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Art’s House by Sarah Simmons Living with a ghost in the attic   The O in Oregon is for Oddity by Jenn Lackey Exploring weird and wacky attractions of Oregon   The Voices In My Head by Jeremy Towsey French An exclusive interview with Paranormal Bob   Bus One Seven by Roderick Armageddon Take it All Off   Slug Licking, Northwest Style by Amanda Rust For every toad-licker, there’s a banana   The Ins and Outs of Toilet Paper by Sandra Lewis Getting the job done, is sometimes easier said The Two-Man Elevator Band by Maxim Theophilus Gunz What happens when the Elephant Man meets Pachyderm Stan   Lists   Signs your psychic may be a fraud

The Voices in My Head
By Jeremy Towsey-French
An exclusive interview with Paranormal Bob

While waiting for my bus to arrive at the downtown stop, I overheard a conversation that actually broke through the clutter.

Slightly gray around the edges and a bit unkempt in baggy cargo pants and a “Boycott Adobe” T-shirt, Bob was chatting with a young chap spitting out words larger than his limited vocabulary could handle. The two were wickedly swapping tales of the bizarre and the macabre, with Bob’s stories grounded in his own experiences and understanding -the young lad’s coming from more worldly, unreliable sources.

What made Bob’s stories stick -where the punk’s tales sputtered- was the unique delivery that somehow managed to sound completely genuine. So much so, that I found myself a bit spooked by his tales. What’s more, Bob didn’t talk like he was some sort of paranormal news source. He merely spoke from the ground he understood and appeared to be most passionate about.

Once the punk left the terminal, I approached Bob before he could get away. A short discussion ensued, punctuated with a plan to chat later that week on the phone. I never asked for his last name and he never gave it to me, so respecting Bob’s anonymity, he shall forever be referred to as “Paranormal Bob.”

Luckily for me, the phone number that Bob provided was the real deal, resulting in a rousing discussion about his special skill –something that never came up at the bus stop. For your reading pleasure, we have transcribed every last insight, tale and opinion collected by our tape recorders. Whether complete bullshit or the absolute truth, Bob opened our eyes to a whole new realm of oddity. Welcome to the world of Paranormal Bob –formerly, Portland, Oregon’s most unknown remote viewer.

Anvil:

First of all, Bob, I overheard you telling someone at the bus stop that you had a paranormal ability –something that you were describing as both a burden and a gift. Do tell!

Bob:

What not too many people know is that while I was living in London in the early 1980s, I was involved with a special British Secret Service program for remote viewing. That is, the British Secret Service hired, housed and fed us so we could assist them with their goals of identifying threats to the nation.

Anvil:

Whoa there partner. What the heck is remote viewing?

Bob:

Hold on; let me get my ASPR (American Society for Psychical Research) glossary so you have the facts straight. (he dictates) “Remote viewing is the act of perceiving and describing details about a distant person, place, thing, or event, via psychic means.” Parapsychologists at the ASPR came up with the term in the early 70s while testing for traveling clairvoyance. Remote viewing isn’t really considered an ability, but kind of a protocol for using psychic ability. In the most simple textbook terms, it’s a… (dictates again) “an amalgam of what was formerly called clairvoyance, telepathy, and thought-transference.”

Anvil:

OK. So you can really mess up people’s heads with this –especially if they know you’re doing it. I have a hard time believing the Brits were into this!

Bob:

It definitely requires that you act as unobtrusively as possible, so as not to screw up anyone’s perception of the real world. We never discussed the British Secret Service programs openly while we were in it –not even among one another. Once a report was filed, we forgot about it. Out of sight, out of mind. OK maybe not out of mind, but you get the picture. Most of the traditional branches in the BSS rejected what we were doing, because they simply didn’t get it. It was magic and hocus-pocus to them. On numerous occasions they told us that we were a bunch of fucked-up wankers making up “intelligence” so our division could pitch for bigger budgets. It’s funny: Ian Flemming was allowed to fabricate German attack plans to sell the war to FDR, but our mind lab was considered by many in the BSS to be unethical.

Anvil:

Well, was your work legit? I mean, did you produce results?

Bob:

I don’t talk much about the details related to the BSS projects. But I will tell you that they were huge and most have come to completion. The BSS turned over paranormal staff every five years. When I left in 1999 it was my second term with the project. You could come back, but you had to wait at least two years in between terms. The mere fact that you haven’t heard of the programs we worked on means we were successful. We provided intelligence. The BSS provided a means to diffuse the global catastrophes that we identified. But 9-11 shows that you can’t always win, no matter how much you know.

Anvil:

How do people know if remote viewing is a farce? I mean, it sounds a bit too X-files for many to really swallow.

Bob:

No one is asking the public to believe us. We’ll always be able to do what we can do, and don’t need people to believe us. If you’re looking for proof of remote viewers and their success, definitely check out the work of Joseph McMoneagle, because he also worked in a government program –for the United States- in the 1970s. We’ve had many similar experiences and he made many of his accounts public, in addition to appearing on an ABC special back in late 1995. On the show he very successfully demonstrated his remote viewing abilities. Also check out Pat Price, Hella Hammid and the very funky Ingo Swann. These are probably some of the best known celebrity remote viewers. I can’t say they’re the best. Hell, the best probably don’t do the road shows. This pack is just the best at selling the concept.

Anvil:

Was your team top-tier or just an experimental pack of rats?

Bob:

Our BSS team was a pretty talented bunch of freaks. I worked with a guy who went by the name Flacid, and he could produce architectural quality drawings of an attacker’s plan for taking over a military installation, government compound –maybe even a bank. Better still, he could predict timetables for the attacks –within three hours of the actual occurrence. Not bad, eh? Joe McMoneagle came out with a number of stories about the time he spent with the US government. Like in the early 80s, he was asked to remote view what the CIA had identified as the largest building in the world –in Russia- to see if there was something truly diabolical going on under the shingles. Joe remote viewed the facility and was pretty sure they were building a submarine. He even gave specific details about it, including its size and weapons –Hell, he even delivered the projected date for its launch. He was right on. They were able to confirm the existence of the world’s largest submarine -the Soviet Typhoon- long before the Russians thought anyone would ever catch a clue about it. I’d call that pretty damn impressive.

Anvil:

Wait a minute. Let’s back-up here. So both this Flacid chap and McMoneagle could look into the future? Bob, you’ve got a tough sell here.

Bob:

It’s a fact, man. Remote viewing can also look forward and backward. It’s not entirely trouble-free, but it’s possible. It’s not uncommon that when a remote viewer gets a picture from the future, they might be able to see it very clearly, but they might simply lack the knowledge of the concepts needed to make any sense our of it. They might see something and be able to describe it, but if it’s through the lens of a modern understanding, future concepts may be completely incomprehensible. In the case of remote viewing the past, you really come face to face with beliefs and theories about your subject matter that completely goes against what people know, so they often discount it. The fact is, we don’t make the rules, we just tell you what they are.

Anvil:

Still, the Department of Homeland Security –Hell, every high school across the country- would love to have that kind of insight.

Bob:

Yeah, but you have to know what to look at. You can’t just “see” everything. You have to have a target. So these specialists would have to be looking at everything –all the time. That’s way too Minority Report for anyone’s comfort.

Anvil:

So what type of remote viewing have you done –or do you do any now?

Bob:

Back when I was really selling my skills in the late 1980s, I sold my time to private investigators, police, the FBI, anthropologists… Hell, even average citizens with a need for increased visibility into their lives. The biggest problem is knowing how to walk the ethical tightrope. There are some people I just have to turn away because they want to know more than they can handle –or I can handle. That’s why I got out of the contract business. It was just too freaky knowing so much about people and situations that I didn’t want to know about. I never wanted to be responsible for anyone’s death.

Anvil:

Were you?

Bob:

Next question.

Anvil:

Well, if you can look so deeply into peoples’ lives, is there anything that you can’t remote view?

Bob:

I don’t think any remote viewer worth their weight would admit that there is anything that can’t be remote viewed. Like Geoff Goldbloom’s character states in Jurassic Park, “…you were so busy figuring out if you could do it, that no one ever stopped to ask if you should.” Remote viewing should only be used when and where it will do the most good. Anything else is Pandora’s Box.

Look man, I’ve said enough and my wife’s on her way home, so I’ve got to run.

Anvil:

Thanks for your time, Bob. Keep your eye out for the article.

Bob:

No worries, I might just read it after we get off the phone. Click (hang-up)