F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction Author

Paranormal

First of Two Wendy’s Coffeehouse Interviews

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Had a wonderful and fun interview on Wendy’s Coffeehouse tonight!

Thank you, Wendy, for having me, and thanks to your listeners for listening! Especially Japan’s listeners, who Wendy mentioned, she had just been informed were listing to tonight’s cast!

We talked about the paranormal and weirdness we’ve both had and continue to have in our lives, as well as some of my books and short stories. It was a fun show! Be sure to check out her podcast archive for a recording of this show!

Wendy’s site: https://wendyscoffeehouse.blogspot.com/

My next interview with her will be September 6, 2017, 11 a.m. MT, on KCMO talk radio.

 

Float Number 8

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, July 15, 2017)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, July 15, 2017)

Today, Saturday, July 15, I did my eighth float. It has been seven months since I’d last done a float. Let’s just say life got in the way. And since then Morgan and Ana-Alycia have hired an employee! Welcome Stacy to the Luna Float Spa team! Morgan, Stacy, and I had a great conversation today, after my float. Stacy has also had brushes with the paranormal, so it continues to show what I mean by saying ALL of us have instances of paranormal activity in our lives!

Like my past couple of floats, this float was also a subtle one…almost non-existent, actually. I had no real intense “visits,” where I “go somewhere” and pop back, or do a rapid-fire succession of multiple such visits. I mean, I might have had one, which I’ll mention below, but it happened so danged fast that it was like all I got was the end of it, returning to the tank. Maybe.

The Robochair

I had used the “Robochair,” as I call it, which is a Dreamweave massage chair, for 30 minutes before floating. I have done this twice, and I think I’m not going to do that anymore…before a float. I think it interferes with my floats for some reason…too much “stimulation,” so to speak. Or “working over” of the body when you’re trying not to even consider a body during a float (after all, these are sensory deprivation tanks!). In fact, just at the end of using this thing, I almost had an episode much like my floating experiences, where I “go someplace.” But the chair stopped and I was pulled out of whatever almost happened.

Yeah, it’s that good!

Okay, so I moved on to my float.

The Float

As I got into the pod, I felt that “internal movement” I sometimes feel, where the insides of me move around, but the physical me—the “outside me”—does not. I initially thought, this would be a great float…but I soon discovered that it was not quite to be. I again had stabilization issues, where I couldn’t keep from (lightly, albeit) knocking around the insides of the pod. In a good float I can quickly stabilize and not “roam” all over the place. That was my first clue.

Throughout the float I had images of people, places, and things, most of which I have since forgotten. But I did manage to remember a few and have written them down, two of them really cool images, but I now only seem to recall one of them, dang it! I also didn’t have the really cool colors I usually get, only getting a “spray” of light red/pink that materialized once toward the end.

Here is what I remember:

  • I saw a small light bulb, maybe a little over an inch in length, and it glowed a neat orange.
  • I saw a floating laptop! A bell had also materialized in front of it and floated with it. The bell was like the Liberty Bell, but a smaller version that fit with the laptop. They were both on a flat flotation device. In a pool? This was the one really neat experience I had that I could remember.
  • Saw several people. Some had spoken, but I’ve lost the words. One had said: “Oh, shiiit…,” followed by some other words I’ve since lost. It was a subtle utterance, not harried or under duress.
  • Saw a young girl in a long white-and-red stripped shirt. To be honest, she looked like one of my nieces! It was her profile I had seen.
  • I kinda had an experience where it seemed like I was “going somewhere,” but it got truncated and all I’d seen was this door closing, and that was that. Odd.
  • Eyes. I seem to see a lot of eyes, in some manner or the other. I didn’t see many, I think maybe two or three.
  • I jerked quite strongly four times. One of those times, my head jerked up, out of the water. The other times were more side-to-side kinda things. My hands also jerked a little.
  • Behind my eyes I saw a brief “spray” of red…but it changed into more of a pink, from its spraying effect.

So, there it is! Not like my first three floats, but it doesn’t have to be. I think that I might be feeling a bit “pulled in different directions,” and my energy wasn’t quite as focused as it should have been. Throw in the Robochair, and I think I just wasn’t as ready for the float as I thought I was. Don’t get me wrong, it was still a great session in and of itself! It’s so danged relaxing! But I’m trying to get my short story collection out there and other things are just on my mind, and I think I just wasn’t as focused as I should have been. But…I got a free float with this one, so I have that to look forward to!

Not every float is going to be a home run…you just have to take them as they come…but enjoy them and be open to what can happen in them!

 

Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Address:

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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Float Number 6

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, November 12, 2016)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, November 12, 2016)

Yesterday (Saturday, November 12, 2016), I did my sixth float. This was a more subtle float. And by “subtle,” I mean it wasn’t like most of my floats where I’m flying back and forth between all kinds of “vignettes” and such (brief out-of-body experiences?), but that yes, I had many of my normal experiences, but they were not jarring and as intense. It does seem that every float can be different, just like mediation, working out, whatever. We don’t know all that is going on inside us, and even when we do think we have a good handle on things, we never really know just what is actually going on inside us metaphysically. I was ready and excited to do this float, like I usually am, but the whiz-bang internal fireworks I normally experience just weren’t there…but it was still a great float!

Just…subtle….

One of the things I’d experienced in my last float was a feeling of a cool breeze of air that had shot across my face, so this time in I looked for that. Nothing. There really is no “cool breeze” that blows across you, so that was an interesting experience last time.

Prior to this session, I’d also gotten a free shiatsu Inada Dreamwave massage chair session. The last time I’d used this chair was after my very first float, in February of this year (2016).

The Living, Breathing Inada Dreamwave Massage Chair! (Image by Luna Float Spa)
The Living, Breathing Inada Dreamwave Massage Chair! (Image by Luna Float Spa)

From that first float post, the Dreamwave chair:

“I used the shiatsu massage Inada Dreamwave chair after the pod experience, but I’d recommend using it prior to it. This chair...it has 100 air cells, while your typical, commercially available chairs have 30 – 40 cells, Ana-Alycia tells me. And it has 106 body types programmed into it. Anyway, it’s simply amazing. It’s like six different people working on you at once. And I kid about the “life of its own” part, but as it works away on you, you can hear the air cells sighing upon exhaling (inflating and deflating—see, I still refer to it as if it is ALIVE…) and the material creaking and scrunching all around you as it works you.

“Yeah, it’s alive.”

As I said, this time I used it before the float. I don’t know if that made any difference for me in this float. But it’s freakin fun!

Here is what I experienced during yesterday’s float:

  • A person—I think a lady?—walking a German Shepard. S/he pet the left-side of the snout of the dog with the first two fingers of his/her hand. I saw from a distance of perhaps 10 feet.
  • I saw a somewhat abstract image of a horse face full-on that came right up to my face. At this point I think the abstract image turned into a “real” horse face. You’d think I’d know one way or the other if the face went “real” versus abstract. You’d think….
  • From a slightly elevated perspective (i.e., hovering), and from many yards away, I observed Naval officers in their “whites” in formation atop a ship’s deck, with another officer in charge of them, walking back and forth and addressing them, doing his thing. Behind them all were naval guns. The officer-in-charge walked back and forth once or twice. Interestingly, as I observed (and this went on for several moments), I was hit with the feeling of so much “white and gold.” “White” would be their dress uniforms, and “gold” all their insignia and emblems on their sleeves and caps.
  • Felt there was a lot of things going on in the background. Sometimes literally, like behind and around me as I went on my subtle journeys in this session, but also in the grand scheme of things.
  • I did seem to flit in and out of ” a couple of conversations,” as I usually do, but these were so subtle, I didn’t always realize I’d just been in one until after I left it. And I would instantly not remember it (now, those last three words are important: I was going to write “forget it,” but that didn’t feel right; the more correct term is not that I “forgot” them…but that I “did not remember” them…).
  • From a bit (pardon the pun) of a distance, I saw a horse running on a track.
  • I saw abstract eyes. These I saw with my eyes closed and opened. See my last float for an explanation.
  • Toward the end of my float, I very briefly saw, “in the upper left quadrant” of my field of view, a ribbon of red. Like that Christmas ribbon candy, but it was red only.
  • Interestingly, I had a hard time keeping stable in this session! I kept pinging off the walls! Now, not a forceful “bump,” but I kept drifting into the sides of the pod. I don’t usually have difficulty maintaining center stability in there, but this time I did.

After the float I entered the common area, where Morgan (one of the owners) and a young woman were talking about the woman’s experience, and sat quietly half-listening to their discussion, while recounting my own to write them down for this post. At one point Morgan brought me into the conversation. Later in the conversation, the woman asked me what I think all these images and “vignettes” were and if they were important. I told her I feel everything is important…we may not understand why or where all these experiences come from, but I don’t consider any of them dismissively coincidental or unimportant. I feel these images and events and experiences come from multiple sources. I think they could be peeking in on alternate/probably existences…lives. Could be events that are somehow tied to whatever energy we’re involved in at the moment. Could be other people’s stepping in on us. Could be those on “the other side” saying “Hi” or just making themselves known. The woman also asked if I ever enter a float with intent, and I told her, yes, I have—in fact I did so with this session, but it didn’t exactly pan out as expected, to which Morgan chuckled a good one (as I did)! Things don’t always go as planned, for me, I told her. That I’m not one of those who consciously works out answers in dreams…now, I do believe problems do work themselves out in dreams, among other “venues,” let’s just say, but consciously, I’d only had that happen once in my life…and today was no different in my float session. But…the over-arcing goal is always to just allow myself to experience whatever it is my Self wants to show me.

Afterward I noted the animal imagery interesting. I mentally noted that a friend of mine had just purchased a new horse. Also after the session, someone I was talking to mentioned something about race horses. So that thread is curious. I’m not a “horse person,” but have nothing against them; I love all animals—I am “an animal person”!—but the horse thread is interesting!  And a friend of mine is currently performing some in-depth military history research, so this was also quite curious! Maybe what I witnessed were some of those who were a part of the historical events my friend is researching? I’m not clear on the period of these officers. It makes no sense to me otherwise—I’m not Navy (though my dad is, but he was a submariner, not a “skimmer,” and this definitely seemed like the deck of a surface ship).

Also, Morgan had mention that he was going to do some increased promotion and asked if he could use my blogs in their promotion! I thought, dang, that is so cool! I gave him my permission to do so. Thanks, Morgan and Ana-Alycia, for thinking of my work! I hope I can help give others a better understanding of what they can expect and it helps grow your business! It’s such a cool, bettering-of-life business, and even if others don’t get nearly what some of us get out it, it’s the intent that matters! The intent of trying to make one’s life better, which expands outward into life in general. When we better our own lives, we better life in general. And even you only get an incredible physical relaxation out of it, that’s fine, too! It all helps. If you’d like to get more metaphysical experiences, then begin by meditating at home. I’ve been doing so since I was a kid…admittedly, I don’t do it as much or as frequently as I used to, but that is where to start if you want to gain similar metaphysical experiences with the added isolation of the physical environment. And also have the intent that that is what you’d like to do!

But, everyone is different. I’m not some yogi, not a guru. Don’t want to be. I’m sure many have more intense, sustained out-of-body experiences than me, but that’s not the point: the point is that we all intend to better understand ourselves in the ways that our selves will do so. There’s no “race,” here (again, the horse imagery!). Enjoy the journey and better discover who you are!

Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Address:

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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Floats Number 4 and 5

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The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, June 4, 2016)
The Luna Dreamwave Pod. (Image by F. P. Dorchak, June 4, 2016)

Yesterday I had an impulse to do another float. I hadn’t done one since July, which hadn’t gone well (see below), but yesterday’s went extremely well! My usual weirdness! I’ve had so much going on this year with writing and family events, then trying to catch up around the house with having been busy with the writing and family events, that I hadn’t had time to do another float. I’ve tried to meditate a couple times when I could slow my ass down, tried two or three times just this week, but I was lucky to get five minutes in. So, I thought I have a pre-paid package of floats waiting for me at Luna, why not see if there were any openings that afternoon/evening—and there were. So I went after the gym.

But, first, here’s my previous float that didn’t go so well. I’d written up notes about it but not posted it. You’ll see why when you read it. I didn’t want it to be my last post on the matter, figured it’d be a while before my next one (it was!), and figured I’d wait until I had a good one to include it.

Here it is:

Float Number 4, July 16, 2016

I simply could not get into it! I was getting absolutely nothing.

I’d only had two images at the very beginning:

  • a weird-looking cylindrical light source attached at about head height to a door way/wall that had a tiny bright red light shining out
  • and looking down at white-sneakered feet at the end of blue-jeaned legs (not sure if mine or another’s…male or female).

I’d ended up terminating the 90-minute session about 45 minutes into it. It was my first attempt at a 90-minute session. But, in my defense, I’d woken up in a weird mood that day and hadn’t slept well the night before. And after the float? Yeah,more weird shit….

As I floated, I tried all my usual methods to get into it, but all failed. I actually felt two-dimensional…“psychically flat.”And as I floated there, I felt a sharp change in my state of mind that was not like normal-me…I felt a “stupidity” of being naked in a tub of water “out in public” in a way that was stark and depressing…like WTF am I doing? I was overtaken by this “two-dimensional” feeling.

I also felt a “rip in time” when all this was going on, which really only lasted for maybe, I don’t know, a minute or two? It was a stark, depressive state…I felt “what’s the point?”…but as soon as I recognized what was happening, I said “No!” and pulled myself out of it. It was very weird. Everything after that seemed a flat-out “nope, not gonna happen”…like my inner journey was being “withheld” from me. So, I tried to allow it some more time… “played around” in the water (it felt good playing rocking back and forth in the water with zero frame of reference—try it!)…but it just wasn’t happening. Sooo, I got out.

Except for about two images, I’d seen no shapes, no colors, nothing.

When I arrived for the float I’d told Morgan, one of the owners, that I was having a weird day…that I hadn’t slept well that night, kept waking up, and was in a “weird” state of mind. So I left and went out into my day…thought would run some errands.

As I was out and about…took a wrong turn at an interstate off-ramp and had to circle back…what had me sitting at a stoplight…I’d heard this “pop” and a “thud” and something drop. I looked around and saw nothing. Thought it was from a vehicle behind me. But as I went through the first of a series of lights that’s when I saw the steam coming out of the right front of the hood! I look to the temp gauge—pegged at “H.”

Joy.

I pulled into a parking lot. Since I’d had a towing company already in my cell from past experience (let’s just leave it at that), I gave em a call and had it towed. I got sunburned standing out in the sun (in the upper 90s) waiting for the tow.

Sigh.

So, that is what happened on July 16th and why I didn’t want to post it and leave it as my last float experience for so long! yesterday’s went extremely well, so let’s dive into that one!

Float Number 5, October 14, 2016

This was also another try at a 90-minute float, and this time I actually completed it. I think 90-minutes is too long for me, so won’t do those anymore. The 60-minute ones work perfectly for me.

Here is what I experienced on this float:

  • Early in, I again had the flitting between images and colors and events and conversations. Felt so good to be back to normal!
  • Also at the very beginning, I felt a cool/cold “breeze” flit across my face. This is quite interesting (okay, “weird”—my favorite word!) because in the pod, it’s totally enclosed! There are no breezes! No fans that deliver cool/cold air. There’s a jet in the pod, under the water, recycles the water, but nothing that spits cool air across my face!
  • I was part of a conversation with a young blonde wearing a bright red (with black crosshatching) flannel shirt. In the image I was looking straight at her, and she was off to my left. I actually saw the woman’s face but didn’t recognize her. But it was a bright red flannel shirt. She said a couple of things, but the only thing I now remember was that she was proud of me, what I was doing. Really? Who are you? She was gone, and—
  • There was another conversation something about e-mailing someone every day. I don’t know if was me or I was listening to others, but I’d heard another person answer “no,” and I also found myself echoing that answer with a “no”—and my head actually, physically shook vigorously back and forth in the water!
  • My limbs again when tingly throughout the session.
  • I’d opened my eyes a couple times while in there. The first time I did so I saw faint (i.e., not stark, and real-life like) images above me. Saw:
    • Eyes
    • Faint outlines of faces
    • Yellows and blues
  • Given the above, I played around looking at the “shapes before my eyes” that you see…and I actually found in every single case that what I saw behind my eyes with my eyes closed…I also saw the exact same thing when I opened my eyes! Have to admit I didn’t really expect that! So it did not matter whether or not my eyes were physically opened or closed…if I saw any shapes behind my eyes there were still there when I opened my eyes! It was actually hard to tell if they were opened or closed, other than the physical sensation of opening and closed my eyelids!
  • Somewhere partway through the 90-minute session, I began to get a little antsy. I actually physically got up and out of the pod for just a moment…but soon went back in. I was able to get back into things, but it wasn’t as intense as the first part of the session.
  • This, however, was quite interesting! Shortly after getting back in the pod, I suddenly had the urge to think about how much I absolutely love my life…myself…and those in my life…and I projected that three-dimensionally out into the world! My entire body suddenly lit up like I just been jacked with a millions of volts of electricity! I managed to maintain that feeling for several moments, actively projecting that out into the world into all dimensions…and man, did it electrify the hell out my body!
  • Saw an image of an outline of a heart.
  • Toward the end saw blues and yellows.

Those are the highlights I remember. As I’ve said, it’s hard to remember all the stuff that goes on in my sessions, because I flit so quickly in and out of the experiences! Some of them are stark and intense, like the blonde in the in the flannel. There were several conversations I’d flew in and out of, but I simply couldn’t capture enough to remember…or in trying to remember them, I’d miss out on other experiences trying to show themselves. Being able to see the exact same shapes behind my eyes with my opened or closed was amazing to me. That seems to imply that there’s actually “something there,” and it’s not just some kind of optical illusion.

And then there was the Love!

Wow.

That caught me totally off-guard! And it was such a wonderful, beautiful feeling! The effect on my body was overpowering, utterly incredible. I was radiating the love for my life out into my life.

We need more of this.

Anyway, it was nice to get back into the swing of things after that fourth session! Everything happens for a reason, and I just had too much going on that last time. I’m so glad I listened to my impulse, yesterday, to do a float at the last-minute!

Luna Float Spa Contact information:

Website: www.lunafloatspa.com/

Phone: 719/309-6776

E-mail: Contact@LunaFloatSpa.com

Luna Float Spa First Blog Post

Luna Float Spa
202 E. Cheyenne Mtn. Blvd., Suite R,
Colorado Springs, CO 80906

Hours: 10 a.m. – 8 p.m., Mountain Time

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lunafloatspa

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunafloatspa

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Perfume From Nowhere

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More Haunted Northern New York, © 2003, Second Printing 2005, Cheri Revai
More Haunted Northern New York, © 2003, Second Printing 2005, Cheri Revai

While in Riverton, Wyoming on our Labor Day Weekend trip, I would get up before my wife and Cousin-in-Law (CIL) and read. I’d started these two books on our upstate New York trip and had finished one of them (New England’s Ghostly Haunts, © 1983, by Robert Ellis Cahill), but was only about halfway through with the other one. That book is the More Haunted Northern New York, by Cheri Revai (apparently Cheri changed her name for one reason or the other, to “Farnsworth”).

I’d sit in the recliner out in the living room, with just the table-side light on and read. What had happened next, I don’t know if it’s really paranormal or not, but I have not found out the source of “the weirdness.”

On the first morning, as I sat and read, I noticed a sudden and definite scent of women’s perfume. It wasn’t an air cleaner/spritzer, it was definitely perfume. I didn’t think any of it, thinking it must be some scent released into the air. I let it go. The next morning, it happened again—twice. This time it happened just as I was finishing up the story about the Hand House (pages 68-70), on page 70. If you read five lines up from my thumb, you’ll read what I read as the two instances of perfume hit me:

"The Hand House," from More Haunted Northern New York, © 2003, by Cheri L. Revai.
“The Hand House,” from More Haunted Northern New York, © 2003, by Cheri L. Revai.

Okay, at this point I put the book down and inhaled some more.

Perfume. Women’s perfume.

Definite, strong.

My wife doesn’t wear it. Neither does my CIL. Neither do his pets.

I put the book down and got up and looked around the shelves behind me (pictures on the shelves and that was it). Nothing. Not one thing that could cause the smell of perfume. I look above and below…I look to the rest of the living room. Nothing. I go out into the hallway…nothing.

Huh.

I sit back down and read the rest of the ghost story and book.

Later that day I ask my wife if she smelled any kind of perfume as she’d sat in the other room the previous day, and she’d mentioned that she had. I looked around some more but couldn’t find anything. I later ask my CIL, when he got up, and he had no idea. But later he brought me over to a knickknack he had. “Is this it?” he asked, at which point he placed what looked like half a geode into my face with a butterfly in the hollow.

I inhaled.

There was a faint scent of perfume. Faint.

He said that you had to run a hairdryer over it to release the smell.

I don’t know if it was the same scent, but I have this to say about the entire affair:

  • I had to ram my nose right up and into that geode/butterfly thing to smell it. What I’d smelled was all around me. It was powerful and strong.
  • No one ran any hairdryer during my early morning hours.
  • This tiny “butterfly thing” was in the next room, around a corner, then recessed back from the entryway into the living room I’d been sitting in by about 12 or 15 feet? There was no way that extremely faint scent could travel like that and amplify it’s scent like it had. What I smelled was like someone had literally sprayed perfume into the air around me. Or like a woman who was heavily perfumed…had stood right next to me.

So…am I making too much out of this?

All I know was that on that second day (and not since) as I read the words “There’s also a very faint scent of perfume“…I smelled perfume. Twice.

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The Riverton Orb (fpdorchak.wordpress.com)