Just ask my children: I’m the wet blanket scientist always spoiling conversations. What’s my Zodiac sign? Give me a break. Health food remedies? Show me the proof. Loch Ness Monster? More like Loch Ness Nonsense.

Science is a cruel master who demands a cold heart devoid of emotion and to paraphrase someone out of my demographic, “All we want are the facts ma’am.”

But, in honor of this spooky month, if I tell you about two experiences that with all my scientific knowledge I can’t explain, you can take my stories to the bank.

A TALE OF TELEPATHY

It was morning on July 13, 2016. I was answering emails when I clearly heard my daughter Mary calling “Dad” in my head, and as clearly as if she was in the room. Mary can sound like my wife or my other daughter Megan, so I thought of calling Megan, but first wanted to check to see if Helen was still at home.

Our self-built log home is well insulated from outside sounds, but I might hear someone if they were at the front door. I quickly checked the front door, then the garage to see if my wife hadn’t left yet. No one was at the front door and the garage was empty. My wife Helen had indeed gone shopping.

I was still in my pajamas, but concerned enough to go outside and walk around the house looking for Mary. I didn’t see anyone. I walked out to the mailbox and looked up and down the street. Then I saw and heard Mary call out from way down the street.

Mary walked her dog Bella by our house every day, but this time she was struggling with a second dog she had found lost and cold. I didn’t know about this dog, or that she needed help. I just heard her earlier call “Dad”. I hurried inside, got dressed, and helped her walk both dogs.

Along the way, she told me that while she was trying to secure the lost dog, she thought, “Dad l really need help”, but with two dogs going every which way she didn’t even try to reach the front door. She is adamant that she never called my name out loud and even if she did, I could not have heard her from as far away as the mailbox.

I never would have gone outside in my pajamas (not too attractive) unless l clearly heard her call my name. I was 71 years old and this is the first time this telepathy has happened to me. The odds of random firing of neurons in my brain causing me to hear Mary call my name, just when she was outside and needed help, are astronomically small. The more sensible answer is that, in a way not yet understood, she transmitted her thoughts to my brain.

Our brains do transmit electromagnetic waves (radio waves, light, and radar among others are such waves). Simple thought waves have been digitized, sent by the net, and inserted into another brain. However, in this case, sensors are held tight to the head. There is no known way of sensing “brain waves” even close to the head as their strength is too small for any detectors we have. A religious phenomenon? Not likely, as many children desperately needing immediate help, never are heard by parents in the next room. Supernatural? Every phenomenon, eclipses, comets were considered supernatural until rational explanations were discovered. Magic? Don’t try my patience.

It is well established that our unconscious processes can do amazing tasks. Certainly my unconscious was implicit in hearing Mary’s call for help, as I was not aware of her blight and not even thinking of her. However, if our unconscious brain can receive telepathy, we can also do it consciously, perhaps by just “letting go” in a way we don’t now understand? The question I now want to answer is not if telepathy is possible, but how it happens.

CAN’T ACCOUNT FOR GHOSTS

I occasionally worked late at Young’s Flower and Gifts in Enumclaw doing accounting while my wife and daughter went home. Young’s was in an old building, but not an especially creepy one.

Since old buildings don’t scare me, as I don’t believe in ghosts, I had turned most of the lights out while I worked. The back of the store. where we stored extra product, was dark. It also had a back stairway to the upstairs apartment doubling as a fire escape.

I was concentrating on my accounting, but suddenly, the hair went up on the back of my neck, and I had the inescapable feeling that something or someone was watching me. I never have had that happen before or after that night.

I quickly turned on the lights at the back of the store. The door was locked, the stairway was empty, and I carefully looked up and down all the shelves. Nothing was amiss.

Turning all the lights on in the store, I tried to go back to my accounting. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wasn’t the only presence in the store.

The feeling kept building. I tried to control it by using my good scientific brain, but I eventually panicked, rushed to put on my coat, and flew out the door.

What happened? You tell me.