A Trip.

Being a Remote Viewer Isn’t Always Easy

Back in the early 1990s I used to fly out to Palo Alto every couple of months to visit the Stanford Research Institute (SRI, as most folks call it) to be part of their Remote Viewing program. Basically, we'd sit around a dorm room, drop acid or DMT and then, after we'd left our bodies, go look in on high-value intelligence targets.

It was like regular tripping, only instead of the Plant Goddess, we had to hang out with Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein or, and I have no fucking clue why the CIA or SRI was interested in her, Oprah Winfrey.

My best story from those years was when I took a triple hit of DMT after draining a bottle of Sheep Dip Scotch Whisky that I'd bought at Harrod's after a hastily arranged photo shoot of Margaret Thatcher's Guinea Pigs for Pig Fancy magazine. Needless to say, I was primed for a big trip and this one did not disappoint. Well, it didn't disappoint me, but I can't say the same for my handlers.

Anyways, I drank a bunch of water and took the massive hit of DMT and settled into the custom-built Ekornes remote viewing chair.

The usual wind up of nausea and finger cramps passed as usual with no complications, as did the flash of green light that signaled I was about to leave my body. But that time, the green light, which usually led to me hovering above my body was replaced with a cerulean glow around the edges of my vision, which then resolved into a field of blue, ever deepening in hue, that filled my eyes and then, quick as Frat boy dropping his pants, turned into the most amazing star-filled sky I've ever seen.

"Oprah doesn't live here," I thought.

Then something happened that was completely out of my experience as a remote viewer.

Someone touched me on the shoulder and asked if I was OK.

"You can see me?" I said.

"I just touched you, so it would be safe to assume that I was able to see you first," my as-of-yet unseen host said.

I spun round, which in itself was weird, because when you're incorporeal you don't really move around like you do when you're in your body, and saw a man who looked uncannily like Hal Holbrook doing his Mark Twain show, white suit and all, only his skin was half translucent, half mottled, like the markings on a shaved English Springer Spaniel.

"Who are you where am I what the hell?!?" I sputtered.

"I'm (at this point he made a sound that sounded like a Bushman choking on a warthog anus and I assumed that that was his name). You're on the closest habitable planet to your home world and I'm the Welcome Wagon. Do you really think Hell would have such a pretty sky?" he said.

I conceded the point about the sky.

Spotted Hal Holbrook moved his hand from my shoulder and took my hand in his and gave it a squeeze.

"I'm as real as that bottle of booze you drank and you need to tell your handlers that your people will never get to see this sky or any other if you don't do something about Oprah. Do you understand?" spotty Hal said.

"What are we supposed to do?" I asked.

"Damned if I know. I just know y'all are supposed to do something about her." he said, sounding more and more like a stagey Sam Clemens.

I was about to ask how I got there and was he really sure that's all he could tell me about The Oprah Situation, when he patted my butt like Tom Landry sending Roger Staubach out onto the field and next thing I know, I'm back in that Norwegian recliner with a medical team, the therapy dog and my handler looking very, very cross at me.

Sadly, the rest is classified.