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Schiller, Lori - I saw fire, lightning, coloured bolts of light. I saw people hanging in the window, and body parts hanging from the trees
Identifier
001593
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
From The Quiet Room – Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett
Sounds echoed through my head like thunder. There was a hailstorm in my brain, with tornado winds knocking down telephone poles and trees. I heard bomber planes overhead and braced myself against their destructive roar. I was overwhelmed by every sound I heard around me. I couldn't tune out any noise; each one pounded my head with equal intensity......
But the worst torment these days was not the things I heard, but rather the things I saw. I saw fire, lightning, coloured bolts of light. I saw people hanging in the window, and body parts hanging from the trees. I saw fire around people and walls and faces. Sometimes I felt I had projector eyeballs, shooting things and shapes and colours straight ahead of me. Sometimes I saw things as if they were movies floating before my eyes. Sometimes I saw things that looked as real as my bed or my lamp or my tennis shoes.
I couldn't sleep at night because of the creatures in my bed. I sat at my desk writing in my journal one night because I was afraid to go near my bed. 'There are four of them sitting on my bed' I wrote.
Usually I saw creatures with faces that were like the scariest Halloween mask ever made or creatures with big blubbery, hairy slippery green faces. But sometimes I saw people I recognised. I saw the face of my parents' friend Dr Arnie Maerov melt into a caricature. Why him? Was it simply because he was a psychiatrist, or because he was a friend of my parents? I saw my seventh-grade science teacher Fred Zaltas. I had had a crush on him when I was thirteen, but I hadn't thought of him in ten years.