Is this true?
Did it really happen?
Was it an hypnogogic hallucination?
I’d been e-mailing my brothers one day, back in November of 2009, when one of them, Greg (you know him from such postings as The Most Interesting Man in the World), told me something that kinda, well…blew my mind. Something that to this day still has me waiting for him to pop out from behind a wall and yell “Ha, April Fools!” For going on four years, now, he continues to assure me he’s not yanking my chain. Swears it’s true.
The Silver Man.
I’ve heard of “Shiny people” before, from an in-law who wrote about them in his book, Faith, Family, and Friends, in Chapter 16, “Shiny People,” but my instance sounded different from this (detail below). In the abovementioned e-mail exchange, at the time (though I no longer recall them now), I mention I’d heard of some “silver people” on occasion (and to this day I remember remembering hearing an instance of them)…but when I went searching for them for this post, found no info on them. Whatsoever. Another I know also did a search. Also nothing. I find this curious. So, what I wanted to do here, was to consolidate all I’ve found out in one place, regarding “Silver People.” Admittedly, my instance is no great shakes, when placed next to the other information below, but this is no competition, and so cool I have to relate it. I also want to compile what information I’ve found for others who might also have had a similar experience, similar questions.
I’ve been waffling on posting this for a while…which also gave my brother ample time to come clean and tell me he’s kidding…wondering how it might make me look (but so many others relate similarly structured “visitations” in the tropes of their religious beliefs, I figured I should also be allowed to express my experiences, though I do not attach religious interpretations to them)…but, in the end, I didn’t really “experience” it, as you’ll see—though I was there. It’s so unreal, so mysterious. Creepy, even? Not so much “creepy,” as out-of-this-world cool. And I know many will most likely not believe it. It’s the stuff you hear about in books, movies, and late-night Internet radio. It’s the stuff you hear about from other people, not someone you know. But, my brother swears it’s true, so I believe him.
This is from my brother, Greg (whom I call “The Renaissance Man”). My initials are “fpd” for additional comment and clarification:
“It was when we were kids. Dad was working on my room, so I had to sleep down in that annex in your room (my room had a smaller, attached, “little room,” with a couple steps that led down into it—fpd). I woke up one night, my head was turned so that I was looking right up the stairs at your bed. The moon was really bright and it was shining right in the room. And there was this silver man sitting on the foot of your bed, just kind of looking down at you. He turned and looked at me, paid me very little attention, then turned back to look at you.
“I did what any kid would do and pulled the blanket up over my head. By the time I pulled it down again he was gone. Freaky.
“[He was] Not clothed, just kind of a smooth-skinned featureless man, or woman I guess. No hair to speak of. Regularish human face and build.
“Our rooms were being rebuilt, all three of us boys were in your room. You and Chris (my other brother—fpd) were in beds that faced the window wall, feet pointing towards the door (I believe this should actually be that the heads of the beds were up against the window wall, since he specifically pointed out what our feet were pointing toward the door; I also never remember our beds “facing the window”—fpd). Chris was on the far side of the room behind you.”
Now, on the one hand, there really isn’t much to the above, but on the other hand, it’s enough…isn’t it?
I mean if this is to be believed, some other intelligence had come from wherever it had come from to see me…to sit at the foot of my bed and visit me. Out of everyone else in the world—the universe? Who was I that this being should visit me…and what had transpired between us? Surely, he/she/it wouldn’t have come from wherever it came from just to look at me and not have something theoretically “important” transpire…and why would a being of such advanced stature need to even “physically” (I think it was actually more of a nonphysical thing) come see me?
I don’t think it was that simple, but I also have no answers.
In March of the following year (2010), while I was on a trip to California, my other brother, Chris (whom I call “The Healer”), and I discussed this. We thought we’d try to psychically tune into and receive information about who/what this “Silver Man” was/is. Chris came up with that “s/he/it” was some kind of entity that took an interest in my soul’s growth. S/he/it wasn’t interested in the mundane (hence the look he gave Greg—heh, heh, sorry, Greg, couldn’t resist! ;-] ), but about how I grew as an entity. I take this one step further and also believe that the being is somehow a part of me, as in a “psychic lineage” of some sort. I don’t believe in “third party” universal beings who are removed from us, just “taking an interest” in us, and peeking in from time to time “to see how we’re doing.” I don’t believe in unemotional, dispassionate, curiosity. I believe we are all tied to each other, and that we have infinitely related versions of ourselves in multiple realities or universes and we all interact. And of course we are all part of All That Is (“God” to the many of you). So, I believe there is a direct link between me and my Silver Man.
So, I’ve played with many ideas, since hearing this, but, interesting, huh? I mean, some being from the Great Beyond sat on the end of my bed as I slept in the middle of the Adirondack woods of upstate New York.
My cousin-in-law, Phil, in his book, Faith, Family, and Friends, wrote about his experience with “The Shiny People,” while dealing with a heart attack at age 37. In his book he described that after having come out of a coma while in the hospital, and while talking with his mother, he’d seen a glow behind her. “A soothing brightness,” he described it. This light came toward him. His legs and back had been hurting him—when suddenly he was pain free. As this light came to him, he also had the sense of people behind him (he was in your standard hospital room at the time). He thought himself to have been in a dream, as the colors grew vividly bright and multicolored. There were shooting star-like lights that Phil felt were prayers. The light was peaceful, and he felt a great understanding overcome him. It was like he was no longer in that hospital room….
Phil was then standing before a horizon, the bright light ahead of him, over that horizon. He saw the backs of people—only their backs—walking toward and over the horizon, into this brilliant radiance. He tried to go, but felt held back. Suddenly, he had the odd sensation of simultaneously being in his body looking out/outside his body looking in…with someone holding him in their arms (like Michelangelo’s statue, “Pieta,” he says). He was small—yet still 37 years old—and was the same size as all the others heading toward that horizon. As he watched them, he saw as they all turned shiny. The person holding him was dressed in a hooded robe, and his/her flesh and robe were the same color, a shiny pearl color that reflected all of the colors that surrounded the both of them. The colors changed as the people walked by, and the shooting-star prayers continued to fly past…“very clean and pure colors.” He was then mentally told to be patient and go back and heal, by who was holding him. He returned to his hospital room.
After I wrote the initial draft of this post last year, then left for work, I asked myself to give me some kind of clue…any information…on what or who this Silver Man was. At lunch, I stopped by a Barnes and Noble, went to the Spiritual/Metaphysical section, and allowed myself to gravitate toward one end of the bookcase. As I scanned the shelves, one book immediately caught my attention: Ultraterrestrial Contact, by Philip Imbrogno. I opened the book and immediately went to the index.
Silver Lady, 202 – 205.
I went to it. In it, paranormal researcher Ellen Guiley Rosemary describes an event that happened to her involving…a Silver Lady. She said that over a period of time, she met a tall, silver woman “dressed in flowing, glowing, silver garments” in her dreams. Their communication was nonverbal, and she kept her face turned away from her during most of their contact, but when she was finally able to look at her face it was “…an oval swirl of iridescent color like mother-of-pearl.” Mostly, they met in her dreams, but one night in 1988, she awoke at three a.m. to find her standing beside her bed. The Silver Lady appeared solid and glowed with a silvery, shimmery light. During this encounter, however, she describes having received a tremendous, nearly overpowering “download,” she called it. When it was over (when she felt she could take no more of the “download”), the Silver Lady had departed, Ellen found her bedroom window open—which she took as sign (she doesn’t spell out what this “sign” was, however; I assume nothing). She had no more experiences with this Silver Lady, whom she thought to be an angel, but in 1991, while visiting medium, Eddie Burks, she asked “Who is the Silver Lady?” Burks channeled that Ellen did not have “quite an accurate picture” of who the Silver Lady was. In the Silver Lady’s channeled words: “I am not an angel, but am of the angel realm and the human realm.” The channeled Silver Lady further said that “she” was an “intermediary” between those two realms for purposes of “interpretation.”
I love that!
No evil, end-of-world bell ringing, not an “angel,” as usually described (note Ellen did so, herself), but something else entirely. Basically, something beyond Human ken.
Whole Light Beings (added after initial post, 2/15/13)
A friend of mine sent me a short blurb of information from “The Book of Knowledge: THE KEYS OF ENOCH,” by J.J. Hurtak. She told me that it describes “Whole Light Beings,” who are described as: “Those entities of Light that exist in pure bodies of energy and travel through the universes by quanta mechanistic corpuscles of Light and move in the midst of Man by gravitational fluxline controls.” (See Key 316:30-35).
Wow. Okay.
So, what was it that my brother saw all those years ago, sitting on the edge of my bed, in the bright Adirondack moonlight? Was my Silver Man of the “angel realm and the human realm“? An interpretive intermediary?
But curiously, I also noticed another similarity between another event in my life and Ellen’s, above. When I was in air force navigator training years ago, and having issues deciding if I was going to stay or go, I had a really weird experience I’ll write about in another post, but the end result was that I had seen not one but two ghosts (at the same time), and when I awoke the next morning the door to my quarters were wide open.
Mind you, this was on a military base, and I’ve never sleepwalked. Our quarters opened into the parking lot. So, I woke up and found my quarter’s door three-quarters fully opened, and found myself looking outside into the parting lot from my bed. I later made the decision to leave navigator training (I was never good with doing numbers in my head).
I have absolutely zero memory of any of what my brother had related to me. I’ve talked with Greg more about it afterward, several times. He maintains he remembers it clear as day, and that he’d been wide awake—that, in fact, he’d had trouble sleeping that night. If I had an experience like this, I’m sure I’d also remember it clear as day and through to the present! He also mentioned that he’d thought he’d already mentioned this to me, but he hadn’t. Yeah, I’d remember that. Anyway, as much as Greg jokes around (well, he does get paid for it), he’s fast and furious in raising the “Bullshit” flag. I know no one quicker to running that flag up the flagpole than him. So, if he says he saw it…I believe him.
Until I see him poke his pointy little head around the entrance to my office.
Nope—nuthin.
Now, I know many will think, yeah…but what about hypnagogic hallucinations?
I’ve had hypnagogic hallucinations before—oh yeah, like the stark weirdness of the Silver Man, this one I remember from back in my college days living off campus. I swear I’ll remember this one until the day I die. It was of a giant, black spider the size of a person, clinging to the ceiling directly above me, while I was in bed—yeah, you bet I still remember that image—so I know things can look extremely real in the in-between world of sleep and awake life, but I also know, that those delusions I’ve had never remained for more than an instant, a flash; never more than a “beat,” as writers might say. Never moved. Yeah, I’d leapt out of bed faster than you can blink, flicked on all the lights, and checked under all the sheets, under the bed, in my shorts, you name it. Of course it’d been fake. Not really there. What my brother saw lasted more than a beat, and possessed deliberate movement. And the way my brother describes it, who my brother “is” and how I’ve seen him raise his revered Bullshit Flag over the years (as well as other “ghostly experiences” he’s related), again, I have no choice but to believe him. Was/is my Silver Man an otherworldy entity that took an interest in me? Some kind of intermediary between the mythical and corporeal? Perhaps “just” an otherworldly visitor checking out a strange little sleeping human boy? I do believe who/whatever it was/is, is not totally physical, but a mixture of physical and nonphysical attributes, given the human form, but beyond that, any guess is as good as mine, but to think something like that actually took “time” out of his/her/its “day” to spend it with me…to check me out…is really kinda cool. I do believe that we all have similar experiences, we just aren’t able to “catch” them, if you will. Or are open to them. I don’t think this is unique to just me; I believe many, if not all of us, have such visitations, but most are never made aware of them. Or we see them and immediately discount them. And, no, I do not believe the “Silver People” evil, end-of-world, or anything else negative. I’ve had a great life, yes, have even felt like “someone” has been watching over me, as far as that means anything, so I do believe these experiences are positive experiences. Others may be more fearfully predisposed, so their experiences might be more “evil” or “end of world,” but I feel that is because of one’s predisposition, not an inherent “we’re all gonna die” scenario. We all filter our lives through the filter of our beliefs. It’s unavoidable—but also necessary.
Though some of these experiences may be unrelated (but, who’s to say?), I really wanted to document them together, for others who might have similar experiences and also cannot find anything about them. Please, feel free to relate any experiences or resources you might have or come across, and thank you for stopping by and reading this rather long post!
Thanks to my brother, Greg, for sharing this with me and allowing me to post it.
And did you notice that graphic? I commissioned Zach Lin to do this for me, and what a great job he did! Mucho thanks to him for his excellent work. Please check out his site!
But…I often ponder…what is my “Silver Man” up to these days. I would really love to meet him/her/it again…consciously, this time.
Wendy Brydge says
This was a thought provoking and enjoyable post, Frank. I’m glad you wrote it. It is interesting, the different beliefs that people have regarding things such as beings from “Out There” or ghosts or anything unexplained really. I’m also always surprised at how closed-minded the majority of us are. We live in this tiny little world and somehow we think we’re the center of everything, that the entire universe revolves around us. I may have some very strong beliefs, but I’m not someone who falls prey to the dogma and musings of “the norm”. I don’t always have to be right. But I do always need proof.
I believe in ghosts. And aliens too, as I talk about in an old blog post of mine ( http://wendylovesjesus.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/ghosts-aliens-and-evolution/ ) . I know we don’t share the same belief, but we’re probably more similar than you might think. I hate when people ignore evidence because of some ingrained idea. Many are of the opinion that you can’t be a Christian and believe in this paranormal stuff at the same time, that it’s either ghosts/aliens OR God, but not both. And that’s simply ludicrous. The Bible itself supports both ghosts AND aliens.
Don’t ghosts support the idea of God? And if there are aliens out there, other beings who are living and carrying on as we are, how does that negate the existence of God? My God, Truth and Love, still made them, they don’t prove He doesn’t exist, they provide evidence that He DOES exist. It amazes me how people are willing to believe that aliens created us, but not that someone created the aliens. *Irony alert*
And I’ve had a number of experiences which backup my belief in the supernatural. I watched a cup slide across the kitchen counter once. I was alone in the house, and ten feet away from it, and it just moved right there in front of me. But the big thing for me was a little more frightening.
I woke up in the middle of the night, and I WAS awake b/c I looked at the clock and thought, “Damn. It’s going to take another 20 minutes or more for me to fall back asleep.” Normally I sleep with the covers pulled right up around my neck but this night they had slipped down, so my back was uncovered. I was lying there when suddenly a hand pressed against the back of my neck and was pulled slowly right down the center of my back. I could feel the palm and each of the fingers — and it scared the HELL out of me. Enough so that I couldn’t move. And as I lay there terrified wondering what the heck had just touched me, something that wasn’t there brushed my hair away from my face and off my neck to one side. O_o
No, just because we don’t understand something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. And it’s foolish to fluff off something because we don’t WANT to believe it. I’ve never experienced your “Silver Man”, but I’m not so self righteous that I don’t believe it’s possible.
fpdorchak says
Thanks, Wendy!
Yes, it is strange how close-minded many can be. But I wonder if maybe some of the is FEAR. Because if you were to believe something like this—or anything else “weird”—you’d have to shatter some pretty basic foundational issues that lead one to doubt and ridicule in the first place. Address long-held beliefs that are not quite correct to the presented circumstances and event s people talk about like this. Like life after death. We’re not alone (and not just applying to space aliens). There’s more to life than you see. There are “those” out there to help you. That maybe that the life you thought you’d lived all your life was a lie (hint; no life lived is a lie…and no life lived is ever wasted)? One can shout the “need for proof,” but it’s already all around us…many just choose not to see it, assimilate it, believe it. And “scientists” are people too, rife with their own personal and political agendas, rife with their own sets of belief systems. Prejudices. And much of science sets out to DISPROVE. Not investigate, but disprove. You find whatever it is you go looking for. Yet science also cannot examine much of the “ethereal,” because it’s not set up for it. You can’t measure phenomena with instruments that are not intended for it. Most-to-many of this phenomena is meant to be accessed through the human mind, not an electron microscope.
Your linked post often brought a smile to my face! Such passion! But this all falls on deaf ears for those who don’t believe in God. You don’t believe in any kind of Creator, and all you have is the trees. And that works for them. That’s their life, and they’re welcome to it. But, yes, a Creator creates everything…is Love that permeates all of Life…but I maintain we also have a huge, working, hand in it, in the nonphysical realms, and also help create our physical setting and backstage. Nonphysically. It all has to come (and go!) from somewhere: pick your belief system. :-]
I’ve had many “supernatural” experiences in my life; I’ve been my own ghost (http://fpdorchakrealitycheck.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/ghost-of-me/), experience synchronicities daily (http://fpdorchakrealitycheck.wordpress.com/2012/03/12/synchronicities-and-coincidences/), met souls from other lives (http://fpdorchakrealitycheck.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/just-thought-id-say-hi/), had weird things happen to me (http://fpdorchakrealitycheck.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/the-grape/), and have heard my name spoken with no one around me. I believe in another world beyond, behind, and woven throughout this one. What happened to you, your “mysterious touch,” is difficult to address without context. What was on your mind at the time? What were the major issues in your life? Were you going through a rough patch? A lonely one? Did a family member pass? What are “you” about? Hazarding an initial guess is that it appeared loving and caring. Once you got over the initial shock, how did that experience have you feeling afterward?
What happened to me might not happen to everyone in this life, but I believe similar instances must happen to others in other Times, other Realities. Obviously, at least that “Ellen” had her Silver Lady experience, and my in-law his “Shiny People.” I’m thankful that one of my brothers was able to glimpse this and remember it so many years later; to tell me about it. It’s neat.
And I’m glad that there are people of religion out there, like you, who do believe in that which they can’t explain. Call it the supernatural…extraterrestrial. I know of and have met others of similar persuasion, and think it’s great! We must all keep an open mind. But we all learn and grow as we must. All of our lives have meaning. Worth. And there are “many” in the background, behind the curtain of life, who are out there watching, guiding, even helping us.
Thanks for sharing, Wendy!
Wendy Brydge says
You hit the nail right on the head, Frank. Fear and the unwillingness to see what is often right in front of us is what hinders a lot of people. As you said, acknowledging and believing such things would require “unlearning” some of the most basic, ingrained ideas and long-held beliefs. And that’s one of the most difficult things to do — admit that something you believed was wrong.
You’re right, much of what science is interested in doing is disproving rather than taking a logical investigative approach and possibly making a remarkable discovery. And that is a true shame. Because I don’t believe there is much (if anything) that is truly NOT understandable, IF we’re willing to open our eyes, search for the Truth and when we find it — BELIEVE.
As a famous literary character once said, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.”
fpdorchak says
And one of my favorites: “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Thanks again, Wendy, for the comments and discussion!
Paul says
I know what character said that! Benedict Cumberbatch, right? 😉
fpdorchak says
Indubitably, man good man! :-]
Karen Albright Lin says
You’ve had such an interesting life, with so many mind-expanding experiences. And most important, you have a good attitude about it all. As you said, these things can be taken as evil but why? There’s no provable reason to believe that. I really admire your take on the unusual and unseen and unknowable. And thanks for hiring my hand-to-mouth artist son to do your graphic. Laura is very lucky to have such a generous and fun hubby. “Hi” to her by-the-way.
fpdorchak says
Why, thank you, Karen, for your most kind words!
Zach was a pleasure to interact with over the past week or so we did this! It was also fun seeing the genesis of the graphic from rough pencil sketches to what we have here. In fact, I’m going to interview him for a future Runnin Off at the Mouth post (http://fpdorchak.wordpress.com/). Maybe show the genesis from conceptual sketches to final product.
Thanks for stopping by, “Inky”! :-]
Paul says
Very interesting post, Frank. I’ve never had an experience like this, but I’ve talked with aunts, uncles and cousins who have. No one’s ever spoken of a “silver man”, but of something similar — a presence or something that felt unmistakably like a manifestation from another plane of reality. And although I haven’t encountered it personally, I believe firmly in ghosts. (I’m less certain about aliens, but refuse to dismiss them.)
To pick up on what Wendy was saying, how can anyone admit of any kind of spiritual belief (which, as a Catholic, I certainly do) and disbelieve in ghosts? Or flatly and categorically deny that alien life exists? That doesn’t mean one should give credence to every ghost or alien story there is, many of which are surely hoaxes, but being unthinkingly skeptical is as bad as being unthinkingly gullible.
You don’t have to be a fan of the Twilight Zone, as we are, to know that there are worlds beyond our world. And your silver man would appear to be evidence of that.
Thanks for sharing your story, Frank! Keep up the great posts.
fpdorchak says
Wow, how cool, Paul! It would be great if even one of them would like to visit this site and share their experiences. As to aliens, I have a bit of a different view on extraterrestrials, but I don’t want to share it, here (at least yet), because of a fiction manuscript I have that’s still making the rounds out there. But even with that, I think it’s not just a case of a prosaic “E.T.” coming to check us out. One day I do hope to go into it in far more (and entertaining!) detail!
“Skeptics”: ANYONE, I don’t care who they are, who classifies themselves as a “skeptic” are close-minded and possess a doubting attitude. In fact, that is one of the definitions of a skeptic: to possess a doubting attitude. Sure, there are other definitions that go along with that term, as in merely “doubting the validity” of something, but there’s a far cry from doubting the validity of something to one possessing a doubting attitude (I believe this definition should be the very first one in any definition of the term). I cannot think of one instance where I’d seen or heard a media-interviewed skeptic who did NOT possess an obviously inherent doubting (and abrasive) attitude. One dude comes to mind, but I’m not gonna give him any air time, he so angers me. As you say, it’s okay to doubt things, I doubt many “photos” of so-called UFOs, but I don’t doubt they exist (fascinating aside: did you know that the basic “UFO shape” goes back to 1934, and a Romanian engineer, named Henri-Marie Coandă? Check out http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/coanda.htm and http://jnaudin.free.fr/html/repcotst.htm). It’s not the SKEPTICAL mindset one really needs to correctly explore the unexplained, the weird…it’s the CURIOUS one.
Synchronicity! Now, this is funny. Given my post, as I went searching through my dictionary, the following term caught my eye, in the first few pages, looking for “skeptic”: “Silver Jenny” (say it like Forrest Gump, cause that’s where my own mind immediately went!). Stuff like this happens to me every day. Love it. :-]
Thanks for stopping by, Paul, and sharing. Because, if we’re open to it, if we’re open-minded, every day…can be like The Twilight Zone…. ;-]
Paul says
You’re welcome, Frank! Yes, we should never close our minds entirely, but instead remain open to greater possibilities. I appreciate the links.
*looks at your last sentence* Those ellipses are so crucial. 🙂
fpdorchak says
I’m an optimist….
fpdorchak says
BTW, when I said that much of science sets out to disprove, I meant with *weird phenomena*. Science is great at looking at things within its Weltanschauung, but go outside it, and then it gets all funky….