The Giant “Oreo Cookie” UFO

Ken Korczak:

A regular reader of my Minnesota Mysteries column called me and told me this story of a fascinating UFO sighting which occurred in New York about 35 miles north of Buffalo in October of 1974.  Here is what he said:

“It was just starting to get dark, and my children were playing out in the back yard. They came one by one to tell me something was ‘beeping’ up in the woods… I went to see what was going on and I heard ‘be-beep, be-beep, be-beep…’ I saw five or six areas where lights were hovering above the trees. Couldn’t figure it out at all. We watched for a while, and that was all that was going on. Just the lights and the be-beeping.

“I decided to get back to the house… it was almost dark. We walked back to the house and our large outdoor light suddenly went out! Just then I heard, ‘Mama, look!’ One of my sons was pointing and there it was! It was as big around as our house! It looked like a giant Oreo cookie! It had what looked like a metal top, a middle section that was partitioned off into what looked like darkened windows and the bottom was just like the top.

“No sound was coming from it. Nothing! It moved very slowly across our front yard, just kind of hovering. We watched it for a good five minutes while it slowly turned west and went across the road. When it was above the corn field across the street, it picked up speed, climbed high and shot off over the corn field like a bullet.

“Suddenly, all the little ‘be-beeps’ and lights that were in the woods were coming out of the woods and were headed toward the cornfield. We could only hear the beeps and see five or six lights because they were now very high in the sky. They must have climbed from the top of the trees in the woods to that altitude in a matter of seconds. They disappeared out over the cornfield just like the big Oreo cookie did.

“I called out local police department and told them what we had seen. Ours is a small town and everybody knows everybody. The police were at my house in 10 minutes. I knew them and they knew me well enough to know that I was telling the truth. There names were Ray and George. I was describing to them what I saw when, suddenly, from the south, we saw a huge white light in the sky headed our way. We watched it coming closer to us as it descended at the same time. Then we could hear the thing’s engine and Ray hollered: ‘Holy ——! He’s got his landing lights on!’

“It was a plane coming right over my yard with its landing lights on, and it was following the exact path of the Oreo cookie. It was at such a low altitude we could read the writing on the side of it. It said: ‘United States Air Force.’ It went out over the cornfield in the exact path the Oreo cookie had taken.

Within another five minutes the area over the cornfield was filled with planes and helicopters coming from all directions. All these planes were at a higher altitude now, so I don’t know whether they were Air Force helicopters or not.
“Well, that’s my story! Is this something the U.S. Air Force was involved in? Were they tracking a UFO? Was the Oreo cookie the so-called Mother Ship? Who knows? As a footnote, that same week, there were many reports of UFO sightings all over the East Coast.”

Note: This is not technically a “Minnesota UFO” story — but what the heck!  It’s an interesting bit of ufology!

e-mail Ken with a question or comment:  writer@wiktel.com 

UFO: Resting “nice-as-you-please, on the green grass …”

Ken Korczak:

In my previous post, I wrote about a bizarre UFO event near the tiny town of Grygla, Minnesota. The story was told to me by a local law enforcement officer, who wished to remain nameless, so I used the fictional name of David Randall to describe the events as he told them to me.

Randall also said he might never have believed the more sensational aspect of the woman’s story—the part about the strange little creatures running around on her farm—if he and his partner had not seen the glowing UFO the night before.

“What could I do but believe her?” he said.

But this was not the first time Randall had seen something he could not explain. Randall tells it this way:

“When I was a boy living on my parents’ farm near a small town north of Thief River Falls, Minnesota, we were all eating dinner one summer day. We were making hay that day.

“We had a farm hand working for us back then… he came into the kitchen where we were eating and told us to come outside quick.”

Randall and his other family members all went outside, and there standing in the hay field was a silver-metallic object resting silently, nice-as-you-please, on the summer green grass.

“It was just there,” Randall said. “It looked like a silver disk … bright, shiny silver with no markings on it of any kind. We just didn’t know what it was. We knew it was something very unusual.”

Randall and his family and the farm hand observed the silver disk-like object for a few minutes. It was maybe 25 to 30 feet long, thick in the middle and tapered on the ends—a classic flying saucer. Then it lifted quickly into the sky and was gone in a second.

“It didn’t make a bit of sound,” Randall said. “It just shot up into the air and disappeared in an instant.”

I asked if the silver object could have been something normal—perhaps a propane tank or a sheet of tin from a busted up grain bin that had been carried into their field by a flukey whirl of wind.

“Oh absolutely not,” he said. “It was a still, calm sunny day. We could see this thing as plain as day. We were about 100 yards or less away from it. It was nothing we could identify as being something common—nothing like a propane tank, or any other kind of conventional aircraft.”

Randall added: “And I know I was not imagining it because all of us saw it together. How could we all have imagined the same thing?”

Randall said this early sighting of a UFO is something that has stuck with his family through the years.

“To this very day, when I get together with my family we mention that silver object we saw in the hayfield and talk about it. Something like that you never forget. It’s a special experience. It just makes you wonder what is out there… there are some things which you can’t explain. It makes you think.”
Later, of course, Randall would have another encounter with a strange object from the skies for which there is no explanation.

The small town of Grygla is also no stranger to visitation by UFOs. Some twenty years ago, another flying, glowing object was spotted by two teenage girls who were in their car at the time. The girls reported that when the object approached close to them, the engine on their car went dead.

It was a terrifying experience.

e-mail Ken with a question or comment! — writer@wiktel.com

Little “Alien Men” Scurried Across Her Porch …

NOTE: Here is a story told to me by a Deputy Sheriff of Marshall County in Northern Minnesota. The Deputy asked me to change his name because he feared he would be fired for telling this story.

By Ken Korczak

The woman was trembling as she walked into the Marshall County law enforcement headquarters. Everyone could see she was scared.

In a low voice, she asked to speak to a police officer—alone. She wanted a private room and requested that only one officer be present. Deputy David Randall looked up from his desk and felt a chill. He suspected that he knew what the woman wanted to talk about. That’s because just the night before, he and his partner had encountered something unexplainable in the countryside near the tiny town of Grgyla, Minnesota.

It was about 11 p.m. The summer night was cloudy, humid and dark. Randall and his partner were cruising County Highway 6 when they saw what at first looked like a sudden appearance of the full moon. But they quickly realized this was not the moon—it was a flying globe of light, glowing bright red-orange, and moving along without a sound.

“What in blazes is that!” Randall yelled.

His partner, Bob Overby, looked up in shock, sucked in his breath and let out a sharp reply, “Whoa!! I don’t know!”

Randall reports that the object was the size of a basketball, but it was difficult to judge its real size. It was three dimensional… and there was something inexplicably bizarre and unreal about it.

“Oh, it was something abnormal,” Randall said. “Definitely not fireworks or the moon, or conventional aircraft… I just know this was something that didn’t seem like it belonged here.”

Bravely, the deputies decided to follow the object, and it seemed to sense their presence. It moved away from them. They gunned the squad car, determined to keep the glowing orb in sight.

After a few miles of thrilling chase, the object appeared to land behind a small grove of trees in a pasture, not more than a 100 yards from them.

Randall and Overby got out of their squad car, scrambled over a fence and ran toward where the object had descended to land behind the trees. They were scared, yes, but a powerful curiosity and a sense of duty as police officers compelled them forward.

But when they reached the other side of the trees—nothing. No eerie glowing object. No sign of it in the sky or on the ground.

Randall and Overby played their flashlights across the dewy grass but saw no marks, or any indication something had set down in this peaceful sleeping pasture.

The Minnesota summer night had become ordinary again.

Randall and Overby returned to their squad car and finished their shift. They talked about what they had seen. They were baffled. Randall took his curiosity a bit further and checked with nearby airports and the U.S. airbase near Grand Forks to see if they had any military aircraft in the Grygla area, or if they noted anything unusual on radar.

All reported nothing.

Randall thought that would be the end of it… until the next day when Marge Conner walked into sheriff’s headquarters. She had an hair-raising story to tell. Even before she said a word, Randall could feel his skin go clammy. Instinctively, he knew that she had experienced something even stranger than he and his partner did the night before.

THE GRYGLA UFO INCIDENT — PART II

When she walked into the Marshall County sheriff’s headquarters, Marge Conner of rural Grygla had the look of a woman who had not slept all night. Her eyes were puffy and carried the unblinking stare of fright.

Sheriff’s deputy David Randall felt a chill when he saw Conner. He had an eerie feeling that he knew why she was here. As it happens, Randall had a bizarre encounter of his own the night before.

Conner wanted to speak with a police officer—but requested to see only one person in a private room. Randall stepped up and introduced himself. He directed her to a small interview room, where she told him this story:

At about 11:10 the night before, Conner, who lives alone on a small farm near Grygla, was sitting up reading. A flashing light in a window caught her eye—as if portending far-off lightning.

She walked over to the window, which looked out to the west. She saw no sign of lightning, but something flickered at the corner of her eye. She turned to look at her south window and saw a glow playing there on the panes.

She stepped quickly over to the south window, and looked out and up. She gasped. She was stunned to see a pulsating, orange-red globe floating in the sky above her house.

It was like nothing she had ever seen before. Definitely not the moon or star or any kind of airplane or helicopter…this was a sphere of light which might have been solid, or pure energy.

Conner’s throat constricted. She was gripped by fear, but she couldn’t take her eyes from this astounding orb hovering above her house.

Conner followed the object, walking from window to window as it danced around in the sky. Suddenly, it was gone from her sight, but something—just a tingling feeling—told her the night’s events were not over.

Standing at her south window, Conner felt an urge to whirl and look behind her. Just as she did, she saw something shocking.

Outside, scuttling past the big windows on the west side of the house, Conner saw a group of what she described as “little men.”

They moved past the window quickly—they had big heads and tiny, frail bodies. Their movement seemed unnaturally fast, almost as if they defied gravity. They were three, possibly four feet tall. They had dark bodies and lighter colored heads.

A scream was trapped in Conner’s throat. She was numb with terror. Could this really be happening!

Suddenly, a commotion sounded outside. Forcing herself to move away from where she was standing, Conner hurried across the living room. She looked out toward her pasture where she kept sheep, some small horses, and chickens around a small shed… the gate doors of the fence were flapping, and her animals were scattering across the dark countryside.

Conner’s instinct was to run outside and herd her animals back home, but going out into the black night with those “things” outside was out of the question.

She thought about calling 911—but tell them what? That little green men from a flying globe were chasing her animals around through the Minnesota night? She was sure she would not be believed… she wasn’t sure she believed herself!

Conner decided to sit tight and wait for dawn—the longest night of her life. Although nothing further happened, she slept not a wink.

The next morning, Conner decided she should at least report the mischief that had been played on her livestock. As she drove to the law enforcement center, she self-debated telling the truth, or simply reporting an act of vandalism.

But by the time she arrived Conner felt a great need to share her experience. She told Deputy Randall her story, fearing she wouldn’t be believed.

To her amazement and relief, Randall told her of his own close encounter with the flying globe the night before.

“I might never have believed her if me and my partner had not seen the UFO, or whatever it was, the night before,” Randall said. “The fact this woman had this experience convinced me all the more that what we saw was something completely unexplainable.”

But Randall had even more reason to be open minded. You see, the UFO he saw the night before was not the first time in his life he had seen a strange flying object — and I’ll write about that in my next post!

e-mail Ken with a question or comment: writer@wiktel.com

Ken’s OBE Interview — Part III

NOTE: This is part three of an interview I did several years ago with a reporter — please go to the “astral travel” link to find parts I and II of the interview, or just scroll down!! And — hey! — thanks for visiting my blog today! Don’t forget to help yourself to the free tea and cucumber sandwiches in the lobby!

* * * *

SASHA: You say that time travel and even interdimensional travel is possible via the OBE. Could you describe one of those experiences for us?

KEN: Sure. One night I suddenly awoke from a deep sleep to find myself rising up out of my body. Before I could think about it, I was sucked into a Starry Tunnel. (Note: See other posts for a description of the Starry Tunnel). As usual I was blasted along—it was a rough ride at great speed. I popped out in a place that I immediately thought must be the surface of the moon. Blazing white mountain crags protruded like broken teeth on a near horizon. I could see many craters, and at my feet was the dusty waste of the lunar regolith. But to my amazement, the dust wasn’t pristine—it was covered and compacted with the tracks of heavy machinery!

In the distance I saw a number of artificial structures, obviously human-made, but futuristic looking. I jumped into the sky and flew in for a closer look. I quickly found myself among some kind of large-scale industrial operation. There were many people — men and women wearing close-fitting space suits that looked to made of flexible, plastic-metal. They were moving about…operating heavy machinery.

I surmised it was a futuristic moon mining facility. I investigated further and noticed a large metal and concrete plate on the surface—it was actually the roof of an underground dwelling environment. I floated over to it and passed through it, and found myself in a common area from which hallways led to a variety of long corridors with many doors.

I moved over to a large display on one of the walls of the common room, and there, among other things, I saw an electronic readout, including the time and a calender, saying the date was 2065. So I assumed I was about 70 years in the future at a mining operation on the moon. After exploring around a bit more in utter fascination, I returned to my physical body on earth.

SASHA : So this is not only an example of time travel, but space travel as well.

KEN: Yes, but remember that scientists tell us that space and time are actually two parts of the same thing, called space-time.

SASHA: Well, how is it that you ended up on the moon in the year 2065? Did you choose that destination before you induced your OBE?

KEN: No, that’s the mystery of the Starry Tunnel. It just takes me where it wants to. Where I end up is a kind of cosmic crap shoot. I have no control over destinations. I just accept and react to where I land, so to speak.

SASHA: Aren’t you afraid you’ll wind up somewhere horrifying or even deadly? I mean, you sound like a child playing with some kind of giant machine you don’t understand.

KEN: No. And in many years of Starry Tunnel travel, nothing negative has ever happened to me. I have been scared at times, to be sure, but I accept these situations as a positive challenges.

SASHA: What about the parallel universes you have mentioned?

KEN: Yes, one of the most fascinating aspects of the out-of-body experience involves alternate or parallel universes. As the theory goes, these other universes are removed from us spatially by additional dimensions.

In the field of quantum mechanics, scientists call alternate universe theory the “Many Worlds Interpretation.” It was first proposed in 1957 by the physicist Hugh Everett III. He came up with “Many Worlds” to deal with some of the more perplexing aspects of quantum mechanics. Everett suggested that whenever numerous viable possibilities exist, the world splits into many worlds or universes, one universe for each different possibility.

For example, if you get up this morning and can’t decide if you want to have coffee or tea for breakfast, the Many Worlds Interpretation says that for each choice made, an entire universe is created to accommodate each choice. In one universe you choose coffee. In another you choose tea. In a third universe, you decide on neither. In still another, you go with orange juice. Each universe is as real and valid as the other. It’s just that each goes its separate way from the point of decision.

So right now, there is another you—or actually millions and trillions of you—in other universes going their own way and making their own decisions.
As far as out-of-body travel goes, I’m saying you can visit these other universes where you find alternate versions of not only yourself, but of your family members, home, country—everything. Many things will be the same, but eerily different in some respects. And the further you remove yourself from your own reality, the more different each universe gets.

There was once a TV show called “Sliders” that did a good job of representing this, and science fiction writers have been writing alternative universe stories for decades. The Many Worlds Interpretation is nothing new to them and to scientists, but the general public knows very little about it all.

SASHA: So, in the out-of-body state, you have been able to enter other universes and meet yourself?

KEN: Yes, many times.

SASHA: What’s that like?

KEN: Mind blowing, difficult and fascinating. I am unable to hold the stability of the OBE state for long in these situations, but sometimes I am lucid and stable long enough to ask questions and explore what life is like in these other worlds.

SASHA: Can you elaborate?

KEN: Yes, but it would be difficult to sum up these kinds of OBEs without using up several thousands words — when my book on all this comes out, I’ll talk about it in more detail.

SASHA: Okay, and we are getting to the end of my interview here. Perhaps we’ll talk more about all this in a future session?

KEN: I’d love to. We’ve only scratched the surface of this whole topic.

SASHA: I bet! But thanks for telling us some of your stories and insights about the fascinating topic of out-of-body travel.

KEN: My pleasure. Happy flying!

CLICKER HERE FOR THE LOST OBE ESSAYS

Drunks Kill a River Monster!

By Ken Korczak

The Red River of the North forms the border between Minnesota and North Dakota and flows north into Canada, where it empties into Lake Winnipeg. When early settlers first traversed this wide, muddy river, they reported sightings of gigantic catfish bigger than their boats — fish as big as logs drifting in the river. But, occasionally, there have also been reports of a large, black, snakelike creature in the Red, a creature that resembled descriptions of the famous Ocopogo sea monster often sighted in British Columbia.

Well, here is a story told to me by an elderly gentleman who lives in northwest Minnesota. He claims that he and four friends not only got a first hand look at one of these mysterious giant water serpents — but they actually killed it! The events described here happened in the late 1950s. Please note: All names have been changed in this story at the request of the interview subject. So, without further delay, the story of the Red River Snake Monster awaits your read!

* * * * *

Once or twice a summer it was Wayne’s practice to brew a batch of his famous corncob wine. Here is how the vile mixture was made: First, Wayne scraped two dozen moldy corn cobs and put the kernals in a bucket of warm water. After letting this sit for a day in a humid shed, he added several pounds of sugar, a gallon or two of grape juice and about 20 gallons more of warm water. He tossed in a hunk of yeast, and then he let it ferment for nine days. After this time, Wayne strained the pungent liquid through a bolt of cheese cloth.

The corncob wine was now ready to drink. To help get this done, Wayne called up four friends—Howard, Roy, Forrest and Wally. Here is how Wayne served his concoction—he placed the galvanized steel tubful of wine on a picnic table. He gave each guest a tin cup. They stood around in a circle, dipped in their cups, and guzzled. It would be difficult to judge the strength of Wayne’s corncob port. It was weak, but it certainly had a few percentages of alcohol.

You had to drink a lot to get a buzz, but of course, there was a lot.

When the tub neared half-empty, the conversation became louder and more boisterous. The men kept drinking until the rims of their tin cups scraped loudly against the bottom of the galvanized tub. They left the dregs, however, because it was cloudy and stunk of yeast. On this particular day, much of the discourse centered around “huntin’ and fishin’.” As the tub neared empty and the day grew dark, the talk became more raucous, including a lot of macho bragging along replete with various sensational claims of physical and sexual prowess.

Then Wayne came up with a very bad idea for a group of men who had just polished off 20 gallons of corncob wine—he suggested they grab a couple of shotguns, some flashlights, take a boat and launch it out on the Red River of the North to see if they could blast catfish out of the shallows.

The technical name for this sport is shotgun fishin’.

Forty-five minutes later, the five men were boating on the muddy Red in Roy’s 18-footer. Howard and Forrest held powerful flashlights, and they played the beams across the inky water.Suddenly, a flashlight beam revealed a floating log which Roy mistook for a gigantic catfish. He let go a blast of his 12-gauge. The rotten log exploded into splinters. River water and bits of wood rained down upon the men. This caused them all to whoop and yell. The boat rocked back and forth and water splashed into the bottom of the boat.

Minutes later Howard’s beam glimpsed something shiny and Roy swung quickly around, only to bang the barrel of his shotgun against Wally’s forehead. Wally fell back and almost went into the water, but the boys caught hold of him before he could go over the side. Everyone thought it was pretty funny, except for Wally. Wally’s fun was over for the night, but not his part in the adventure. Yes, Wally would play a central role in the fantastic events that were about to happen.

Dazed and barely conscious, Wally leaned back in the boat and let his right forearm dangle into the water. A minute later, he felt a strong pressure squeezing his arm. Wally jerked his hand out of the water and let loose a savage yell. All four of the others turned at once to look at him. The two flashlight beams held by Howard and Forrest revealed an amazing thing—some kind of thick, black, long snake-like creature had attached itself to Wally’s arm! Screaming, Wally lifted his arm straight up into the air. The serpent creature curled around the length of his arm, wrapping it like a barber pole.

Here is how one of the men described the creature—“My best description would be that it looked like an electric eel, the kind you see in them undersea adventure TV shows… it had a flat head, shiny black skin, slimy, and I think we saw smooth fins on the thing. It must have been six, seven feet long.” Of course, it was difficult to see well because it was dark, there was so much pandemonium, and the men were considerably hazed by the fermented beverage coursing through their veins.

“Everybody was screaming and yelling at once,” Wayne said. “We were going crazy when we saw that thing on Wally’s arm! It was dark and flashlights were dancing around like crazy… we were rocking the boat so bad just about all of us were swamped into the river… it was nuts!”

Wally began to shout: “Get this ———- thing off my arm! O-o-o-w-w-w-w! Get this ———- thing off my arm!”

Roy grabbed his shotgun by the barrel, wound up to take a hard swing at the monster, lost his balance instead and fell backward into the river. In all the commotion his pals hardly noticed.

Wayne slipped out his pocket knife and made a vicious thrust at the giant river snake, but missed and plunged his knife deep into Wally’s arm. Wally howled in anguish. He thought the monster had bit him. He started to flail his arm around, and whacked Howard square in the face. Howard, face covered with slime, was hurled backward and only Wayne’s quick catch prevented him from going over.

Wally began slamming his arm against the side of the boat, but the snake only squeezed tighter. Wally was in full panic. He kept screaming: “Get this ———- thing off me! Get this ———- thing off me!” In desperation, Wayne recovered Roy’s shotgun from the floor of the boat. In a lucky glimpse afforded by a chance pass of a wild flashlight beam, Wayne noticed that some three feet of the snake’s body was dangling below Wally’s arm.

He pointed the shotgun in that general direction, pulled the trigger and unleashed a roaring discharge. The kickback of the 12-gauge knocked Wayne backward and out into the drink. He dropped the shotgun and it sunk to the silty bottom of the river. Luckily, he was able to grab onto the side of the boat and haul himself back in.

“I got real lucky,” he said, “‘cuz I blew the whole bottom part of that snake monster clean off.”

The truncated end of the creature’s body jerked wildly around like a loose high-pressure hose. Fetid black blood and slime spurted in all directions, spattering the men with rank gore. But the blow was enough to cause the creature to go limp. Wally heaved it from his arm and heard it splash down somewhere in the black water where it sunk to its death.

As soon as everyone had calmed down, they could hear Roy screaming and splashing around in the river. Their flashlight beams located him. They motored over and pulled him in the boat just seconds before he went under for the last time. At this point, the men decided that they had enough shotgun fishin’ for one night and pulled the plug on the adventure.

“We still talk about that bizarre night to this very day,” Wayne said. “I think the biggest mystery is what the heck that thing was. It sure as hell wasn’t no fish, and I never heard of any snakes that big here in northern Minnesota.” Yes, the identity of the creature does pose something of a mystery, but one must grant that much could be explained by the consumption of an entire tub of corncob wine. But as far as I am concerned, there is an even bigger mystery contained within this story—that all five of these geniuses lived to tell it.

e-mail Ken with a question or comment! writer@wiktel.com

The OBE Interview: Ken Talks Astral Travel

NOTE: Here is an interview with yours truly, Ken Korczak, conducted by a fellow journalist Sasha Spilman. This interview originally appeared in the now defunct Rural Road Press. Sasha asked me about how I got into the strange “hobby” of astral travel.

SASHA: How did you first get interested in out-of-body travel, or OBEs as they are called for short?

Ken: I had a serious accident when I was 10 years old that caused me to have a near-death experience. I experienced myself leaving my body, among other things. Since then, I have been compelled to learn more about what is beyond the physical body.

SASHA: So you have been having OBEs since you were ten?

KEN: No. I only learned to travel outside my body in a controlled way years later when I was in my mid-twenties. It was at that time that I made a conscious decision to study this phenomenon more deeply, and see if I could induce an out-of-body experience without needing to almost die.

SASHA: So basically you decided one day to teach yourself how to have out-of-body experiences?

KEN: Exactly right.

SASHA: How does one go about doing that?

KEN: I began with reading everything I could find about the topic. There are dozens of books about out-of-body travel. This is nothing new, you know. People have been experiencing and writing about out-of-body travel since ancient times. Even Plato wrote about what he called “soul travel.” There’s plenty of information out there to show you the way.

SASHA: How long did it take you to induce your first OBE?

KEN: Not long. I studied a number of different techniques, many of which were just crazy nonsense, but others had merit. I eventually stumbled into something that worked for me.

SASHA: Tell me about your first successful OBE.

KEN: Sure. I was living in Minneapolis at the time. I was lying flat on my back on the floor of my apartment. I was just relaxing and not really trying to do anything when I suddenly felt myself lift off the ground and float toward the ceiling. At first, I thought my whole physical body was floating up, but then I looked back down and saw myself—my physical body—on the floor! It was a wild experience!

SASHA: I bet! Weren’t you afraid, or freaked out, or something?

KEN: I would describe it as a totally stunning and exhilarating experience, but I wasn’t scared because I had done my homework. I knew that out-of-body travel was safe… no one has ever died from having an OBE, just like no one has ever died by having a dream about flying.

SASHA: What happened next?

KEN: I floated up to the ceiling and bounced right off of it! Once again, this was a truly bizarre experience. I found that I was able to move in any direction I wanted to simply by willing myself to do so. I floated to the wall on the right, bounced off, and hit the opposite wall. I bounced back and forth between the walls … kind of like a weightless astronaut in the space shuttle, just bouncing around, free of gravity.

SASHA: What were you thinking while this was happening?

KEN: (Laughing) I was screaming inwardly to myself: “Yippee!! Yahoo!!! This is fantastic!!!” I mean, it’s difficult to describe the feeling of utter and complete freedom and breathless exhilaration that hits you when you realize for the first time that you are — or might be — more than just a physical body… that there is another greater part of yourself that has tremendous abilities and freedom.”

SASHA: Well, I’ve heard that people can pass through walls and other physical objects while out-of-body, but you say you bounced off the walls?

KEN: Yes, but let me explain. In the out-of-body state, physical objects are what you decide them to be. If you think a wall is solid, then it will be solid. But if I tell myself I can pass right through a wall, and believe it, then I can pass right through a wall.

SASHA: So have you done this?

KEN: Oh yes, hundreds of times. I took me a while to develop the ability, though. It’s hard to overcome your belief that a wall is wall—you know, something solid. You just have to relax and tell yourself that a wall is not something that can limit or hinder you. I’ve many times experienced the ceiling and even the rafters passing right through my head and body—it’s a wild experience at first, but then you get used to it.

SASHA: Hard to believe you could get used to something like that!

KEN: Yes, but melting through the rafters is only the beginning. There’s no end to the amazement of out-of-body travel. I can tell you about flying into outer space, back in time, into other dimensions, through tunnels or star vortexes, meeting beings from other world and dimensions … it’s endless.

SASHA: I’d like to hear a lot more about all of these things.

KEN: I’d be glad to tell you about them.

PART II — INTERVIEW

SASHA: So your first OBE took place within the confines of your living room. When did you start to go further?

KEN: Very soon. It wasn’t long after I learned to leave my body somewhat frequently that a phenomena I call the “starry tunnel” appeared.

SASHA: What is the starry tunnel?

KEN: One night I was in bed attempting to induce an OBE. I felt myself swaying from side to side while my physical body was completely still and asleep, although my mind was awake. Suddenly, I detached from my body, and was stunned to see, in the floor next to my bed, a whirling vortex—a kind of black whirlpool filled with bits of light which looked to me like distant stars in outer space.

SASHA: That sounds frightening! What happened next? Did you panic?

KEN: No. To be honest, I was not afraid. That’s because part of the training I underwent to develop this ability dealt with handling and controlling fear… I looked at the vortex with wonderment and awe. Rather than be afraid of it, I plunged toward it.

SASHA: Yikes! What happened then?

KEN: I was sucked right into it and immediately found myself being pulled along at an enormous rate of speed. There was a whining sound all around me, and also around me were bits of light that looked like sparks from a camp fire. These were blurring past at enormous speed. I hate to say it, but the effect was very much like the “worm hole” you see in some science fiction shows.

SASHA: How long were you in this tunnel?

KEN: Well, I have traveled the starry tunnel many times. The trip usually lasts just seconds, but sometimes as long as several minutes.

SASHA: And does it go somewhere?

KEN: Yes, it usually goes someplace weird or wonderful, but oddly, there have been many times that I have traveled the tunnel for several minutes, only to pop out right back in my bedroom… like a feedback loop, or something.

SASHA: Tell us about one or two of the more “weird” tunnel destinations, to use your word.

KEN: Yes, well, the first time I traveled the Starry Tunnel I ended up in the middle of vast, empty outer space. I assumed I was far from Earth. I could see no bright stars, or sun, or moon. There were millions of stars, but all a huge distance away from me. I was just floating there.

SASHA: That’s it?

KEN: No. In a few minutes two white energy forms—they looked like large glowing snowflakes, appeared out in the upper left quadrant of my field of view. They hovered out there in space with me, and I felt that they were intelligent and were trying to communicate with me. It was almost as if they were wondering what I was doing there.

The trouble was, at the time, I was very new to OBEs, and I had yet to learn the kind of communication techniques that can be helpful in that situation. I had read much about others who has encountered such “energy beings,” and I assumed that’s what these things were. What I tried to do was project feelings of love and friendship toward them with my mind. Just as I did this, I felt myself yanked… as if a rubber band was tied to my waste… and I was suddenly sent screaming back through the tunnel again, and I ended up back home in bed… back to normal reality.

SASHA: You must admit, all this is pretty hard to believe. I’m sure a lot of readers by now are thinking, “Yeah, right!” How do you know you are not simply having vivid dreams, and not actual out-of-body experiences?

KEN: That’s an excellent question, but the answer is complex. OBEs may be dreams, as you say, but if they are, they represent a special category of dream event. Some scientists have studied people who claim the ability to leave the body in a laboratory setting. One of the best examples is the late Robert Monroe of Faber, Virginia, who was tested by the famous psychologist, Charles Tart. In some cases, the scientific results seem to support the reality of the OBE, while others support the idea that what is actually happening is a form of dreaming called “lucid dreaming.”

Sleep researchers at Stanford University are on the cutting edge of this kind of research today. One scientist there, Stephen LeBerge, is convinced that OBEs are really extremely vivid lucid dreams. Others disagree, and the debate goes on.

SASHA: But perhaps you are just making all this up?

KEN: That’s the most obvious question, and I think a journalist like you needs to ask it. My honest answer is that I am not making any of this up, but at the same time, I willing to admit that all this could be only dream experiences on my part, and not actual OBEs. The bottom line is, I don’t know.

I do know that my out-of-body experiences seem real and they truly don’t have the “feel” of dreams. I ultimately don’t care. I’m interested mainly in the experience. I let the scientists and philosophers wrangle about the nature of the reality of it all.

My attitude is this: You don’t need to be a Chrysler engineer to know how to drive a car, and you don’t have to be an expert in the out-of-body experience to make it happen for you. I just do it and have fun.

SASHA: Now, you have also said that you have traveled to other planets, and have learned to communicate with “strange beings,” among a lot of other far out things.

KEN: Yes, and I think some of the most amazing experiences of out-of-body travel involve travel to other dimensions, or parallel universes as some would call them. Time travel is also a somewhat common experience… the possibilities are endless when you are involved in this kind of experience.

SASHA: Could you tell describe a few of these, perhaps one of your parallel universe experiences?

<>KEN: Yes, I’d be glad to.

<>NEXT POST: THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW!

The Starry Tunnel Ride: The OBE Path to Adventure

Ken Korczak:

In my ongoing experiments with out-of-body travel, the experience that has frightened, surprised and delighted me the most is something I call “the starry tunnel ride.”

Once I learned to control my fear of this strange experience, the starry tunnel ride has become an exhilarating, swooping, roller-coaster kind of trip for me. I use the term “starry tunnel” for lack of a better description. I’m not at all sure what this thing is, or even if it is a tunnel, per se. I’m not sure if the screaming points of light inside it are real stars. Just let me describe the experience to you, and I’ll let you make your own speculations.

Very often when I “detach” from my physical body and find myself “out” and floating above or beside my bed next to my sleeping body, I usually plummet right through the floor. Every time this happens — every time — I have the feeling that I should smash into the floor or get a mouthful of dirt beneath the house. (Note: I do not always detach from my body and just float up into the familiar surroundings of my bedroom, although I have experienced this many times. On those occasions when I do find myself hovering above my bed, it usually is not long before I get sucked into a tunnel. I have no idea why or how this works, I just know it happens.)

Once in the tunnel, I find myself being hurled along at tremendous speed in outer space — except it is not exactly open space; it is more like a tunnel through space.

Although I’m reluctant to make this analogy, the tunnel is much like the “worm hole” described in some science fiction books and movies. It almost seems to be a warp in space, although my starry tunnel is not quite as dramatic and psychedelic as the one depicted in the Star Trek movies .

I make the comparison with much reservation because I don’t want to strain your credulity. I’m not for a minute suggesting, nor do I even want to leave you with the impression that my starry tunnel is, in fact, a warp in space. That’s just too cute and too much like a pat science fiction convention. I’m just struggling for words here and for some everyday comparisons that will best relate my experience to you. Science fiction’s worm hole is just a handy, fictional invention (based on scientific conjecture) that seems to serve best here for descriptive purposes.

As I fly through the tunnel, I see and hear millions of tiny sparks, or points of light which stream by with a high-pitched whine. It’s a mild electrical sound not loud enough to be irritating or scary.

Sometimes the “stars” are quite vivid and appear as pinpoints of light. At other times they seem much less substantial. They can appear blurred and take on a liquid, run-together look.

Even though I now look forward to the crazy fun of the starry tunnel ride, sometimes hurling through this bizarre corridor is no picnic. The first few times I encountered it I was frightened out of my wits. I screamed, struggled against it, and always ended up aborting the experience by waking myself up — that is, waking up my physical body. (My mind is almost always awake and lucid throughout this entire experience).

One of the difficult things about the starry tunnel is that it’s hard to breathe inside it. It’s like being seated in a dive-bombing jet pulling “heavy G’s”. There is a feeling of being squeezed or pressed on the chest. It’s an out-of-control kind of event, like falling and not being able to grab onto anything to stop myself. But really, the starry tunnel is a tenuous place. I find I can abort from it with remarkable ease. In fact, if I fight the tunnel even slightly, it releases me immediately. (It’s interesting to note that this out-of-breath feeling is common to the sleep paralysis experience, which lends credence to the theory that the OBE is actually more akin to a lucid dream than actual out-of-body travel).

Anyway, it wasn’t until I learned to control my fear that I realized that the starry tunnel was nothing to fear at all. Instead, I’ve found it is a dazzling, delightful gateway into an infinite number of realms and universes — both our own universe and (seemingly) alternate ones.

Controlling fear is the key to successful use of the starry tunnel. (In fact, controlling fear is a major key to all aspects of out-of-body travel). And where does the starry tunnel lead? That’s the best part of all! In my next post, I’ll describe some of the mind-blowing, astounding locals the starry tunnel leads me to in the out-of-body world! Stay tuned!

Cool Shrooms Grace My Stump

I know it’s only fungus, but I like it, I like it, yes I do!

Here is a photo of some shrooms growing on a high stump in my back yard. I have already wasted way too much time today trying to identify this species of mushroom, so I give up. If any of my gentle blog guests can identify these for me, please chime in.

I have been thinking about trying to eat these schrooms — so if I suddenly stop making posts here — you’ll know what happened.

Mycologists, those who study mushrooms, have a saying:

“There are old mycologists and bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists!” (click on photo to enlarge)

Xtreme Lucid Dreaming

Ken Korczak:

Now let’s discuss something extremely dangerous. I relate this information, only on the grounds that you fully understand that what I’m talking about is highly dangerous, and no one should try it. My subject is dreaming — lucid dreaming to be specific. You may never have thought experimenting with dreams as being dangerous, but this particular method of triggering lucid dreams in just that — dangerous! Don’t try it!

I stumbled upon this sure-fire method of triggering lucid dreams — and out-of-body experiences — by accident. The technique involves dream deprivation by suppression of dreams with drugs. Here’s how I happened to encounter this dream induction process:

I have long suffered from migraine headaches, and recently, I began suffering a blasting migraine that was painful beyond imagining. Those of you who have suffered true migraines know what I’m talking about. Few things in life are worse than a pounding, nauseating, skull-splitting headache so bad you actually wish for death. Well, to deal with one such headache, which had been tormenting my head for nearly three days, I finally obtained some prescription narcotics — oxycodone — from my doctor and took to my bed. Because my headache was so extreme, even this powerful opiate was able to provide only moderate relief, but it was better than nothing.

My headache persisted for almost a week, and for about five days in a row, I was bombed on oxycodone. Among other effects, prescription narcotics really mess up your sleep patterns. In my case — and partly because of headache pain — I never slept deeply enough during that five-day period to enter REM state, the dream state. When my headache finally lifted, I was finally able to put away the energy-robbing, mind-numbing bottle of pain killers.

During that first night of normal drug-free, pain-free sleep — FIREWORKS! My poor dream-deprived brain had lost five nights of dreaming, and now it was determined to catch up, and really make up for lost time!

Now — I have long been a practitioner of lucid dreaming, and I have learned many good methods over the years if inducing lucid dreams, but rarely have I had as easier time — and more conscious control of my dreams than I did that night after having been dream deprived for several days. I was also easily — remarkably easily — able to capture the hypnagogic state — and practice that wonderful experience of lifting in and out of my body with my dream body, or astral body, or whatever you want to call it.

To make a long story short: Dream deprivation is obviously a way to powerfully magnify your ability to dream, and to help you enjoy improved control over your dreams so that you can practice your favorite lucid dreaming techniques. There are other, safer ways to deprive yourself of the dream state, but even that can be dangerous for some people — so don’t try it. I, however, have continued to experiment with non-drug, temporary dream deprivation techniques as a way to enhance my ability to explore the world of lucid dreaming.

I expect to write more about this in the near future, so stay tuned!

e-mail Ken with questions or comments! — writer@wiktle.com