"This world of Imagination is the world of Eternity; it is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World of Imagination is Infinite, and Eternal, whereas the world of Generation, or Vegetation, is Finite and Temporal. There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity. The Human Imagination..." William Blake A Vision of the Last Judgment Consider: An encounter with a man whom my friend Terry Robinson wonders if he was actually an angel saves him from drowning. Another poet, and friend of mine, Stephen Morrissey has an excellent blog and series of poems, Dream Journeys that would fit right into this new series I am going to do here! There are also other poems of Stephen and Terry that these gentlemen kindly let me post here at My Favorite Monsters under the "poetry" label-and also by their names. A young mother notices her 3 year old daughter has run off from the garden where she was playing. The mother looks around frantically and to her horror sees the young girl sitting on the nearby railroad tracks-a train is coming. "As she raced from the house screaming her daughter's name, she suddenly saw a striking figure, clothed in pure white, lifting Lisa off the tracks. While the train roared past, the glorious being stood by the track with an arm around the child...When the mother reached the daughter's side, Lisa was standing alone." Daimonic Reality by Patrick Harpur, pages 37-38.
And what of these incidents: "Or the Petropolis, Brazil, report of October 25, 1957, in which we are told that a girl dying from cancer was saved by a fantastic operation performed by two men who came from the sky. Or the case of "Dr X," the French doctor who observed two strange objects near his house in October 1968 and was subsequently cured of a large hematoma and of a form of paralysis." Dimensions, page 154 by Dr. Jacques Vallee. And what on Earth are we to make of these encounters/incidents?: "Driving home in a company van the evening of March 17, 1978, Englishman Ken Edwards saw a strange figure on top of an embankment...It descended the steep hill at an impossible right angle to the ground, and before walking across the road and straight through a chain link fence as if it wasn't there, turned to face the van and shot narrow beams of light from its eyes into the cab. A power surge burned out all of the major components, Edwards' watch stopped, and he showed Hough [Peter Hough-a respected UFO researcher] marks on his hands that had been clutching the steering wheel which resembled sunburns. He soon began complaining of stomach pains, and was found to be riddled with cancer, and died at 42. Maybe he would have anyway, if he and something unknowable hadn't crossed paths, but like Barbara, his widow, told Hough, "A thing that can burn skin, stop watches and destroy an expensive radio might well be capable of harming a human being." Rigorous Intuition by Jeff Wells pages xiv and xv.
And this?: "Last July 20, Vince Weiguang Li delivered an Edmonton newspaper that carried a lengthy feature on the Wendigo, "a terrifying creature in native mythology that has a ravenous appetite for human flesh. It could take possession of people and turn them into cannabalistic monsters."
"Li abruptly quit his job and took a bus across the Canadian prarie, where he beheaded and cannabalized 20-year-old Tim McLean. "I just don't know what to think of it, quite frankly," says the pieces author, and Windigo expert, Nathan Carlson. He'd documented numerous cases of people believing they were "turning Windigo" who would beg to be killed "before they started eating people." At Li's first courthouse appearance, the only words he spoke was a soft, "Please kill me." also from Rigorous Intuition pg. xv 
And this?: "On 16 November 1963 four young people were walking along a country road near Sandling Park, Hythe, Kent. Seventeen-year-old John Flaxton was the first to draw attention to a bright "star" which seemed to be moving over the woods at Slaybrook corner. The group grew alarmed when the "star" started to drop towards them. As they ran for safety they became aware of an oval-shaped golden light floating above an adjoining field. They stopped running-and the light stopped moving. They felt they were being watched."
"Up until now. the encounter is typical: the anomalous light heralds the advent of some visitation-a ring of fairies perhaps or a blond "spaceman" with a stirring message for mankind. Instead, "the glowing disappeared behind the trees, and the next thing the young people knew was that a dark figure was stumbling across the field towards them. It seemed to be completely black, human-sized but with no head [and]...to have wings of the kind associated with bats...The youngsters are convinced they saw a ghost. Mervyn Hutchinson, eighteen, said it was like a bat with webbed feet and no head." Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld by Patrick Harpur, page 44.
The 1963 sighting in England, that Patrick Harpur talks about, gave me a bit more of a pause than its very creepy nature would already suggest. It happened 6 days before the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Texas (or the 1963 coup d' etat for some of us conspiracy researchers!) "over the woods at Slaybrook corner," and involved an entity very reminiscent of Mothman . Now many people who believe in, and investigate such things believe the Mothman is an apparition that presages death, similar to the Black Dog or the White Lady. Maybe my ponderings on this case are "out of left field." However, I do believe in the reality of these (and thousands upon thousands) of other paranormal/Fortean phenomena. I also believe that human consciousness (at all of the levels of existence it can access) interacts like it is a web -spun within and without the threads and skeins of gross physical matter, and other, more subtler forms of matter which I definitely think exist too.
So I ask myself, "WTF is going on?" The first image is William Blake's The Ghost of a Flea, painted circa 1815-1820. The second image is one I saw on a discussion forum so I don't know who did it- another mystery! To be continued...
