Seven months into my assignment, the battalion jumped into Sicily drop zone, a favorite of the 82nd, for a training exercise. Six hundred and eighty-six men cascaded from C-141 Starlifters in the darkness. For several days we moved, fortified, fought an opposing force, then moved and did it all over again. Both sides in this mock war were being evaluated and both wanted desperately to do well, so the nights were long and the days filled with endless activity. On the sixth day, we bivouacked along a defensive line extending several kilometers along a small creek. At 0200 hours my driver and I stopped inside the battalion headquarters perimeter for some much-needed rest. I gave Lieutenant Colonel Scully a final update on some logistics issues and headed to my vehicle for some sleep.
The trail leading to the vehicle was narrow and black as pitch on the moonless night, and it was there that the ether began overtaking my everyday life. I followed the small lights that led down into the low ground to my position. Pushing a large branch out of the way, I closed my eyes to protect them. I opened them to sunlight and a beautiful tropical garden filled with waterfalls and enormous pools.
“Welcome! My colleagues and I have been waiting for you.”
For a moment I just stood there overwhelmed, staring into the garden, listening to the rush of the waterfalls. A few yards from me sat a man impeccably dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. He sat at a glass table in an enormous white chair with a flared back that extended well above his head. Accompanying him at the table were six identical men identically dressed.
I looked up to see a surreal sky, crimson with wisps of black streaking across it. “Where am I?”
“You are where you belong.” The first man swept his arm in a welcoming gesture. “This is your home, if you are worthy.”
“Really? And what constitutes worthiness?”
“The acceptance of things as they are and were meant to be. The wisdom and willingness to use your new gifts correctly, for the right purpose.” He pointed toward the seat directly opposite him. “Please sit with us.”
I sat cautiously, keeping an eye on the men with him. They didn’t budge or look around or even blink, not once. “Who are you?”
The man gave a thin smile. “We are your brothers, your friends … we are whatever you need, and we will always be there for you when you need us. We are everything you could want. Just ask and your wants shall be fulfilled; we have been directed to care for you.”
“By whom? The angel?”
“Yes, of course, the angel. He asked that we watch over you and counsel you on the use of your gift. It is quite remarkable, is it not? The gift, I mean. Its potential is quite limitless, and the beauty of it is that all your brothers and sisters possess it. You are simply one of the few to have harnessed it. Congratulations.”
“Why am I here? What do you want from me? Why did the angel send you now?”
“Merely to inform you. He wanted you to know who I am, to feel comfortable with me.” His eyes bored into mine. “You are comfortable with me, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not at all comfortable. As a matter of fact I think something’s foul. A lot of what has happened to me doesn’t make much sense, but this makes even less. You have no message, no lesson. I don’t know who or what you are, but I’m not afraid of you! Leave me alone!”
The man continued smiling, his eyes still boring into mine. I felt as though he were turning me inside out with his eyes, revealing the contents of my soul. Something stank, something I knew but couldn’t recognize. His smile turned to cruel and wicked laughter. I backed away, stumbling, and looked up to see my face on the man who was the haunting, evil being of my nightmares. All around me a voice called my name laced with evil laughter. I spun in every direction, trying to break the connection, trying desperately to get back to the physical world. The garden morphed, and the stench of the water grew thicker and thicker, the water running a sluggish dark red like the sky. An amber glow was cast across the garden, mixing with the hot wind and the laughter. I tried to get away. Concentrating, I raised myself above the beings and crossed the water, tracking the waterfall up and over its source, desperately trying to escape this baneful place. As my spectral body crested the falls, I saw the most terrible sight: there, on the banks of the narrow river, stood a great assembly of people gathered like cattle, spread before me as far as my eyes could see. And there, on the banks of the river, faceless beings systematically beckoned each man, woman, and child to step forward and come to them. Apathetically, they obeyed. As they did, the beings slit their throats, snatched them up, and held them aloft by the ankles. It was their blood that turned the river, the falls, and the pools dark red. The drained bodies were piled in great heaps. Now I recognized the stench: it was blood, the blood of a people, the blood of a world.
“Oh, my God, why am I seeing this?” I cried aloud, dropping to my knees to cover my eyes and head as a beaten child would.
“Halt! Who goes there?” demanded a voice out of the darkness. “I said, who goes there?”
“It’s Major Morehouse.”
“Advance and be recognized.”
I walked toward the voice, stopping when a red flashlight beam struck my face.
“Sir, what the hell was going on out there? What were you yelling about—you want to give our position away?”
“Sorry—I got a branch in my eye.”
“I’ve pulled that stunt a time or two myself, sir. You want me to get a medic over here to take a look at it?”
“No, thanks anyway. Who are you? I can’t see your name tag.”
“Private First Class Collins, sir!”
“Collins, I appreciate your asking. Keep up the good work. And, say, do you happen to know where my vehicle is parked? I seem to be a bit disoriented.”
“Yes, sir. It’s right over there”—he pointed with the flashlight beam—“about thirty or forty meters. You sure you’re all right, Major?”
I touched his shoulder in the darkness. “I’ll be fine. I just need some sleep. Thanks again, Collins.”
“Airborne! Sir.”
I stumbled away, found my vehicle, and lay on the ground next to it, staring into the night sky until sleep came to me. The time the angel had spoken of must be growing near. The battle inside me raged on.
Six weeks passed. Mel and I had many phone conversations about how and when to go public, discussing over and over every possible way to take the information safely to the people. We agreed and then disagreed on how best to do it; our families, the unit, and whether or not to try and involve other viewers became paramount issues. We finally concluded that we couldn’t do it on our own; some outside third party would have to help us. But who would help and how remained a mystery.
It’s a difficult decision to violate a security oath. The penalties are stiff, but they don’t hurt nearly as much as the attitudes of your comrades when they learn of your decision. I was about to break an oath that I had honored since the day I first saluted and swore my allegiance to the United States, promising to support and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I was about to become a domestic enemy.
I had to define clearly what I was about to do. First I considered whether telling my story would endanger the national security of the United States, the country I love dearly and had sacrificed for. I concluded that it would not. The Cold War was over. A year ago our Soviet counterparts had told the entire world what they had been doing for the past forty years in the paranormal arena. I wasn’t giving away launch codes or the names of top-secret operatives. I was telling a story about psychic spies, whose existence was already an established fact.
Second, would telling my story endanger anyone’s life? During the Cold War, when the two major superpowers were still at each other’s throats, the answer might have been yes. But not today. Today it was I who would face the greatest risk. In my opinion, this was a story that had to be told for mankind’s sake; if I was going to take heat for doing so, so be it. Too much had been learned to continu
e to allow remote viewing to be bottled up in some secret dungeon, never to be shared with the people who paid for it.
On October 1, 1992, I mustered the courage to call Debbie. It had been nearly six months since I’d talked with her and the children. They needed to know what I was planning to do.
“Hello, Deb.”
“Well, it’s been a long time.”
“Too long.”
“How are you feeling these days?”
“I’m doing better, I think.”
“Maybe someday you’ll share it with me.”
“I’m going to go public with the remote-viewing story. I’ve decided it’s too important to keep under wraps any longer.”
There was silence on the phone. “Do you realize what you’re saying?” Deb’s voice quivered. “Do you really think they’ll let you do that?”
“There’s got to be a way, and that’s what I want you to help me with. Help me decide how best to do this. All I know is that it needs to be done, for all mankind.”
“David, I know how important it is; I’ve always known that. I’m proud of you, but think of the price! Is it worth your career? Your life?”
“C’mon, Debbie, you’re exaggerating. Once people see what marvelous potential remote viewing has, don’t you think they’ll support my decision?”
“No, they won’t. First of all, they won’t believe you. Second, the people in charge will discredit you. Or they may even go to greater extremes. You just don’t know.”
“You’re right—but this is something I need to do. It’s my destiny.”
“Destiny isn’t a matter of fact, David. It’s a matter of choice.”
“I can’t change what I’ve become.”
“Yes, you can! You haven’t become what you’re supposed to be.”
“What am I supposed to be? I love you, Debbie, but I can’t go on like this. I need someone to stand beside me.” I waited, but she said nothing. “Okay, I understand.”
Hours later the phone rang.
“David? It’s Debbie. I love you. Why don’t you come home for Christmas?”
My father and mother came to be with us that year. For the first time in a long while we were all together. Michael, growing like a weed, was already taller than me. Mariah and Danielle were discovering boys, and makeup, and clothes, and music … God, I’d missed a lot. We decorated the tree together, wrapped presents, shopped, and wrapped more presents. Grandma and Grandpa loved shopping for the kids, who hadn’t enjoyed such a bountiful Christmas in years. As for me, it was a wonderful Christmas, a time to touch the place where I truly belonged and wanted to be. I was constantly full of emotion, almost enlightened with it. The goodness of everyone around me seemed to flow into me; I was in love with life again, brimming with enthusiasm. For a few days I put aside the difficult issue confronting me and enjoyed my family.
One evening after dinner, Dad and I walked to a small park a few blocks from the house and sat on a cold bench, with only the oak trees as company.
“So things are working out for you and Debbie again, are they?”
I crossed my fingers. “If she were as mixed up as I am, we’d be divorced already. It’s really her spirit that keeps us together. I’m always so far out in left field these days. It’s tough to keep the important physical aspects of your life together.”
“Well, Debbie and the children are far more than physical aspects of your life; they’re the most spiritual things you have or ever will have. Believe me, you mustn’t sacrifice that kind of love for anything, and I mean anything.” He looked at me intently. “Do you understand me?”
“I think I do. But I also know that I have to do what I’ve been set apart to do. You know about that, don’t you, Dad? You know I’ve been selected to be a part of something special—don’t you?”
Dad didn’t look at me, but into the trees, as if he were searching for memories he’d put away long ago. Slowly, he rose to his feet and headed deeper into the park.
As we walked he began speaking, the timbre and cadence of his voice unlike anything I’d heard from him. “I want you to know, before I tell you this, that I don’t consider myself unique in any way. I’m just a man who loved his family and did what was asked of him—no more than any of your relatives did, no more than millions of other Americans and Allied soldiers did. In two wars I never fought above battalion level, so I was always close to the enemy. I had a lot of close calls in World War II and Korea, but I had an inner feeling that something was watching over me.” He stopped, his modesty overtaking him. “It’s difficult to talk about this; I put it behind me decades ago.”
“It’s okay, Dad, I understand. You don’t have to tell me about it.”
“You need to know!” He composed himself and continued. “As I was saying, I had this inner sense that I was being watched over. I wish everyone had the advantage of feeling that way. When I was aboard ship, transiting the Atlantic, we were warned about the wolf packs that would track the convoys and sink whatever came into their sights. More than once we were locked up in our holds, below the waterline, listening to depth charges trying to keep the subs from getting a shot at us. Those were weird episodes … time seemed to stand still. A lot of guys nearly went crazy anticipating a torpedo; others prayed; still others cried.”
“Don’t you think we all have an angel looking out for us at times?”
“Yes. I also think that whether you’re aware of its presence is entirely up to the angel.”
“Why wouldn’t the angel want you to know it was there?”
“Maybe only some people need to know. Maybe knowing is what steers them in a certain direction in life, causes them to make certain choices. I don’t know. Maybe I was given the knowledge that I had an angel because without it I wouldn’t have been as brave as others.” He smiled. “But I want to say that I think there was a reason some were spared in the war and some were called away from this life, and it has nothing to do with deserving to live or not. It has everything to do with the purpose of some larger plan that I can’t even begin to comprehend. There are angels out there. I know mine.”
“You, too?”
“I was in Korea, assigned to the 224th Infantry Regiment. One night I lay down and it came to me. My angel.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me this?”
He laughed. “It’s not something you bring up for high school graduation, now is it? It was hard enough for me to accept, let alone try and tell someone else about it.”
“Did you tell Mom?”
“She was the first person I told. You’re the second, and you’ll be the last in this lifetime.”
“Did your angel speak to you?”
“What he said confused the hell out of me, so I just let it go. It never made any sense until now.”
“What was it?”
“He said that a part of me would one day struggle to deliver a message.”
“And?”
“That he would leave me, to protect the part of me in peril … . It made no sense to me for nearly—what? Fifty years? But it makes sense now.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re the part of me he spoke of, and you’re getting ready to talk about this thing you call the gift. Aren’t you?”
I hung my head, realizing how transparent I was to this man. “Yeah, I am. Mel and I think it needs to be done. What do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think. The angel’s yours now, you know. I’ve given him to you, just as he said I would. He took good care of me; I know he’ll do the same for you.” He paused briefly, troubled by his thoughts. “You’re going to have a difficult time with this, son. The keepers of the secret won’t take it lightly.”
“I know.”
“Keep your wits about you and stay perfectly clean, because they will look for any weakness they can exploit. That’s how they work—you know that, you’ve been among them for five years now.”
“It should be harder for them to get to me in the 82nd
.”
“No, it won’t. You won’t have as much chance of knowing what they’re up to. Just remember, you can be better than your reputation, but never better than your principles.”
In retrospect, I thank God for that brief interlude before the storm. I wasn’t reminded of my decision until January 3, 1993. I was playing a game with my son when the phone rang.
After a short pause an unfamiliar voice broke the silence. “Is this Major David Morehouse?”
“It is; who’s this?”
“We know what you’re trying to do. My advice to you is that you change your plans. People who tell secrets pay a big price in the long run.”
“Wait a minute! Who the hell are you? What the—”
“Are you willing to pay that price?”
The phone went dead.
SEVEN
THE FALL
I had been at Fort Bragg as the battalion executive officer for about nine months. Life there was no different for the enlisted men than at any other army post. If they weren’t training for war, there were always leaves to rake, weeds to pull, and barracks to paint. I did everything I could to improve the men’s quality of life, and it was a good time for me; I felt worth something again. I still had trouble with the remote-viewing fallout, nightmares and altered states, and because of that I still lived alone, unable to return to the family. Also, unbeknownst to my fellow soldiers, I planned to reveal classified information. But for a year I was back where I belonged, making a difference in the lives of soldiers. It was a blessing.
Ingo Swann, a highly respected paranormal researcher and expert, suggested to Mel that we consider telling the story of remote viewing in a book. This, he believed, was the only way to get a clear, complete statement out to the public. We suspected that the news media would cover the story briefly and superficially, chasing after any bone the government threw their way and taking official government statements about Sun Streak at face value. The story would die quickly—if it aired at all. Eventually we did put out some feelers to the news media, but were met with considerable skepticism. I told Mel we just had to find a long-term, detailed way of telling our story.
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