That day we had invited people over for lunch on the patio. I was crossing the patio telling a few of the early guests that I was going to run down to the Turley post office and would be right back. I walked by a doctor who was carrying a plastic bag of ice. Without warning, his arm released the ice bag and the heavy frozen bag smashed into the top of my foot and broke it. I tried to pretend I wasn’t hurt. The pain was so great that even though I was headed toward the post office I turned back. I realized I wasn’t supposed to mail the letter... at least not then. An X-ray on the following day confirmed the break on the metatarsal arch bone of my right foot.
I sat down on the couch, took the letter out of my purse and put it into the desk drawer. It wasn’t time yet, I knew.
Four days passed. I was again fairly pain free and felt fine. I told myself, “Everything is okay. I’m going to mail the letter while I’m shopping for clothes for the kids.” I put the letter back into my purse.
At the Thrift Store I found the rack of kids’ clothes. On the wall above the rack was a high shelf which traced along the whole length of the building. The stationary shelf held toys, radios, pans, vases, tools, just a ton of stuff of all kinds. Right above where I was standing was a large metal lunch box with a beverage vacuum, the box was set toward the back of the shelf. When I stepped back to scrutinize one dress the heavy metal lunch box jumped off the shelf and hurtled down to the top of one of my feet. I say “jumped” because there was no explanation for the fallen object. It was originally set well back on the shelf. Some “force” moved the box off the shelf and onto my foot. I was wearing sandals so, again, excruciating pain was involved. I hobbled out of the warehouse building and went home. I took the letter out and put it back into my desk drawer while saying aloud. “I’m not mailing this letter.”
Five days later I put the letter into my purse once again. I put my purse strap across my shoulder and walked out to the pasture in back of our house where our three horses graze. There are two pear trees in the field and I saw that they were heavy with ripe fruit. I went to shake down pears for the three horses. As I jiggled the branches to loosen the fruit, the horses seemed to go berserk and headed directly toward me. They’d never stampeded in such a way before and I’d shaken the fruit down for them many times in years past. The palomino reared up and stamped on my other foot. Now both feet again had broken bones across the top of the arch.
I never sent the letter. I could barely hobble, so for the next week or so I spent a great deal of time on the couch. I had plenty of time to think. I came to understand that I had been attacked in such strange ways because it was time to dissolve the partnership with Jacques. Even though we were a perfect team... I could get people to talk and he was able to record and question further. Cases would come to me and he would know how to investigate the situation. When we started I was green but I learned an immense amount about how to investigate the cases which were always being dropped into my lap. Neither of us wanted to quit the work but the aliens had made it more than clear that I was to proceed on my own and that is what I have done.
As word began to get about among the UFO fans and while I was still working with Dr. Vallee, another case was given me by people who had psychic problems but no answers. I thought at the time that it had nothing to do with UFO’s. Jacques was always interested in any investigating I did on my own so I usually shared whatever my case might be, with him. He took copious notes but offered no solutions to my suffering clients. This case, which both Jacques and I found terribly fascinating is the one my co-author calls, “The Jack Black Story.”
It started in the early morning in the spring in 1979. I rolled over to lift the telephone.
“Hello?” There was silence at the other end of the line.
“Hello?” I tried again.
“Barbara Bartholic?”
“Yes.” I could sense fear in the man’s voice. It seemed that panic lay just beneath the surface of his high pitched tone. “This is Barbara Bartholic.”
“My name is Will S_____.. I think I have a problem and someone told me you might be able to help me.”
“What sort of problem do you think you have?” It was four o’ clock in the morning and I was pretty sure this young man had seen a UFO or had had some of his cattle mutilated... the usual thing in this part of the world.
“Well...” He hesitated such a long moment I almost went back to sleep. “It’s these things. They keep showing up on the floor of my bedroom.”
“Things?” Now he had my attention. The hair on the back of my neck bristled when he spoke again.
“Yeah. You know. Like pictures and letters and stuff. Things are... Someone’s... Something’s happening over here. Some of it I wouldn’t want to talk about over the phone with no lady.” I was sitting up by now. “Can you help us?”
When I had his address and number I reached for my clothing and left our bed. “Bob,” I shook him slightly. “I’m going out on a case. I’ll see you later this afternoon. Someone had been receiving photographs and other stuff in his room. Sounds like teleportation.”
It didn’t take me more than ten minutes to make it to the apartment complex where the caller lived. There was almost no traffic in the Tulsa area, not that early in the morning, and, I have to admit, I was speeding.
Will S_____ and his girl friend, Maria Y_____, met me at their door when I rang the bell at the apartment he’d named on the telephone. Native Americans in their late teens or early twenties, I surmised. Both appeared to be eaten alive by fear. Maria’s teeth were chattering and Will’s voice cracked when he talked. They told an incredible story.
They’d been accustomed to meeting for sex in Will’s bedroom which was located in his Father’s apartment, usually during the nights when the Father worked. One night after they’d finished with their lovemaking they’d suddenly noted a sharp, strong odor, something like the spray fragrances some people use in cars and bathrooms, only more pervasive. By the side of the bed where they lay, Will found a strange item, something that had not been there when they’d gone to bed so far as either of them knew. It was a rectangular, whitish, felt pad which was emitting the strong deodorant-type odor. Later we learned that the pad was an old style deodorant item which had, in years past, been used in men’s latrines in bars, saloons and brothels. The odiferous liquid was contained in a glass capsule encased within the felt pad. To activate the deodorant the person in charge of cleaning usually stamped on the pad to break the glass capsule inside. The liquid deodorant was terribly strong in order to mask the ugly smells which usually pervaded such rarely scrubbed areas.
Both the young people swore to each other that first day that they neither knew what the horrid thing was nor had either of them left it on the bedroom floor. They chalked it up to chance. Maybe Will’s Father had put the pad in Will’s room?
That first pad was the beginning salute of a cycle of the life and time of a Mississippi black man named “Jack Black.” They learned over several days and nights through annotated photographs, newspaper clippings, maps, notes, letters and many other objects, that Jack Black was fascinated by feces, exploding toilets and overflowing septic tanks.
Upon questioning the two young people we learned that Will had opened a closet and had seen a woman in the closet one day. He was so frightened he’d closed the door. Upon reopening the closet he’d found the woman was gone. They also had a fire in the wall, a non-consuming fire. The flames could be seen for several minutes but the wall was not burned and there were no marks when the fire died. These apparitions, along with the continuing flow of the strange objects beside their bed were driving the young. couple apart. They began to be more reluctant to make love.
Each time before sex, they’d check the floor around and under the bed very carefully, then after their lovemaking, they’d invariably find a photograph or a death certificate or a newspaper article, all pointing to some phase of Jack Black’s life. They also received many more deodorant pads. None of the material was address
ed to either of them. All the letters and notes and annotations were to or from Jack Black and his friends and family, complete with official postmarks and U.S. Postal stamps and cancellations. Some were from his time in the army in Vietnam.
Long, coarse, black hair. Greenish goop. Photographs of dead people. Letters in envelopes with legitimate postmarks and cancellation symbols. Maps. Old greeting cards. Other types of deodorant pads. Notes signed and hand written in block printing by Jack Black. Birth certificates, funerary photographs, death certificates, and dried vegetation of tropical origin were among the things that appeared. A treasure trove to us but a nightmare to the kids who were experiencing the objects’ appearances.
To me this was all exciting beyond measure. To Will and Maria it was frightening beyond measure. They weren’t interested in Jack Black, nor in his exploding toilets. However, they began to collect and keep the materials in a cardboard box after I asked them to do so.
A few years later my co-author asked a writer friend of hers to do a little investigating of the Jack Black story while she visited family in the area shown on the magically appearing maps and newspapers. She didn’t learn anything, but how much can a blonde white woman expect to learn about the life and times of a country black man even in the same county? Not easy in Mississippi nor perhaps anyplace else in the South.
But the story doesn’t end there.
Will was called to the army and soon sent overseas. Maria drifted into another relationship and married Richard L. They moved into a small house on Tulsa’s West Side and Maria assumed that her days of being “haunted” as she called it, were over.
But she was wrong. Something followed her to her new home.
Jacques, as usual, had taken notes but had few comments. I was thrilled to be able to lay out the objects in neat rows on my living room floor and through them, to trace a story of Jack Black’s life and times in Mississippi and Vietnam and back again.
I still have the teleported objects carefully stored in a closet in my house.
Maria and Richard were horrified to learn that strange stuff was going to be occurring in their new house. A light that sat on the dinette table flashed off and on. They could not use their telephone, sometimes for an hour at a time. One morning the smell of cigar smoke was so strong in the kitchen that they had to leave it. Neither Maria nor Richard smokes.
Richard’s mom came to live with them for a month. She was married to a man (not Richard’s father) who was a practitioner of Indian medicine. Because his wife had left him the Medicine Man threatened them all and said he would send his power to cause the mother lots of trouble.
Their troubles accelerated.
One day Maria came home after work and all the curtains were drawn back, all drawers were open and things from the drawers were spread about on the floor. There was no sign of a break-in. The doors and windows were all closed and locked.
A friend called and Maria was telling her about the happenings in the house and she heard a huge crash from the spare bedroom, the one the mother had used. A huge crash sounded twice more but there was nothing unusual or out of place in the room, except for one thing. A cabinet which boasted lion head handles (brass lion heads with large hoops in their mouths) gave quite a show. The hoops usually hung tightly down from the mouths, all obeying the laws of gravity. Each time after the noise the hoops would be up from the lions’ mouths. Whenever they heard the noise from that bedroom the hoops stood at attention. The noise was heard (Hoops in the air) as many as five times a day. Sometimes the noise was accompanied by a really cheap smelling perfume which started subtly but grew more and more awful within minutes.
Richard and Maria had dreams of living on a farm. They had ten pamphlets on horticulture which they were reading and discussing. They laid the pamphlets on the coffee table and enjoyed a television program they had planned to watch. During the TV show, the pamphlets disappeared. During the night six glasses teleported from their kitchen to their living room. Six bowls, six spatulas, six whisks, all teleported to their living room.
Night after night they found they could sit in the living room and see the kitchen lights dimming. Once when they were washing clothing, the hose disconnected from the washer and scalded both of them. Maria’s hand was caught in the car door more than once. They became afraid to be in the house alone. They didn’t know what to do and they wondered if I could help. They said they really wanted an exorcist.
I suspected that moving would not help the situation, that Maria herself was creating the energy for the strange happenings. She was the right age for poltergeist activity which usually depends upon a child or teenager (usually female) for the electrifying happenings.
Sometimes pictures appeared on their floor.
One Saturday morning Maria got out of bed. Her husband had gone out. She walked into the living room to find the wall behind the couch dripping a substance that looked like hot black tar. The tar ran down to the floor and ate the speaker wires from their record player completely through. She walked on to the bathroom and there it was as if someone had thrown diarrhea feces and vomit all over the wall and floor and bathtub. She’d just bought new carpets but the couple ripped it up and converted to plain wooden floors. The smell of the vomit and other materials lingered even after repainting.
They were also pestered with unusual stone showers. The stones were egg size and shaped and sometimes appeared over a three-day period.
A month after the clean up, Maria woke up to a long trail of vomit on the floor by her bed. Still steaming, the nasty stuff made a path three feet long and three inches wide. From her coffee table a clear Jell-O like substance bubbled and oozed. Another molasses looking substance poured from the wall and ate the new paint off wherever it touched.
That was the final indignity. Maria decided she couldn’t take it anymore. She and her mother prayed in the backyard of the house. They placed crucifixes on a wall of every room of the house and Maria’s Mother went with her Bible, praying throughout the house to exorcise the dwelling.
So far the exorcism seems to be working.
Jacques could only shrug and take notes about the whole affair. Since that time I have learned that the poltergeist syndrome is often closely allied with UFO activity. Aliens love to frighten us. Our fear is their delight.
Chapter 14
OTHER CASES: DROWNING IN PEOPLE
In 1985 the minister of the Harmony Religious Science Church was newly moved to Tulsa and she’d decided she wanted to develop a circle of friends with common interests. She accepted every invitation she received and that was how we met at the home of one of her parishioners.
One night after she’d arrived in town she was awakened by the seemingly spoken thought, “Get up, get dressed, go take a ride.” She followed the command and while out on that drive she saw a UFO vessel hovering above her. She went back to her house, slid into her bed and slept, forgetting what she had seen.
Another message came to her mind a few days later. “It is time you began to tell of our existence.” At that moment she remembered her experience of a few nights earlier. She wrote a tiny piece for the church paper telling of what had transpired. I was given the paper so I called and interviewed her about her experience. She suggested we two needed to institute meetings of some sort and I agreed. I guess that’s how I got started with the gatherings at my house.
A few hours after our interview, my favorite horse fell ill with the bloat, an ailment which usually kills horses. I examined him and found a triangle cut out of one of his ears. I stayed with the horse all day and it wasn’t long until he recovered. The triangle is a common symbol that appears wherever UFO’s have been. It’s something like a calling card. However, I didn’t know that at the time the horse fell ill. I’m afraid I assumed that teenagers with nothing much to do had decided to hurt my animal.
The horse seemed to suffer no lasting ill effects from the triangle carved in his ear nor from his bout with the bloat.
In another instance
, a girl who had just come to Tulsa from California was working in a local restaurant. She was compelled to pull her car over one evening as she drove home. She received a mental message, then drove on toward the Utica Square area where she was living. That evening she saw a UFO hovering over the yard of the house where she was renting a room. Her landlady saw the craft, also.
That night she was shown some Egyptian symbols and was given what she said was a clear understanding of the Egyptian connection with the UFO-alien culture. She told about that incident at one of the meetings which we held at my house.
One of the persons who also met with us was a cargo pilot. He always kept a camera on board so he could photograph anything unusual. He called me from South America.
“Barbara, I have some astounding pictures. I’ll bring them to the meeting when I get home.” But he didn’t make it. He crashed and all three people aboard, including my friend the pilot, were killed in a mid-air explosion on their flight to the United States. If photographs were found I was not informed since I was not a member of his family.
Toward the end of 1987 there was a noticeable influx of alien landings, giving rise to stories of abductions all across the country. Up to that point there had been only a few classical cases of abduction, such as the Betty and Barney Hill case. Then suddenly there was a definite shift. In Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Virginia and Florida, we experienced a flood of alien intruders. That was the year the famous Gulf Breeze abductions took place in Florida. Anxious people contacted me every day of every week. I felt I was supposed to provide a meeting place for all the traumatized people. Hundreds of people came, hoping for help of some kind. Once in awhile we had other speakers in for our meetings and we let people vent their fear and anger within the group. Tulsa, within a month’s time, had had at least sixty cases of abductions. The intruders appeared to have a definite project or plan in mind but we didn’t yet know what it was.
Barbara: The Story of a UFO Investigator Page 11
