Close Calls & Great Escapes Mini-Book

My German was kind of rusty because I hadn&apos;t used it for about 15 or more years, and I have this sense of really communicating with people on a different level, so it had been a long time since we had communicated with anybody verbally other than each other. So here we were on this island, and we had gotten to know the people around us. We we&apos;re living there with a Local family with several children. Tell me about the island. Djerba is right on the coast of North Africa, not too far away from Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. It&apos;s a tourist spot. It&apos;s French... where French people go... but at that time there weren&apos;t a lot of tourists who came through. It wasn&apos;t real developed. It was 11 years ago. We were feeling fairly comfortable, and Vanessa had picked up a little bit of Arabic. And she seemed to have an affinity with that, not really with French too much. French and Arabic were the two main lan-guages there, and it was really fun and neat to watch her running around like the queen of the jungle with her matted yellow hair and speaking a little bit of Arabic here and there with all the dark-skinned children. It was really neat... little miss queen of the jungle. And so, we went into the market place one day—it was about three o’clock—to get some vegetables. I was going to purchase the vege-tables and turned around to ask Vanessa something, but suddenly she was Just gone. I looked all around for her, and I asked everybody if they saw her, and suddenly I really felt like something had shifted in a way. It was like suddenly I walked into the ‘Twilight Zone,’ and I just knew that this was gonna be really something... when I couldn&apos;t find her.

There were lots of robes and clothes and fabrics and merchandise piled up all over the room. It evidently was the black market area where everything was stashed in this room. I then shouted to Vanessa, “You know what... COME OVER HERE! I want to talk to you!” She said, “No.” And then I demanded, “Vanessa come over here!” “No, this is my mother now. This is my mother now?” Her mother?... She was talking about the dancer! “Oh, this is my mother now.” Understand, I am NOT her mother now! She tells me that she (the dancer) was now her mother! What&apos;d you feel at that point? I felt stunned! “Oh.” I just felt like, “Oh.” I don&apos;t know what that feeling is but it’s just like, “Oh.” You know, it wasn&apos;t anything; it was just... It was a surprise, and even some delight. And even amusing in a way. At that point, I was not challenged, so it was like, you know, it was like only Vanessa could do this. And so, at that point you weren’t actually taking it very seriously, huh? Not right then. No. Not really. No, I didn&apos;t right then. And it was more like, I didn&apos;t believe it. It was sort of like a little magical, you know. I said, “Oh, this is cute!” you know. And I looked at the woman. But the woman was taking it very seriously. She was, no doubt, actually quite interested in having this happen, evidently. I said, “Oh, that&apos;s very nice; now let&apos;s go!”... and, “You know, this is nice... but what do we do... couldn&apos;t we just have tea with them?

About a month later, we were in a toyshop and saw a flyer for what they called the “Drac Tour,” which you could go on. You could go through the Carpathian Mountains, and go through Transylvania, and go out to the island where they found the bones of “Vlad the Impaler.” 	Author Michael: Why did you want to do this? Was this something you wanted to do your entire life? 	Devon: Yeah, I think I&apos;ve been obsessed with Dracula ever since I was very, very young, and, actually, that&apos;s the only tattoo that I have—of Bela Lugosi. See right here! (shows me the tattoo on his arm). 	Michael: I went, “Oh wow! You really are serious!” 	Devon: Oh yeah! No doubt. 	Michael: And I don&apos;t have to ask what you dress up as on Halloween. 	Devon: I&apos;ve done it twice. 	Anyway, we hopped on a plane, and we did the whole tour. It was probably the best vacation I&apos;ve ever had in my life. We were in Romania, in the Carpathian Mountains over the Halloween weekend. 	Michael: Did they play it up big there, Halloween? 	Devon: No, they don&apos;t, actually, but they know the Americans do. They&apos;re kind of watching to see what the stupid, crazy Americans do when they are in their country because over in Romania they look at Vlad as being the man who united the country and Christianity and kind of broke the Muslim rule.

Djerba, Tunisia, Mid ‘70s by Angelica Chaparral

So this follows after we left we left Tunisia when Vanessa (my daughter) and I moved down onto this little island, Djerba, so that we could get out of the city and get more into the folklore and into the people and the culture and the customs of Tunisia. We had been there almost six months. And there weren&apos;t too many Caucasian people who lived there. There weren&apos;t too many English-speaking people for about nine months. I actually went out of my way to avoid people who spoke English.

Over the last four decades, I&apos;ve interviewed nearly 2,000 world travelers and adventurers in my own travels to more than 125 countries throughout the world. I am weaving their 10,000 or so fantastic travel tales into a psychology of travel as revealed by these very telling stories. These are travelers I&apos;ve met on planes, trains, buses, ships, tours, safaris, and in camp-grounds, cafes, and pubs. These travelers have freely shared their most personal travel tales with me, which I, in turn, get to share with you now through my True Travel Tales series. Travel tales are told here—but with this one unique difference—with my being the world&apos;s first travel psychologist, you&apos;ll get more of the psychological pay dirt behind the incredible travel tales told to me by these travelers. Along with my interviewing these amazing world travelers, I have also interviewed people who have had multiple experiences of UFOs, the paranormal, and other high strangeness in their lives. And along with the late, great Rosemary Ellen Guiley I’ve created The Road to Strange series of books on these extraordinary subjects. The subject of this book in particular are the stories of those who have experienced multiple accounts of UFOs, aliens, the psychic, the paranormal, as well as all sorts of other highly strange and bizarre occurrences in their lives.

2002 Piatra Fântânele, Transylvania, Romania

Experiences. It is a bright and sunny morning in the coastal town of Bocas Del Toro. It&apos;s a popular spot to go to. It&apos;s not uncomfortable now, but it will shortly become hot and humid as the morning wears on. I am to take a little launch from the pier to the neighboring island of Bastimentos. I am curious about a new development, which will be a resort community along a beautiful white-sand beach called Red Frog Beach. The red frog is a little native inhabitant: tiny, beautiful, but poisonous, so you only want to look at them—and that&apos;s about it. The guy at the launch is loading goods to take over to the island, so he suggests I go get a coffee and come back in about half an hour, and we&apos;d depart then. Nice, friendly guy. My Spanish is adequate—enough to get around. I take a coffee and relax, just enjoying the morning and the increasing activity of locals and tourists moving about this small town.  Finally, we set off for the 20-minute cruise. It&apos;s quiet and pleasant enough, and he drops me off at the main town pier, where another launch will come to retrieve me in about two hours. The boatman glides away from the pier, leaving me to my own devices in the meantime. At this pier are a couple of small restaurants serving drinks and some light snacks. It&apos;s all very pleasant, and I&apos;m looking forward to the unfolding day ahead of me. This is a very small town, and I see that there is a central path of sorts that leads off to the left into a small residential area and a few shops further down. So why not? I decide to take a gander down this path. It seems manageable, and no one seems particularly to be about.  So I set off along this path. Maybe one or two people walk by, and I nod a friendly “Buenos dias” and continue on. What a beautiful

“You wouldn&apos;t believe the incredible stories people have told me about their UFO and paranormal experiences!”

So I just sat there, and I kind of felt the magnificence of it all, and I felt a sense of Vanessa&apos;s well-being, and that there was just nothing to do. There was just to sit there for a few minutes, so I really sur-rendered to that space. But at the same time, I watched my mind reel into thinking about all the stories about the slavery and like that, and then I knew that there was a good chance that she had been stolen from me for the slave market. I knew at once that it had been plotted ever since we&apos;d been on the island, and that the family we were living with arranged it, and that it was more of the same kind of, you know, plot that was going on. Could you tell more about that? Why did you feel that way? Because of all the stories I had heard. What had you heard? I had heard that children—particularly blonde women and children—were stolen frequently in dark-skinned countries and sold to slave markets for a lot of money, and then they would be slaves to wealthy families. Where? In Egypt in the darkest parts of Africa, in Arabia, in Nigeria, and in Algeria, you know. I just knew that that that was probably what was going on, although I thought that maybe it was and maybe it wasn&apos;t. So, it just happened, that right at that very moment, these two little boys were passing by chatting and talking. I recognized them, and so I called them over. I got their attention as they were coming by me, and I asked, “Where&apos;s Vanessa? Where&apos;s Vanessa? Help me find her.” At first they just stood there for a minute looking at me. Then they

We approached the lake, and we did see quite an unusual lot of bird-life, and we sought to get closer to it for identification. Took us quite close to the lake. It might have been 300 or 400 yards. We were having a ball looking at the birds and trying to identify them, when all of a sudden, with the sun on our backs, we could see the glistening of some kind of metal. Shortly thereafter, we put our binoculars on the site, and it turned out to be three or four Mexican peasants, men, fully grown, mature men, coming at us with these machetes waving above their heads in the sun. We thought, Well, it was time to get out, but they were a lot faster than we were. It was all lava rock and it was hard going for us. They were coming uphill after us, and we were huffing and puffing to get at this car of ours up on the highway. I just about had myself in except for one foot, and the driver was in there driving already, and we were going down the highway. And these, I think drunken Mexicans, or whatever they were trying to do to us, were left standing on the highway, still waving their machetes. How did you feel about it at the time? I felt like I was very glad to get in the car and be on my way.

Near Mexico City, Mexico, Late ‘40s by Edwin F. Finkel

Going back to Mexico and immediately after the war, we were driving on the Pan American Highway, and we are coming through the high plateau country as it rises towards Mexico City, which is at about 7,000 feet. And now there is a cratered lake that we spot on the right hand side of the highway. Being there to observe birdlife, we knew there was a lot of waterfowl on this particular lake. We got out and parked our car on the shoul-der of the road. We did have to go through a fence, as I recall. A barbed wire, one-strand fence. We had our optical equipment with us, such as binoculars and telescopes on tripods.

I cannot wait until the launch returns. And the sooner I can get out of there, the better! The boatman arrives. I cannot beckon him over fast enough to sit down and have a cold drink on me. He accepts. I am totally relieved by this. I get us our drinks and decide to tell him the whole story. He listens. Then he says to my total amazement, “He&apos;s my brother!” I cannot believe my luck. His BROTHER? Unbelievable! After a few moments, he gets up to arrange to take cases of empty bottles back to the boat. He has a brief conversation with his brother. He then returns and says to me, “My brother wants to shake your hand.” HE WANTS TO SHAKE MY HAND? What? As an apology, I wonder? Just wants to be my friend? I am completely both dumb-founded but relieved by it all, nevertheless. The captain continues, “Look, my brother is a bit slow. He means no harm. He&apos;s a good man and works hard. Really, he wouldn&apos;t hurt a fly. Everybody here knows him. I hope you can understand that.” He goes on, “He wasn&apos;t always like this, either. He was quite normal. Then suddenly one day everything changed. My mother took him to all sorts of doctors. We never knew really what happened to him. He&apos;s been this way ever since.” Maybe I was in little or no danger at all. Nevertheless, there are cultural bridges that are sometimes hard to cross. I may never know exactly what happened on Bastimentos that day, but I am happy to this day that it did not turn out to be any worse than it was! Sometimes fear just gets in the way. It&apos;s one thing to run into and confront someone in your own culture who is challenged; it&apos;s another thing, altogether, when language and cultural barriers come into play and get in the way.

morning and a pleasant enough place. Then I spot a local guy—whom I would say was a Panamanian of African descent. In fact, most of the people around Bocas, as well as this small island, appear to be the same. He&apos;s a young man of maybe 18 or 19 or so. This fellow then comes up to me and says something, but I&apos;m not quite sure what. He strikes me as being maybe a bit challenged, retarded, on something? Hard to say. I don&apos;t really understand him. Maybe it&apos;s a dialect, maybe not. My Spanish is not that good, and I am struggling to make any sense out of our troublesome interaction. At first, he&apos;s not particularly menacing, but as he continues saying some things, I feign the suggestion that I&apos;m not comprehending. Can it be that our failure to communicate is frustrating him all the more?  Now, I am beginning to feel like an ‘object,’ that is, like a tourist being approached by a tout because I am, after all, indeed a tourist—and probably wealthy in his eyes. Maybe he sees me as part of a looming threat of gringos about to take over the island through a planned development at Red Frog. I cannot, however, attribute any meaningful thinking going on in this guy&apos;s head. How to deal with this? I am becoming more anxious by the minute. And he&apos;s becoming more aggressive and bolder all the while. I can&apos;t run off, and I certainly can&apos;t fight him. There&apos;s really not a whole lot I can do. So I just keep on walking, maybe at a slightly faster clip. The more I walk, the closer I am coming to what appears to be a couple of commercial places. Suddenly, he grasps my left wrist. This is clearly a border that no one

Right in front of you? Yeah, right. So now, I was the first line of defense, if you will. The next person, Dr. Gunther and myself, and on the other side, Ed Lawson, Anne James and Tony O’Neil... five of us. So all I had to do was lean forward to my right a little, and I could have a clear view right to the cockpit where I saw the guy. What was going through your mind at that point? Well, in fact, it didn&apos;t seem real. It seemed really crazy. But then one of the guys came back, and he opened one of these big tea cans, and he pulled out a bomb. And I said, “Oh my God, this is a bomb!&quot; Right in front of you? Yes. Right in front of me. He took it out, and he put the cap on it, and he attached the detonating device. And, you know, with great relish and flurry he wanted us all to see what he was doing. And he cranked up this detonating device. It was a terrible sound. I can still hear that without too much trouble. And so, I whispered to my friend and said, “They probably want to go to Hong Kong or Shanghai or Taiwan.” I said, “I hope it’s Hong Kong, because in Taiwan, with all these Chinese on here, that would be another problem. And I didn&apos;t think too much more. The hijackers kept coming back and forth, and they communicated. My friend understands some Chinese, and they indicated that we should all just sit still and be absolutely quiet, and that nothing would happen to us. One of the stewardesses... she was a very brave little girl. She was watching what they were doing, too, and she would yell, “Meo, Meo!” which means ‘no.’

Did you communicate that effectively? I think we did, because they communicated to us that bomb or no bomb, we&apos;re out of fuel and we&apos;re gonna crash, anyway. And I looked out the window at that point, and I saw that the two propellers on the left hand side of the plane had, in fact, stopped. So I said, “Look, we&apos;re gonna go, anyway... GO!” And at the moment they charged forward, the bomb was detonated. And just before they got to the john, it blew out the wall. Fortunately, they were not killed. They went through the rubble, and they sub-dued the five hijackers in a matter of seconds. How many were there coming down from the back? The aisle was full; I couldn&apos;t tell you. It was a continuous mass of people. I couldn&apos;t even get into the aisle to help because it was just a continuous mass. They had got themselves all readied in the back. At the moment of the explosion, now there&apos;s a whole lot of stuff going on. Now, even though I&apos;m looking, I can&apos;t see very much. But I must have assumed that the pilot and co-pilot turned around to let themselves free from the guys with the knives, because the plane did go out of control. and we went into a nosedive—the charge, explosion, and now into a nosedive. I looked out the window and I saw the ground coming up very, very fast, and we were at a very strange angle. How high were you? I don&apos;t know. Let me guess, at 3,000 feet—I have no idea. Maybe 30 feet, even? I really don&apos;t know. So I yell to all the Americans to take the crash positions and get down. I said,

should broach. Physical contact is out. I wrench his hand off my wrist, firmly and resolutely. Whatever he wants, I am obviously not buying into it. And this is frustrating him all the more. I pick up the pace; he is right behind. Wow! An Internet cafe, of all places! I quickly duck into there, thinking that maybe I have at least fended him off for the moment. Something like this has never happened to me before. Frankly, I am terrified at this point. Inside the cafe I go to a computer, thinking that this will be the end of this guy for now, at least. I&apos;d be happy to buy some time at this point. Nope! I simply cannot fathom what happens next. He sits down and waits. He stares at me. I try to communicate to the owner of the cafe that this guy is menacing me. However, it just does not seem to register at all! I am wondering if there is an equivalent of a ‘9-1-1’ or a policeman I can talk to. No such luck, it seems. The cafe person doesn&apos;t seem to perceive that anything really is that much out of the ordinary, and, not in the least, that anything is wrong. And I cannot really be too vocal about this, after all, with this guy sitting right there. Shortly, an American gringo guy comes in and sits down at another computer. I sidle over to him and tell him the story. He knows the guy, apparently. He tells me not to worry, and that when he finishes what he is doing, he will walk me back to the pier. Apparently, he is not too concerned about this guy, either, whereas I am terrified about him. How can this be? How can these two people who live there not appreciate my anxiety and not realize that something is very wrong with this picture? What can I possibly be missing here?

Over China, Near Shanghai, 1982 by Ron Ross

We got up on Sunday morning in Xian, which was the ancient capital of China, and we went to the airport early in the morning and board-ed about 8 o&apos;clock. Went through a rather superficial examination, no metal detectors or anything like that. Got on the plane, noticed that there were a few Japanese and a lot of Chinese on board. What airline was it? Chinese Airline (CAAC), and it was a Russian-made jet prop plane—a rather old plane at that. We got on and took off, and usually on an airline they give you something to drink or something to eat. We got

The other thing I can remember doing—this is about three hours we&apos;re going through this turmoil now—was closing my eyes and just imagining I was on a roller coaster ‘cause it was really terrible. My stomach was up here most of the time, and not only were we emo-tionally upset, hyper, the adrenaline was flowing like crazy in that plane, and most people were... you could tell they were praying... some praying out loud. But, in general, they were all very calm. No one got hysterical. I could look around, and I could see that these guys weren&apos;t doing much checking on people. I could see that most of the passengers were just sitting quietly with their eyes closed. The hijackers made three critical errors, fortunately. One, they didn&apos;t assign somebody to watch the ground or they would have known that we were circling the airfield. How close were you to Shanghai at this point? Yeah, turns out we were no more than a few miles from the Shanghai Airport all the while. They didn&apos;t know that; I didn&apos;t know that. Some of our people did, but I didn&apos;t know that. The second error they made; they put the bomb in the john. Had they put it in the aisle, out by me, the impact would have gone the length of the plane and killed us or ripped the plane in two. But, by putting it in the john, the impact went sidewise, and it blew a hole in the plane and knocked out the john walls instead. Right. Wait a sec. When did that happen? Are you leading up to that? I&apos;m leading up to that. Okay, the third error they made is that they allowed two of the stewards... (there were five crew members: the pilot, co-pilot,

[Travels of the &apos;Victim&apos;] Bocas del Toro, Panama, 2005 by Michael Brein

Ever been confronted by an unruly, menacing local person who strikes you as being high on something? He obviously wants money from you. You walk along the sole path going to the little town from the wharf, and he just won't let you be. The more you ignore him, the more insistent and persistent he seems to be. He grabs you by your wrist, and you twist it off in an act of defiance. He is younger and stronger than you. And you don't have many options. So what do you do? The consequences for the ‘Victim,’ —YOU—whether positive or negative, are still learning

The Road to Strange: The Contiguous Universe Repeat Experiencers of UFOs and the Paranormal

A story excerpt from this available book follows

Right after that point—right after the bodies were dragged out—again I yelled to the other eighteen, and I said, we&apos;re not out of this yet. I said be prepared for about a two or three hour debriefing. Which I though would be the normal thing in any country. And particularly in a communist country. But then they allowed the Americans to go off first, and two soldiers came to help each one of them off and took them to the side, be-cause most of them their legs were rubber. They weren&apos;t walking very well. They got them off the plane and into a bus ride and took them to a private room. My carry on bag and a box were in the very back of the plane, so I didn&apos;t get off with the rest of the Americans. And the rest of the Chinese got off, and I went to the back of the plane and got my things. By this time the crew had washed up and got off the plane, and all were assembled in front of the plane. When I got up there the crew were all there and I shook their hands. When I got to the captain, I put my bags down and gave him a big hug. And his smile turned to tears. And I left. We got into the room, and all of us Americans were already there. They gave us wet cloths and stuff to clean up with. They gave us something cold to drink. The manager of the airport came down and apologized profusely for the incident and said, “Your bus is waiting.” What kind of treatment did you have after that? What happened then? They took us all to down town Shanghai to—I forgot the name of the restaurant now—but it was the most famous restaurant in Shanghai. They took us to the top floor, which was the private banquet hall and we had a meal, which was fantastic.

my eyes and saw people walk by me that were really old. They look-ed like hundreds of years old. And when they looked at me, I saw their eyes were like white, like that had cataracts on their eyes. A lot of these people had cataracts, and it was as if they looked at me with x-ray eyes. It was a very strange experience, and I just sat there and didn&apos;t have a feeling of well-being at all. I didn&apos;t have the feeling that it would be alright. I felt real panicked. And then in that moment, I just kind of looked up and I said to myself, Okay, it’s getting to be night now, so what? ‘Cause I didn&apos;t know what to do. I had really come to a standstill. And right at that point the clouds all turned magenta and golden: the sun was really sinking and turning a bright gold and red color. There were loudspeakers all over the island. The people were Muslim, and then everything stopped at exactly at that time: everyone gets out of any carts or off of any animals or vehicles that they&apos;re in and come out of any shops. And they all began to chant. Soon, all the chanting was going on all over the island. And there&apos;s a particular kind of bird that comes out looking for a worm that comes out of the earth at sunrise and sunset. By now, all the birds were flocking through the skies, and the chanting was going on, and the birds were swooping down for the worms. It was all just so magically magnificent. And I knew that, no matter about anything else, nothing mattered anyway, you know, that it was all just what it was. There was nothing of anything, and it switched right at that point to a feeling of well-being. And that things just were what they were; it didn&apos;t matter.

They had one of the stewardesses up front also. So the one crazy looking guy... he had a wild look in his eyes and a terribly high-pitched voice. He asked for something to drink, so she went back and she got a bottle of soda, and she threw it to him. And he took it and yanked off the top, and I guess he didn&apos;t like it, so he spit it out, and some of the soda spilled. A real macho kind of thing. Then we started hitting turbulence. And I mean real turbulence. I&apos;ve been through turbulence before, but never have I been through turbulence like this, where we would drop maybe ten feet. And then we&apos;d bank and we&apos;d bank. And the pilot was doing this on purpose. He was trying to get them sick or get them off balance at least. Meanwhile, however, he was getting lots of the passengers sick also. Fortunately I didn&apos;t get sick, but most of the passengers were. My friend said to me, “Don&apos;t make eye contact with them; it’s bad luck.” He added, “Whatever, just feign illness whenever that one comes up to this section.” So I did that. The more I thought of it, it made sense that he might view eye-contact as a challenge or some kind and come up for no reason and kill me. So whenever that one came, I just had my airsickness bag there and just kept doing things for him to think that I was maybe ill. So he kept showing up? Right. A couple of thoughts went through my mind. Most of the group wee much older than I. And I kept thinking to myself, Oh, please, God, don’t let anybody have a heart attack, ‘cause we’re probably gonna come out of this thing. And if they have a heart attack and dies, that would really be awful!

in with the mad queen and all of her servants. And I really felt very small, you know. Then I heard Vanessa&apos;s laughter. I looked around the corner and heard her still laughing, and I looked and saw she had this costume on, this gypsy attire on, and she had this silk on. And her hair was brushed—and she really didn&apos;t like her hair brushed at all! Her hair hadn&apos;t been brushed for a while, and she had these earrings on, and she had this look on her face, and I thought, My God, and I called out, “VANESSA!” I called her name. She then looked around at me very nonchalantly, you know, and said, “Oh, hi.” She was like—juiced out—she was like blissful; she was like transformed somehow; she was like magic. And then I called out again, “Vanessa!” And she said, “Oh?” you know, and she hardly paid attention to me. I mustered my wits, and I said to God or someone, “What is this? What? What is this? You know, like What do I do now? You know, I must have groped for a script, because I didn&apos;t know how to act. So, I decided to be indignant, and I shouted again, “Va-nessa! Do you know what are you doing? I mean here I am, and I&apos;m so glad you&apos;re alright, and where have you been? And it’s been hours... yadda daa, yadda daa.” I started to move closer to her. But now, the tribal members that had long knives on their legs came over to me and held me back and were telling me to stop my voice, telling me to stop my anger, you know. And Vanessa was now very indignant and very prideful, and now gesturing like, you know, “Stand back!” I shouted to her, “Do you know what are you doing? Do you know what are you doing?” over and over again.

suddenly took my hand and started running with me. We were soon running in and out of the marketplace and into these long—I forgot what the buildings are called—but they are long, close to the ground, and they have all these tunnels and are all white-washed. They have all these rooms leading off of them, and we were going in and around and through the tunnels. I then began to hear this faint music that sounded far away. At first it sounded like Jill Crockery, but then it sounded more like chanting. I couldn&apos;t quite tell what it was. I was really excited, and I still felt something of a sense of well-being. I felt a sense of guidance. I knew, somehow, that no matter what in the world was going on, I was being guided, and that there was something else going on. There was some kind of a story going on, and, you know, I didn&apos;t feel at all afraid. Really, at that time, I was excited and was actually into it. And then we came to this room. Music was playing very loud, and I could tell then that it was Gypsy dancing music. Next, I flashed on the woman&apos;s face, someone who Vanessa had recently actually form-ed a friendship with. And now, she was one of the Gypsy dancers. Apparently, she and Vanessa had become quite close. All the time, she was teaching Vanessa how to dance. And Vanessa had showed favor to her frequently and didn&apos;t want to leave her. So, as I entered the room, there were several tribal members in there, and they wore lots of robes and clothes piled on top of each other. They were Very colorful and flashy clothes full of gold and jewelry, and the women had lots of tattoos all over themselves. As I walked into the room, I had this sense of being very, very small. And they were very large. It was like ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and I was

So I got her attention, and then I was really angry, and the anger was very clear. I yelled at the woman. I yelled at a man to back off. I pushed him. I just said, “Stop it!” I mean, I just at that point was tired of the story. Nothing was going to happen with me. It was very clear to me I was just gonna take my child and leave. That was clear; there was no doubt about it. No matter what they did. I was very convicted about the truth. And so you know, they were still playing with that. So, what was happening now was that Vanessa didn&apos;t want to come with me. And so, I said, “You know, I&apos;m gonna pick you up now; I&apos;m gonna put you over my shoulder, you know, and if you do anything, I&apos;m just gonna beat your ass. I don&apos;t care what you do; you&apos;re gonna come with me; I don&apos;t care what you say...” Saying it in English? Threatening her, yeah. It didn&apos;t matter to me; it was real clear. I had had enough. And then she was fighting back, and I didn&apos;t like it. And then she started to cry and tell me how mean I was and bla bla bla. And I felt terrible, you know, “Wait a minute what am I doing?” She said she would not like me anymore; she would hate me if I took her away from her now real mother, and bla bla bla. And I said, “You know Vanessa,” and I got down on my knees and I just looked into her beautiful hazel eyes and this just incredible child, and I said, “What is going on? I&apos;m your mother; you came into this world out of my body, and this isn&apos;t what you wanted. Why are you doing this?” And she said, “Because I want to dance.” She said, “These people are magic—you&apos;re not magic.&quot; “Oh God,” I said, “You know what?” (I knew she telling the truth. I

We take off and he doesn’t; he can&apos;t come across. There&apos;s a lot of traffic going by there, and it takes us down another side street, then we dash around and come out in an area close to our hotel and jumped into our hotel, and that&apos;s the last we saw him. We lost the guy. What do you think? Who knows? No one will ever know. We began to think that there’s... That was a deliberate follow, though. He was really following you. Why was he so obvious? It was sort of a gut... because of the setting, very political, espionage kind of setting, the surroundings around you were very... put you into a very spy novel frame of mind. Maybe his intent was robbery or whatever, but it sort of led one to believe that he was following you because of some trespassing into a certain territory, or whatever.

little souvenir nail clippers, instead, so I proceeded to clip my nails on the flight. Where were you? Where were you headed? We were headed to Shanghai from Xian. And later I find out that we were flying over Wushi at the time, making our approach to the Shanghai Airport, when I saw three gentlemen go into one of the johns. I then said to Dr. Gunther, who was sitting right next to me, “Very strange.” There&apos;s not even enough room really for one person in that john. I said three guys just went in there. Strange. A few minutes later they came back out, and all the people from the front section of the plane were now rushing back towards us, and I heard somebody shout, “They&apos;re fighting with knives up there!&quot; Obviously, it was a ploy to empty out that front part of the cabin. So the five of them at that juncture took... two of them went to the pilot and co-pilot and had six- or seven-inch knives held up against their necks. They got all the people out of the section between the cockpit and the galley and the john. Could you just back up a second? Hmm. Now, you say three men en-tered into the bathroom, and then who was rushing forward yelling and screaming? The passengers. All the passengers in the first section there came running to the back of the plane where we were. Because they were staging a mock fight or something to get them out of there—this is a mock thing to scare the people. They got them out. I was in the fourth row of the second section, and these guys all took their shirts off, and one of them came brandishing two knives, and he got the people out of the next three rows, and they also came back.

And we were told that we were gonna have a special luncheon, be-cause we had missed our train to Wushi, and we&apos;d have to take a later train. So we got on the bus and we&apos;d be driving for a couple minutes. Everybody still talking about what happened, how lucky we were. And I turned around, and I said, “It&apos;s Sunday morning, and I think it’s appro-priate that we sing the doxology,” which is “praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below,” which they did, and then im-mediately everybody cried. They had an emotional release then, which they needed ‘cause we&apos;d all been penting it up in ourselves. We’re still going on the adrenaline. So all the Americans together in the group? Yeah, the 19 are on a bus all by ourselves. And what about the bus driver? We had a bus driver and a national guide also. In fact, the national guide was so impressed; he wanted to have the words to that song. Yeah. End of story. In retrospect, how do you feel about the whole thing? I&apos;d never want to go through something like that again. I really consider it a miracle that I&apos;m here today. If the bomb didn&apos;t get us, the hijackers didn&apos;t get us, the crash could have gotten us. You know, it&apos;s unbelievable. And I think it helped me put a lot of things in perspective that maybe I&apos;d gotten a little out of perspective. I think I&apos;m less materialistic today than I was a month ago.&quot; How was your treatment by the Chinese? I loved it. The people were very friendly. So that was a Methodist prayer hymnal. Possibly a doxology.

dancers. What made you think that they were thinking about, you know, ab-ducting Vanessa? You indicated a little feeling of paranoia about it all. She just had so much love in her eyes, and so Vanessa came with me, and then we walked out, and we kind of skipped down the road and sang the songs that we knew. And we went back to our place and all those people. Was that just your mood at the time that you were panicking? Well, because they were definitely capable of great violence. They would have definitely been capable of that, just cutting me up into little pieces and feeding me to the... And the family that you were staying with? ‘Cause you had said before in the story that you thought maybe they were even possibly plotting the kidnapping. Oh, that was just my mind reeling ahead about why did this happen. So you were paranoid and just panicking about trusting? Yeah. And why didn&apos;t people relate to you then? Do you have any thoughts on that? No idea. It was just kind of like the ‘Twilight Zone.’ But, did it have something to do with the people? No, I don&apos;t think so. No, I don&apos;t think there was a conspiracy, if that&apos;s what you mean. They were ready to have Vanessa with them, clearly. Oh, absolutely. There was no doubt about it. They were locked in. And they didn&apos;t see it as abduction. They saw it as her wanting to be with them. They thought that she was a part of their tribe and... So, then it got kind of resolved? Yeah.

She just had so much love in her eyes. And so, Vanessa came with me, and then we walked out just kind of skipping down the road. And we sang the songs that we knew. We went back to our place and de-cided to, you know, be friends. Wow! That&apos;s it. What would have happened do you think, if you never had found her? that’s hypothetical. Well, that&apos;s a different story altogether! Yeah, but they meant well. She wouldn&apos;t have been a slave; she would have been with them, probably, yes? I don&apos;t know. All I can see is that Vanessa loves magic, and that she&apos;s a magical child. So whatever would have happened to her would have continued to be, you know, looking for that same quality of life that she saw that they had and I still fall short of. But the interesting part of the story was that Vanessa was originally named ‘Andrea Renee,’ and It was then when I saw the movie that Vanessa Redgrave did about Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer, that I was so inspired. I was just so inspired that I had visions and dreams of Isadora Duncan. And whenever I looked at Vanessa it was like I looked at her reincarnation, ‘cause when Vanessa was little she really danced—she didn&apos;t walk. Her hands were like, you know, wings, and then at that point she was three years old, and I began to call her Vanessa. And everyone had just fell in place. It all fit so well. Does she dance now? Well, not so much. I mean we move... I danced around the periphery of magic, and it’s coming, and there&apos;s an opening, although its a long time coming. Did she ever say anything more about that later on to you? Never. When it was over it was over. I want to ask you about the family you were living with and the

“This is it.” And I guess all of us at that moment were prepared to die, because I thought that was it, and I remember going down in the back of the plane and was there less than a minute. And I could feel the nose of the plane coming up. Before that, what was going through your mind at that point? Just, it’s a hell of a way to die. Why me? No, no... Why me? Just that I never thought it would end this way. Just, never... no fear, actually. None. It was just a strange feeling. And somewhere deep in the back of my mind, something kept saying to me, You're really gonna get out of this. It was very strange. I was very ambivalent about the whole thing. But I felt the nose coming up, and I looked out, and, you know, it was a miracle. There was a landing strip in front of us. And we hit at a very strange angle... it was the fastest landing I&apos;ve ever made. And as we hit the ground, the tires all blew, and we could feel it scraping and gritting in. But we did land safely. And at that moment, we just all sat there and didn&apos;t do anything. In fact, a quiet came over the plane that you wouldn&apos;t believe. And the pilot and co-pilot stood up, and they started coming toward us. I remember I started applauding. They weren&apos;t holding the pilot and co-pilot at this point? No, at this point the hijackers had all been bludgeoned; they were unconscious. And we&apos;d all taken off our belts. I forgot to tell you that, because they needed to be tied. They were bludgeoned. That&apos;s the only word I can say. What did you think about their condition at that point? Well, I didn&apos;t think anything about their condition at that point. Frankly I did not care.

Yeah, we moved on down to another bus stop, but he follows us down. So we go down and he follows suit. Where we go he goes. How are you feeling about that? Starting to get a little anxious. I don&apos;t know what is going on. Here is what happens. We get on a bus and sit up in the front. Just as the bus is about ready to pull off her trolley thing there, he hops on the back, like you see in the ‘French Connection.’ He&apos;s at the back; we&apos;re in the front. We get off. Switch to another one. We asked some directions of the bus driver, switch to another one. He gets off. We get on the front; he gets on the back. We&apos;re doing this. We have to keep transferring buses. This is the third bus that this guy has followed us ever since we got lost out there in the bombed out ruins and the rubble along the Wall, and the guards were chasing us out of there. This guy suddenly appeared and is following us. Can&apos;t be more deli-berate in following than that. We did a maneuver; we finally pulled off a maneuver that got rid of him. We lost him. By endangering our own lives is how we did it. We got off the bus. He gets off the bus. This is Kurfurstendamm Strasse, the main drag down West Berlin. It&apos;s about eight lanes wide and there&apos;s a hell of a lot of traffic. We wait until the light changes. Just as the traffic light turns green and everyone starts to go, we dash across Kurfurstendamm Strasse. Brakes are screeching, horns are honking as we continue to dash across and through the traffic.

It&apos;s time to go. We walk together to the pier, and he drops me off. He is an American who lives there who has little or no difficulties with the locals. He doesn&apos;t say much about this guy, but he does not think that I am in much danger at all. It seems matter of fact to him; traumatic to me. Back to the Piers I have still, it seems, an hour or so to wait for the launch that will take me to Red Frog Beach. And I am still worried that I will be further harassed by this character that I do not regard as particularly harmless.  I decide to stay out of sight and hang around close to the counters of the two restaurants. I order something to drink. So far so good. The launch comes not a moment too soon, which I eagerly board. We depart. I am much more at ease now and enjoy the next few hours at Red Frog and, finally, return to this wharf again.  Now, I am becoming anxious again, wondering where this menacing local guy is at this point, and whether I am going to have any more problems with him. Again, I sit at a table close to the cafe counter. I intend to sit in this spot until the banana launch returns to retrieve me and ferret me back to Bocas. Whoa! Here now appears the guy AGAIN, who now seems to be keeping a wary eye on me while doing something at the wharf. Can he possibly have some kind of a job here? I maintain my composure and continue to sit as is within a hog&apos;s breath of the restaurant counter.

I am on the Paris Metro. You feel as if you are as safe and secure as one could be. After all, this is France, a civilized, first world country, no less. What can happen? The train pulls into a station. There is an electric sort of crackling and zapping sound. Suddenly, the looks of tranquility and confidence on the faces of the Parisians morph into abject terror! I have never seen such faces on people until this!

Michael Brein, aka ‘The Travel Psychologist,’ and a ‘UFOlogist’ is an author, lecturer, travel storyteller, adventurer, and publisher of travel books and guides as well as books on UFOs, the paranormal, and high strangeness. He regularly appears in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and radio programs on the psychology of travel and the paranormal. He recently appeared on CNN International TV on the subject of pandemic travel. Michael is the first to coin the term travel psychology. As such, through his doctoral studies, work, and life experiences, as well as his world travels, he has become the world&apos;s first travel psychologist. Michael publishes a series of True Travel Tales consisting of eBooks and print books on specific travel subjects, themes, or countries. Michael also publishes The Road to Strange series on UFOs, the paranormal, and high strangeness. Michael Brein resides on Bainbridge Island, Washington. You may visit Michael’s website at <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="http://www.michaelbrein.com">www.michaelbrein.com </a>and email him at <a xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" href="http://michaelbrein@gmail.com">michaelbrein@gmail.com. </a>

navigator and two stewards—five men on the crew.) There were also five hijackers. Now, whether they wanted to deplete the other males in the front of the plane, or whether they really were being humane and allowing the one steward who was bleeding pro-fusely... They allowed the two stewards to come to the back of the plane. That was a tactical error, because what the stewards did, is they or-ganized the Chinese in the back of the plane to make an assault. Could you back up a second and tell me how one of stewards got hurt? Oh, stabbed. He tried to wrestle with them, and they stabbed him. Okay, that was at the very beginning? No, there were little struggles that were going every once in a while. Okay, so one of them did get stabbed? Oh yeah. And the co-pilot got stabbed very badly later on. Anyway, they came to the back of the plane. Unbeknownst to me, they organized, and they led off with two mops. The two stewards were the first. One, having a turban around his head, really looked like an old Chi-nese warrior now coming down the aisle. But they had mop handles, which were about three feet long, and huge. They were like the trunks of small trees, actually—maybe three or four inches in dia-meter. And when they came, I heard the noise, and I looked, and I saw them coming down the aisle from the back. So I started yelling, “No!&quot; And Dr. Gunther and I and Ed Lawson, we actually grabbed the mop and stopped them and said, “There&apos;s a bomb!” We didn&apos;t know whether or not they knew that there was a bomb up there.

She had been very ‘in and out,’ often wandering, disappearing at a moment’s notice. She&apos;s independent; I felt chills all over my body, and I knew this was gonna be quite the experience. I asked everyone if they had seen her. But now, the people who were once very friendly with us and always very hospitable to me, now acted like they didn&apos;t even know me, and it was like suddenly I was a complete stranger or an unknown tourist in an unknown land. No one was responding to me. It was as if I was invisible, and all the people that I talked to before, now either didn&apos;t have time to hear me or see me or didn&apos;t know and couldn&apos;t relate to what I was saying. And since I couldn&apos;t speak the languages, now, my hands were flail-ing all over, and I was frantically going from place to place. But now, no one knew; no one saw; no one knew anything. I thought at first that this had gone on for only a couple of hours. But it turns out it that by five or six o’clock it had actually gone on for three or four more hours even. The time had somehow flown by. I had been everywhere and looking everywhere, and it was like as if everyone decided that they weren’t going to even acknowledge my very existence. And I thought, Boy, this is really strange. The sun was turning a real golden color, and I started to think, Oh. night is coming; oh no... night is coming! By now, the clouds were changing colors, and the sun was beginning to set. So, I sat down by the side of the road, and I just watched the people walk back and forth. It was so surreal: it was like I was just completely stoned on something. Quite honestly, I didn’t know who I was or where I was or if anything really mattered at all. It was like, you know, as if I looked through

But the captain and co-pilot came, and we all got up and shook hands as they went to the rear of the plane. The co-pilot was really bleeding. He had been stabbed bad—obviously he had been stabbed several times in the face. We had just been on the ground only a matter of seconds when their (China) SWOT, which was obviously a special military unit, boarded that plane. And they rushed through and up to the front of the plane. They wouldn&apos;t allow any of us to go up there. And in a few minutes they dragged one by one the five hijackers through the plane by the feet. Two of them were... in my book they were dead. They were gray. They were no longer bleeding. The blood was all dried and clotted, and as they went by, the Chinese spat on them. Two of them I know were living, because one I heard him moan, and the other one I could see his chest heaving. The third one I have no opinion about. The Chinese government officially said all five of them were alive. This morning on the news the Chinese government said they shot all five of them. This morning. They tried them? Well I guess it was a quick trial. They said the penalty automatically is death for hijacking. On Sunday the crew was also awarded special awards, which we had asked the Chinese government to do. Would they have done that you think, if you hadn’t suggested that? I don&apos;t know. We did request it. Because, in our book, they acted heroically, and we wouldn&apos;t be here had they not kept their cool and did everything they did.

At that time Berliners just loved Americans; they loved Kennedy. A strong affinity, so you had no trouble there. They were very hospi-table to Americans. I was very surprised to see that still a sizable part of West Berlin was pretty well built up, but there are still ruins, bombed out ruins in West Berlin at that time, and so we got lost. In fact, what happened was, we got lost over there in the ruins of the bombed out area. No man’s land. We encountered some guards who sort of moved us into... they didn’t quite tell us where to go, but motioned for us to get out of there. So, we come to this scene up there around the Brandenburg Gate. It&apos;s much later than we want it to be. It&apos;s pitch dark. A few street lights are visible. It’s a very long deserted street and we decide to finally get out of there. And we are noticing that there&apos;s a guy about 100 yards up the street that is sort of watching us. It&apos;s real chilly. It can get cold. I have this German trench coat and Karen&apos;s in her dark black long coat, long full-length coat, and this guy&apos;s up the street about 100 yards up there standing under a street light in a trench coat, too. I hadn’t noticed him appearing up there before, but we popped out of the woods and finally came out into civilization here after running around along the Wall and stuff there and the guards directing us out of there. So, this whole thing is deserted, just him up there, and then we noticed that... we decide to move on down to the next bus stop, something a little suspicious about the way that guy looked. You went in the reverse direction?

Told to me by Devon D. An American Dracula aficionado treats his girlfriend to a trip to Romania and Transylvania for Halloween. They overnight at the famed “Hotel Transylvania,” where strange things happen. 	She wakes up with puncture marks on her wrist; he has a shallow cut across his. He purports to have a photo of this and sports a Bela Lugosi tattoo on his arm! 	A man conceivably obsessed throughout his life with all things Romanian, Transylvanian, and Count Dracula, even to the point of sporting a tattoo on his arm of Count Dracula, aka Vlad, the Impaler, and also wearing a Bela Lugosi t-shirt, to boot, travels on a long journey all the way to the Hotel Castel Dracula. 	Was he seemingly ‘drawn’ or destined to come to Transylvania at the behest of mystical forces, only to be subjected to mysterious blood-curdling procedures during the night at the hotel, otherwise known as the “Hotel Dracula,” on that one fateful Halloween night? 	One wonders if this could conceivably be true or if it might have the makings of an elaborate perpetrated hoax or urban myth? 	Says Devon, it was 2002, and the girl I was dating at that time asked me, “If you could go anywhere, where would you want to go?” 	I said, “Well, I&apos;d love to go to Romania, and I want to see the real-life castles of “Vlad the Impaler,” and where all the stories came from, and all the heritage.

Why don&apos;t you say it again so I could have it. I&apos;d love you to repeat that. Okay. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him all creatures here below, Praise Him above Ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” Very simple.

I guess somehow I wanted more. I wanted more interaction with all of them. I wanted to go on with it for a while and see what comes next. I mean, they had been quite tame even by that point and were even offering me gold and fabric and silk and were bringing things and piling them up right in front of me. And telling me this goes with me, and she stays with them, and so on. I thought, Oh, now what do I do? Now let's see... My next move is... Any time I showed any kind of chagrin or anger, the flashing teeth and knives were kind of telling me to back off, that anger was inap-propriate. I said, “Well, okay... No, no this isn&apos;t working out,” very adamantly, “This isn&apos;t going to happen. No, you can&apos;t have her.” I was very firm. They said, ‘yes’ very firmly. They would have her. I said, ‘no’, they would not have her. Vanessa said, “Yes. I&apos;m staying with them.” I said, “No, you&apos;re coming with me, REALLY!” and this went on and on. Then she began to ignore me and play with things, and like she would not give me her attention. So I said, “You know; you are com-ing with me!” I said to the woman, “Just back off!” And then I got angry, and it didn&apos;t matter about their knives or whatever. At that point I had had enough. I was getting impatient. The other woman clearly wanted the confrontation to take place because she knew that that would eventually have to happen, right? Yeah, it would have to happen. It was going on too long. Vanessa had really lost interest. She was now playing with trinkets or whatever.

<a href="bookcreator://page/gyp_7ZJsQgmgLgv5KdahTw"> The Hotel Caster Dracula</a>

Repeat Experiencers of UFOs and the Paranormal

wasn&apos;t magic. I was bored; I was running from a wild husband; I was dazed in my own right. I was looking for magic but I did not have it. They had it. And they lived it, and she was right, you know.) And then I told her, “You&apos;re right, you know.” And I said (you know, little tears came, and she didn&apos;t really want to look at my pain; she just wanted it to be magic), just listen to me for a minute, you know; you can stay with these people if you want, because what you&apos;re saying is true, and I may never be magic, but can you tell me how can I get magic?” And she just looked at me for a minute, because she&apos;s very suspic-ious ‘cause I&apos;ve been very unmagical in her life a lot. She then said, “Will you know how to dance? Will you dance a lot? Will you teach me how to dance?” And I said, &quot;I&apos;ll do my best, I don&apos;t know, I promise that I&apos;ll try.” She said, “That&apos;s where the magic is.” I said, “Okay, I&apos;ll try, but will you come with me and please just give me a chance?” And she said, “Alright, I&apos;ll try too.” And then she took off her things, and she left them with them, and she cried, and the lady cried; some of the other people cried, and I thanked them, and I gave them another one of my mother&apos;s rings. Two down; how many to go? I&apos;ve got a lot of bling [rings and jewelry]. How many are there? Two more. So I left. I gave it to the woman, and I thanked her, and she gave me a ring, and it was real beautiful, and she pointed to her heart, and she touched her hand over my heart and over Vanessa&apos;s heart.

And so, they look at him almost like a religious hero over there, whereas we look at him over here as this monster. So, it&apos;s a really interesting thing to see it all through their eyes when you go over there. Michael: What did they think of Americans, then, who are obsessed with this? Devon: I think they&apos;re kind of fascinated just by the way we celebrate and look at everything. When I went over there, it was a third-world country at that time, so you could buy a $20 steak dinner for about only $3. I don&apos;t know if they’re into the Euro now, but they definitely were not at that time. So, the Euro had started, but it was still just a third-world country, so I mean you can spend a whole week there, and not even break a one-hundred-dollar bill. As I said, it was the best vacation I&apos;ve ever had in my life. You stay at a five-star hotel for only $45! So we got to go through the Carpathian Mountains, and you would see a gigantic crucifix on the mountainside as you went through on this tour bus. And then this old toothless woman took us by rowboat out to this island, and it was amazing. Transylvania is where they found the bones of ‘Vlad the Impaler.’ It was just like something right out of an old Christopher Lee-Peter Cushing vampire movie from the 60s. We also got to go to the moors, where his wife had thrown herself off the castle and committed suicide. It was at the time, apparently, when the Turks were invading and on their way to “Castle Bran,” where ‘Vlad the Impaler’ was being held prisoner. We got to see his escape route out of captivity, and then we ended up seeing the themed hotel called “Hotel Castel Dracula.” And that night we did the whole big bonfire thing, and the local news crews came out and filmed everybody in costume—all the crazy Americans—and my girlfriend and I had some Romanian wine that night, and then finally we crashed out. Michael: Now, were there any paranormal or unusual or any psychic things going on? Devon: Absolutely! Here’s what happened. We woke up the next morning, and my girlfriend had two puncture marks on her vein on her arm, and I had one slit going in one direction on one wrist and another slit on the other wrist! (shows me his wrists). True story! I&apos;m not going to make up any explanations for it, but that is what happened. I even photographed it. I have a photograph of it somewhere. (Devon promised he would send me a copy, but now he says that he has so far been unable to find it. But, He’s[delete comma after But and don’t capitalize He’s] assured me he would send me a copy,[delete comma] when and if he locates it.) Michael: Did you try to follow up and understand this? Devon: No, it&apos;s just another crazy thing that happened. Michael: Now, you don&apos;t think it’s conceivably part of the package, that they would do this to Americans, to give them the feeling of the really genuine experience? Devon: Well, we talked to the people in our group, and it didn&apos;t happen to anybody else in the group, so who&apos;s to say for sure? Michael: Have you ever had any psychic or paranormal experiences in your life? Devon: Every year, yeah! (Laughs.) Michael: Well, I mean, seriously. Devon: No, I&apos;m being dead serious. Up until a week ago. Michael: Of what nature? That&apos;s what I&apos;m asking. Devon: A lot of it is electrically based. So, light bulbs burning out, exploding. Like about a week ago, I was in my bathroom, and the lights went off and on three times in a row. And when I walked into the kitchen, the lights flipped off and on three times in a row there, too. And then, I went out to eat with some friends later that night—and they had been waiting for me for about half an hour—and then, as soon as I sat down in the chair, the light above our table went out! Michael: What about street lights, maybe? That’s happened to me a lot! Devon: Streetlights? I can&apos;t think anything for sure about streetlights, but definitely in the house. In any apartment that I lived in, too, there&apos;d[there’s] always the one light above my door in the apartment complex that’d be the one that&apos;s always flickering and going out. Michael: So now, this is going to be a strange question. Do you think in some way that you were targeted or drawn to all this in your life? Devon: Sure, yeah! I mean, I&apos;m always open to this. I always kind of just look at things for what they are and not try to come up with, like, a great explanation. Michael: Well, I don&apos;t mean as a hobby or an interest. I mean, maybe it took your whole lifetime to get to Transylvania to have[insert whatever] happened whatever they did[delete whatever they did]to the two of you? Devon: Who&apos;s to say for sure? Michael: Where did you begin to get this—I&apos;m not gonna[going to] use the word “obsession,” not in a negative way, at least—you obviously are obsessed with this! Devon: I was just born that way. Yeah. Michael: Did you think any of your lineages come from there? Did you ever think of getting a DNA thing? Devon: I&apos;ve done the test. Michael: Where are you from? Devon: It&apos;s 76% Irish and English. I&apos;m pretty much white. Then, Scandinavian, French, German, and a little bit of North African. Michael: But nothing—no Romanian, huh? Devon: There was a vague East European connection, just a small percentage. But that could have been anything. Michael: So, you see where I&apos;m leading… I&apos;m trying to see if is there any… Devon: Bringing me back to the motherland! (Laughs.) Devon: I don&apos;t know, this didn&apos;t happen to anybody else. Michael: Why did it happen to the two of you? Did you have dreams that night? Devon: It was so long ago, I couldn&apos;t say for sure. Michael: So, you don&apos;t see any connection or anything drawing you back there? Devon: As I said, I live a pretty weird life, and that was just one… that&apos;s one out of maybe a thousand stories that I have! Michael: Did you show what happened to you to any of the locals, like, in the hotel? Devon: Well, the tour guide was Romanian. Michael: Well, what did he say? Devon: He laughed about it and said it was Dracula. (Laughs.) I think you&apos;re looking for some big explanation, and there just isn&apos;t one. That&apos;s just what happened. Michael: You know, I find when I probe into this, when people tell me stories, sometimes things come up that people don’t think of. That&apos;s why I do this, because I’m absolutely serious, and I&apos;m not joking. There&apos;s, of course, a lot of humor to this. Devon: Yeah, and this is exactly what happened. I&apos;m not telling you any lies. This is my story. Michael: Well, it&apos;s true. People ask me, do people ever make up stories for you? But, when I see you and I see your tattoo, and I see your shirt, of course, this is for real. You are for real! But what do you do in your normal life? Devon: I do a couple of different things: I rent out some real estate; I&apos;m also an artist/illustrator, so I work on Disney&apos;s ‘Haunted Mansion Comics;’[semi-colon after quotation mark] I’ve done a couple of children&apos;s books; I do a lot of private commissions. So art is my trade, mostly. Michael: So, you don&apos;t really read anything more into this experience. But you were in ‘pig heaven’ over there, weren’t you? Devon: It was great, yeah! With stuff like when it comes to vampires, I kind of look at it more from the archetype angle. Why that&apos;s a consistent theme in different cultures, and how it&apos;s interpreted by the Irish or the Egyptian or the Native Americans or the Romanians, and what was going on that time, and why that’s a consistent theme that keeps coming up. When I look up monsters, that&apos;s kind of my angle, when I look at these things. Michael: But, in Romania, is the culture around Dracula pretty similar to the way we see it in the west? Devon: h,[???] no. Not at all. Michael: Tell me, then, who was Dracula in Romania? Devon: Well, I think they understand the difference between what it is and what it’s become, and I think they love the art that came from it—what with Bela Lugosi’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula, and the book, of course. But I mean, that&apos;s not their starting point. Their starting point was that this was their ‘George Washington,’ so to speak. And so, they’re gonna[going to] see that before they see the fictional Dracula. But they see it’s all one pop culture phenomenon now. They&apos;re coming from a completely different starting point than us. Michael: So, they don&apos;t really resent us? Devon: No, it&apos;s good for their economy. As I said, it&apos;s a third-world country, so yes, it’s “the stupid Americans are here to buy up all the Dracula merchandise.” Michael: So, you don&apos;t think somebody said, “look at this guy; he&apos;s really into this; let&apos;s give him a real experience. Spray him with sleeping gas right through the night and…” How deep were these cuts? Devon: They were on the surface. But I mean, it was enough to leave a scab. Michael: My question is, were there any rumors that any of that area where you were might have been haunted in some way? Devon: Yes, it&apos;s Transylvania. They still believe. They’re still living like it&apos;s the 1400s over there. There are places where there was no electricity. You see wild dogs running through the mountainside, donkeys, and wooden carriages. Yeah, the superstitions are real. They do believe in vampires there, absolutely. Michael: Yeah, you know, it sounds a little silly, but do you think the spirits could sense “this is someone that’s very serious about this subject… let&apos;s give him an experience?” Devon: I like to think so, sure. Michael: But, you come away totally positive, and this was like a mecca for you. I would absolutely do it again, and I would recommend anybody do the trip. Michael: This is a great story. I don&apos;t think anybody’s told me about Transylvania before. *** Commentary This story of the Transylvania Hotel (or Hotel Transylvania), which may be true or not, may just be the stuff of urban myths and legends. 	I mean, you could not ask for anything better than who I had standing right before me in Portland at the Body Mind Spirit Expo telling me his extraordinary story: 	You had a man with a Bela Lugosi tattoo on his arm. You had a man wearing a Count Dracula t-shirt. My God, what more do you need to see an urban myth or legend staring you right in the face? 	If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and for God’s sake—looks like a duc,[duck] what then? 	You would be the laughingstock, no less of all the skeptics and debunkers everywhere! 	And to make matters much—much worse even—that so-called ‘promised’ photo of the superficial injuries that Devon and his girlfriend purported to have, never did materialize! 	But in the least, this story is a fun, teaser tale (similar in some respects to the urban legend of the Nullarbor Nymph story in the first book of The Road to Strange series). 	Or maybe, just maybe what we have here—namely, the story of a man obsessed with Count Dracula, and who was even adorned with a tattoo of the Count and toting a t-shirt of the Count as well—may himself very well be traveling down a similar path along The Road to Stange in his own way parallel to the genius violinist Heine who earlier in this book may very well have been lured to his impending death in this lifetime in some similar way, too, but in this case to and by the sirens of Ibiza. 	But Devon’s return to Transylvania with his girlfriend, possibly to fulfill some sort of a past-life mission or destiny, may in the end simply not be at all the stuff of urban myths and legends! 	What if they are simply the ordinary stuff of The Road to Strange and The Contiguous Universe? Just what if these stories are true after all and NOT at all the subject of urban myths and legends?.[delete period] 	I mean, we’ve had all kinds of stories of the paranormal and high strangeness here in this Road to Strange series, with undoubtedly a number of them being true, maybe even the majority of them! 	In these Road to Strange pages, after all, we have the one place in the Universe—namely here—in this very series—along The Road to Strange, in the midst of The Contiguous Universe where those stories of purported true events have found their true home! 	If nothing else, Devon smacks, himself, of sincerity. His answers seem honest, well thought out, and well put. I think maybe, just maybe, Devon is merely acting out a life quest over perhaps a series of past lives, still driven in this present one to fulfill or complete the destiny of his soul on a mission. 	Of course, this is just a theory. 	In the end, each of us must decide for him- or herself, which of the tales of happenings along The Road to Strange possibly ring true. And it may well be just a part of a tale and not necessarily the tale in its entirety, which might conceivably be deigned as being true. 	When thought of in such a manner, such a person as Devon who seems to be traveling a life path which winds him up at the Hotel Transylvania—no doubt a pull for a chunk of his young adult life—I think we may very well have a fun case of a personal path drawn to merge with The Road to Strange.

It is happening all too quickly for much of an immediate reaction on my part, as the passengers are now running for the car exists, seem-ingly running for their lives. And I now find myself included in the crush for the doors. No longer am I an outsider—an observer. I am now an unwilling par-ticipant. A bomb? No destruction, no injured, and no falling people. Nothing more than the people filing frantically out of the car onto the platform. A sparking electrical failure in the rail equipment on the platform as the train comes to a stop. Something to do with Metro train opera-tions. That&apos;s all. The disturbed looks on the faces of the people do not morph back. Recovery is a much slower process than the onset. Some people file back onto the car for the imminent departure of the Metro, once it is determined that it is okay to proceed. Most passengers exit the station, finding it all just too difficult to overcome so quickly. I suppose there have been subway bombings in Paris. Terror and fear, so it seems, are on the tips of our tongues, whether in civilized or third-world countries.

&quot;I can always use another —Michael Brein

Wanted! Some more great travel stories for this series!

West Berlin, Germany, 1965 by Lee A Weigle

This is an espionage story in West Berlin. This was in ’65 in Berlin. We were on a tour around the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie one more time, because we were kind of hurried on the tour during the day-time, so my wife, Karen, and I went back on our own later in the day. We had dinner together and then decided to go over to the Branden-burg Gate at night.

It&apos;s very beautiful and lovely there. We take the public buses over to here. We don&apos;t speak any German, but I found it very—for some reason—it must be the German in me that came out—I had a great affinity for understanding or communi-cating with the Germans. Although I don&apos;t really speak it, I had very little trouble in understanding or just somehow communicating with them.

Michael Brein, aka ‘The Travel Psychologist,’ and the ‘UFOlogist,’ is an author, lecturer, travel storyteller, adventurer, and publisher of travel books and guides. He also publishes The Road to Strange series of books on UFOs, the paranormal, and the highly strange. He regularly appears in newspapers, magazines, blogs, and radio programs, and recently appeared on CNN International TV on the psychology of travel. Michael is the first to coin the term ‘travel psychology.’ As such, through his doctoral studies, work and life experiences, as well as his extensive world travels, he has become the world&apos;s first travel psychologist. Michael also publishes a series of True Travel Tales consisting of eBooks and print books on specific travel subjects, themes, or countries; Michael Brein resides on Bainbridge Island, Washington. You may email Michael at michaelbrein@gmail.com. And you may visit his website: www.michaelbrein.com.