Lehal Library

eleven dollars does not go very far! Very few people really believe it, and I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t if it didn’t happen to me. Item: In our house at Whistlefield Farm, there was a screened porch off the living room. To get to the porch, one had to go through two double doors and down a series of flagstone steps that led to the porch at a lower level. These steps were quite steep, the difference in floor height being approximately four feet. One morning, with my arms full of books and papers, I walked out the entrance to the porch and stumbled. My left foot crossed over in front of my right, and I dove headlong in the direction of the flagstone floor of the porch. As I fell I was unable to get my arms out in front of me. I remember thinking, “Well, this will certainly end up with a fractured skull and a broken neck.” About six inches from the floor, my fall was suddenly arrested and I landed on my head and shoulders very lightly on the flagstone floor, no heavier than if I had simply put my head down very carefully. The rest of my body then draped down afterward, drifting as gently as a feather. I lay there for a moment wondering what had happened. I felt my head and my shoulders and there was no pain, no mark, no bruise, nothing. I stood up, picked up my books and papers, looked at the place from where I had fallen, and tried to figure some answer. Something had cushioned my fall, but I certainly was not consciously aware of what it was. Some months later in the middle of winter, a similar event took place. I was walking down the front steps, which had been reportedly cleaned after a snow, slipped, and started to fall. This time I was not quite so surprised when I again landed very lightly. There have been only two such events, and I don’t think I will deliberately try to fall experimentally. Just another one of those “as yet” unexplained moments. Item: One of the more puzzling events took place as a result of a very direct communication—or so it seemed. Early one morning in the mid-seventies, about three o’clock to be exact, I went through my customary lazy man’s way of rolling out of my body. Almost immediately I was accosted by a vaguely formed individual who gave