, not to mention John Cassavetes, Alfred Hitchcock, Lillian Gish and D.W Griffith. It's nice to know that these people are endorsing my endeavors. They give me a feeling of validation, especially during the times when I start doubting myself and the creative life I lead.

Now, one thing a lot of people are probably wondering right now is where the hell all these spirit guides are? I mean, if they're "with me", where are they in relation to my physical self? And, to be honest with you, I don't really know how to answer this question other than to say that the spirits exist in a completely different (i.e. non-physical) dimension that we can't see with our own eyes and therefore have a difficult time comprehending. But it's important to remember that our eyes are only designed to process a very narrow spectrum of light, which means that we only see a fraction of what is actually in front of us. If our eyes were designed to process a much broader spectrum of light (one that would include infra-rays and ultra-violet rays) then we would probably be able to see a lot more spirit activity, as spirit energy usually only makes itself visible in the higher portion of the light spectrum. This, incidentally, is why so-called "Ghost Hunters" have more success capturing spirits with "full-spectrum" cameras (i.e. cameras with lenses that can process both infra-red and ultra-violet rays).

The bottom line is that our concept of reality is unavoidably limited because we can see very little of what's in front of us. So, in the end, who is to say that our guides aren't around us all the time? Maybe they are, but we just don't know it. Maybe an entire world of spirits surrounds us on a 24/7 basis, but we're just completely blind to it.

Meeting My Guides

The roots of this particular story go back several weeks to when I was attempting to shoot a documentary about metaphysics. I had wanted to do a "follow-up" to my short documentary "A Parallel World" which consisted of me investigating a haunted house and communicating with an intelligent entity through knocks (go to my previous "Parallel World" blog to watch).

After "Parallel World", I became fascinated with the possibility of some sort of spirit world coexisting with our real world, and I wanted to further explore this phenomenon. I didn't know exactly what angle I was going to approach the subject from, but I knew I wanted to explore anything and everything metaphysical, especially the possibility of past lives and the existence of spirit guides (a concept which I'll explain in a minute).

Anyway, along came Liam Galvin, a renown medium who's written a couple of books and is so popular with people that it takes about three months to get an appointment with him. I actually met Liam through a female psychic friend whom I planned to initially focus my documentary on. Liam is my friend's "spiritual mentor" and I filmed him reading her at a place called "Women of Wisdom" in Easton, MA. And when I say he "read" her I mean he explored her past lives, her spirit guides, her health, her love life and her general future. Although I was skeptical at first, I must say that it didn't take long for me to be absolutely blown away with what I saw. Within minutes of the reading, Liam was talking to the girl's dead father like he was right in the room with us (which he supposedly was).

After the reading, Liam approached me (sitting in the corner of the room with my camera) and said I had "very interesting people with me."

"Really?"

He also told me I was "intense" and that I "got stuff done." I'm not sure what that meant but it sounded good to me. Then he said that there was "California energy" all around me and that I'd definitely be going there.

"Really? Interesting."

Needless to say, I was rather intrigued, but not necessarily sold on the idea that this guy was reading my future. I mean, maybe he just figured that since I was into making films that I obviously would want to go out west - to Hollywood - eventually.

I asked Liam whether he could do a reading on me sometime and he said "Sure! Absolutely! Just call and make an appointment!"

So a couple days later I called "Women of Wisdom" and was surprised to learn that Liam was booked for the next two or three months. I didn't really want to wait that long, so I made a few more phone calls, pulled a few strings and eventually managed to land a reading with Liam two weeks later at a place called "The Healing Moon" in Norwood, MA.

Like "Women of Wisdom", "The Healing Moon" is a "wellness center" where people do yoga and Reiki and engage in other holistic healing practices. There is also a small gift shop where they sell New Agey sorts of things, like crystals, rocks, minerals, angelic figurines and other items that would probably make the common Joe Six-Pack raise some eyebrows.

I met up with Liam in the gift shop and he led me into a peaceful room with dim lighting and an artificial fountain that sounded like a small brook running deep in the middle of the wintry woods. I don't know if it was because of the fountain sounds or maybe the good Feng Shui, but the room was seriously one of the most relaxing environments I had ever been in.

"All right, let's get started," said Liam as we sat down at a small table with cushioned chairs.

And so we began....

The session started with Liam introducing me to my main "spirit guides". In layman's terms, a spirit guide is basically like a guardian angel. The theory (proposed by meta physicists) is that these guides help us with our endeavors and also protect us from harm. Oftentimes, guides are family members who have died either far back in the past or during our lifetime. But many of our guides are also non-family members who help us with our work or hobbies. A musician, for example, is likely to have ex-musicians as guides, as well as writers to help them write lyrics, and maybe even philosophers who help them convey complex ideas through their music.

Anyway, Liam introduced my first spirit guide as being a "maternal" figure who didn't sound very familiar to me, though Liam ultimately determined that it was probably my great grandmother on my mother's side (whom I had never met). He said she was on the short side, had great skin, was very pleasant and uplifting, and also very religious.

"OK," I thought to myself. "I guess that could be true." But so far I wasn't very impressed. In order for me to take Liam as legit, he needed to talk about somebody I actually knew, not some person who may or may not be a great grandmother of mine. I needed something more concrete before I definitely took this guy for real.

Liam proceeded to skip over my second guide (whom he had trouble identifying) and went immediately to my third guide, whom he identified as my dead grandfather (my mother's dad)! And just as he started to speak with him my other dead grandfather (my dad's father) supposedly "came through" to talk as well! Yes, both of my grandfather's were supposedly in the room with us!

Needless to say, I was pretty damn shocked about all this, though still very skeptical. After all, Liam could have just taken a shot in the dark and guessed that one or both grandfathers could be my guides. Maybe he got lucky. I didn't want to feed into it too much, so I remained stoic and conservative with my reactions.

But then Liam proceeded to describe each respective grandfather's personality/physical build/interests/quirks in detail and with eerie accuracy. He told me one grandfather was more social and the other one was very military (true). One was bald and the other had a full head of hair (also true). The military one was surrounded by water (yes, he was the captain of a ship) and the other one liked the beach (true). He even described the different ways in which the two grandfathers passed. One "went the way he wanted" while the other had a "tougher passing".

Although I tried to maintain my composure, I was completely blown away by what I was hearing. Liam was dead-on with his descriptions!

Here is the video of this section:




After listening to my grandfathers speak for a while, another shock came my way:

"Who's John?" asked Liam. "They keep on saying, 'Say John. Say John. He'll know what we mean.'"

And, indeed, I did know what they meant...or at least I thought I did. See, for the past few months I had been thinking about the possibility of spirit guides and also thinking about who mine would be (if they actually existed). For some reason - and don't ask me why - I always thought the ex-filmmaker John Cassavetes, the so-called "godfather" of the American Independent Film movement, may have been with me. This was partly because I was so drawn to him as a filmmaker and also because I felt that we thought eerily alike. Now, of course I never told anybody about this. They would have thought I was nuts. But if I had to (I mean HAD TO) guess who one of my spirit guides was, I would have probably said it was Cassavetes...possibly.

So when Liam said "Who's John?" the first person to enter my mind was, of course, John Cassavetes. But I didn't want to admit it right away. I wanted Liam to describe this "John". And he did...with more eerie accuracy.

He said John was a young, good-looking man who died too early (Cassavetes died at 59), loved women and was very flirtatious (true, Cassavetes made women the main focus of much of his work), worked hard and played hard (very true), didn't take good care of himself (also true, as he died of cirrhosis), smoked like a fiend (he was a chain smoker, basically), and was an artist (of course). He also said that I admired this "John's" work and there were shades of his work in my own work (incredibly true).

Overall, it sounded a lot like Cassavetes. The only thing that threw me off was that Liam said he saw a lot of music with him and that he thought he might have been a musician. This was not true. Cassavetes was a filmmaker and an actor (you may remember his role as the husband in ROSEMARY'S BABY), though he loved music and listened to it all the time, which is what Liam may have been picking up on.

Whether it was Cassavetes or not, this "John" was ultimately identified as being my spirit guide number-two, right behind my great grandmother and in front of my grandfathers. Crazy stuff.

Here is the video for this section. There is more about Cassavetes in parts three and four where it is more definitively confirmed that the "John" is, indeed, Cassavetes:






After the introduction to Cassavetes, Liam started to talk about my future and my work and how he saw me in California. He also told me there was a beautiful actress with me as a guide, somebody from the 1920s or 30s. Apparently a book I had written (about Hollywood) attracted a lot of ex-Hollywood spirits to me and they helped me out with it. Why me? Who knows...

Oh, and apparently I was in California before. In a past life....


Here is the video for this section:





After discussing my future in California and Cassavetes some more, Liam gave me shock number three. All of a sudden - out of the blue - Liam said, "You have Alfred Hitchcock with you!"

"Alfred Hitchcock????"

"Yeah, he hangs out with you."

Of course it goes without saying that I was completely knocked on my ass by this (figuratively speaking). I mean, at least with Cassavetes I sort of had a tiny inkling that he may have been a guide of mine, but Alfred Hitchcock?! Legendary director Alfred Hitchcock?! The guy who made PSYCHO and VERTIGO and THE BIRDS and God knows what else??? This was pretty intense.

"You must be all about detail," explained Liam. "There are a lot of parallels between you and him. He's philosophical like you and you try to get messages across like he did. He's going to help you with Lighting and color."

"Yeah, well...I guess that makes sense," I said to Liam, but I wasn't really sure if it actually made sense.

"Wow, that one really shocked me," said Liam. "He's all around you."



Here is the video for this section:





The reading eventually came to an end and I told Liam I was incredibly impressed with what I had seen. I mean, this guy was so dead-on about so many things it would have been extremely difficult for me to call him a phony.

I subsequently left "The Healing Moon" feeling...well, incredibly weird. If what Liam said was true, I am not alone when I am alone. I am supposedly walking around with the spirits of John Cassavetes and Alfred Hitchcock (not to mention the spirits of my grandfathers and a bunch of other people) by my side. It's pretty hard to comprehend, but at the same time it's a really cool feeling.

And maybe it all sort of makes sense. I mean, what really happens to us when we die? If there is an afterlife, then do we just sit on our ass, like in a hot tub or something with tons of babes around us (or hunks if you're a woman)? Surely we would want to make ourselves useful in some way. So maybe this is what we do. We help others who are alive. Why? I'm not really sure.

Some meta physicists view life on earth as a sort of school where we constantly come down here (over the course of several lifetimes) to learn certain lessons, go through different types of experiences, all with the ultimate intention of growing into the most intelligent and wisest soul we can possibly be. In other words, the meaning of life is to learn and experience, so that in the greater scheme of things our soul grows to the most advanced level possible.

So maybe our "guides" help us with this growth. And we help our guides with their own growth. It's, like, something we HAVE to do if we want to progress on a spiritual level. After all, Clarence didn't get his wings until he helped George out with his problems on earth (allusion is to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE if you didn't get it). Maybe we're both helping each other in a way. And we switch roles as the guides and the guided. And we grow in the process of playing both roles....

Anyway, this is all food for thought, but not necessarily something I one-hundred-percent believe in at this point in time. I feel the need to investigate further. In part three of the video, Liam told me I had been in California during a past life of mine. I'm curious as to who I was and whether I was there recently, like within the past 100 years when the film industry was alive and kicking. Was I a filmmaker or director? Actor? Musician? Or maybe I was a Mexican or Native American who was there a long time ago. Maybe a dude in the gold rush. Who knows?

...

On my way home from "The Healing Moon" I zoned out for a second in my car and took a wrong turn onto a web of side streets. I suddenly found myself on a street that looked very familiar. It was the street where my grandparents lived before they moved into a condo many years ago. In fact, most of the memories I have of my grandfather are products of the time he spent at this house. And the weird thing is that I had actually forgotten how to get to it!

Perhaps I'm being a tad melodramatic, but it's almost as though my grandfather led me to the house, as a sort of sign. It was a way of telling me that everything that had just happened with Liam REALLY just happened.

My Paranormal Documentary "A PARALLEL WORLD"

I’ve been curious about the paranormal for as long as I can remember. When I was very young, there were two or three ghost books that I would check out of my elementary school media center week after week. This was also around the time when the TV show “Sightings” was on Fox. That show scared the crap out of me but I couldn’t stop watching. I couldn’t look away!

Aside from “Sightings”, it was rare to find a TV show or even movies/books about the metaphysical world. Paranormal activity was a topic that wasn’t really part of the mainstream at that time. This all changed, however, in 2004 when the Reality TV show “Ghost Hunters” took off. I quickly became addicted to this show, along with other “para-reality” shows like “Ghost Adventures” and “Paranormal State”.

Inspired by the para-reality shows, I wanted to launch my own paranormal investigation but the only problem is that I didn’t know of any nearby haunted locations. A few years went by where I kept watching “Ghost Hunters” and could only wonder what it would really be like to personally experience a haunted house. Was it all even real?

It wasn’t until 2009 that an opportunity came to investigate a real haunted house and I didn’t seek it out; it pretty much just fell in my lap. It was Easter Sunday and my aunt and uncle were over for dinner. They had been renting a house on Cape Cod for a few months while waiting to move into a new home. Strange things were going on. There were loud bangs and electrical issues that defied explanation. Candles popped out of their holders. File cabinets opened by themselves. My uncle even saw a mop bucket levitate from the ground. Now, it’s important to understand that my aunt and uncle were conservative Catholics, about as far away from being believers in the paranormal as people could get. I knew that the activity must have been intense for them to be talking about it openly.

Flash-forward a couple weeks later and I went to visit them at their rented house. I had a video camera with me and all I did was shoot a little footage in each of the rooms. Nothing strange happened at the time, but upon reviewing the footage the next day, I saw something weird. There was a set of French doors in a living room and through the door I could see what-appeared-to-be a face. I studied the footage frame-by-frame, adjusted the brightness/contrast a bit and, sure enough, it really did look like there was some sort of apparition watching me while I was filming. Here is a still image taken from the footage:

The ghost is in the square. Can you see it?

Intrigued by what I saw, I wanted to go back to the house and do a more thorough investigation. I returned to the house about a month later armed with a new video camera and various tools I could use to try to document paranormal activity and perhaps even communicate with the spirits. Once again, nothing overly strange occurred during the investigation, but upon reviewing footage later, I noticed several anomalies. The most remarkable of these anomalies was possible evidence of intelligent communication that I didn’t even realize was happening at the time of the investigation. At one point, I had asked the entity to knock twice on a wall. I didn’t hear it with my own ears at the time, but on the audiotape there are two distinct knocks in response to my request.

Along with the knocks, there were also several light anomalies that appeared on the tape. Some of these I did notice while I was filming and looking into the camera viewfinder. I wanted to debunk them as being dust, but upon closer review there was no denying that they were legitimate orbs of energy flying past the camera, out of walls, in and out of the room etc.

In the end, I was absolutely fascinated with my discoveries and happy I had finally gotten to experience paranormal activity first-hand. You would think that this would prompt me to conduct more “ghost hunts” but this never happened and I’m not sure it will ever happen again. The main reason for this is that “something” appeared to follow me home after I left my aunt and uncle’s rented house. This turned me off from paranormal investigating for, well, perhaps ever.

I knew something wasn’t quite right when, a couple nights after the investigation, I had a strange dream, if you even want to call it a dream. Perhaps I was in some sort of altered state of consciousness but all I could remember was that there was a pale, creepy-looking man coming at me. He never said anything but he seemed desperate. I don’t know why I got this impression but I felt like he wanted to suck and drain all the energy out of me, like he fed off of this.

After that dream, I experienced paranormal activity in my bedroom, mainly lights turning on and off and also electronics turning on by themselves. It wasn’t until a year or two later that a psychic medium confirmed that ‘something’ had followed me home from the haunted house. After performing a spiritual cleansing, the paranormal activity in my bedroom ceased.

...

Anyway, without further adieu, here is the full-length documentary "A Parallel World". It may give you the creeps, so snuggle up with that special somebody before you press 'play':


PART ONE



PART TWO



PART THREE