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A Record of Out of the Body Experiences – Oliver Fox

In the room where I slept there was what used to be called a fish tail burner – now, like the lamplighter with his rod, a thing of the past.  Through the clear glass of the globe I could see the bright, fan shaped flame with its central cone of blackish purple, or dark blue, in which little red spots shot upwards.

In my drowsy condition I used to watch these mounting spots as they traversed the dark space and became lost in the outer brightness, and sometimes things would suddenly ‘go wrong’.  The light of the gas flame grew dim and that mysterious pale golden light from nowhere suffused the room.  I would hear strange noises, crackling and snapping noises, while little shafts of blue flame, like miniature lightning, darted from the corners of the room.

And then came the apparition; a man with a grotesquely horrible face, a wolf with the eyes of fire, a lion, a huge serpent, a great black bear standing erect so that it reached the ceiling – I saw all these at different times.  And I just yelled and yelled.

The apparition would stay quite still, glowering at me, and I could hear my mother running up the stairs in answer to my frantic SOS; but as soon as she turned the door knob, the fearsome beast vanished and things ‘came right’ again.

It must have been very irritating for my mother, but she was always sweet and gentle with me.  She, of course, thought that I had been dreaming, and impressed upon me that it was only a nightmare.  Well, I know now that it was not.  These experiences, which were quite rare and probably finished with by the time I was six, were undoubtedly the result of self induced trance caused by staring at the gas flame