Category: Nonfiction Stories

I’m watching a movie about a witch. Two guards walk her barefoot through mud to the gallows, yuck! When the hangman is putting the rope around her neck, she helps him by casually pulling her hair back out of the way of the rope. I didn’t believe that part. Why would a witch about to be hung to death, and probably scared and angry, obligingly pull her hair out of the way of the rope and be so nonchalant about it? And why wouldn’t the hangman do it? Unrealistic!

Then, like in other witch movies, she does the curse thing before swinging from the rope, cursing up a storm against God knows how many generations of her enemies. However she goes on and on ad nauseam. Not believable. Why would the hangman let the witch get on the soap box for all that time? I mean, she goes into a long monologue that sounds as fake as a long-winded, lying, two-faced politician.

Yeah, I know it’s just a movie. But, Damn!, make it at least a little realistic. And by all means don’t spend a lot of time filming the witch’s dirty feet as she walks through the sloppy mud. Disgusting!

Bob Boyd

I was six or seven years old and taking swimming lessons at a community pool and when I was out of the pool standing in front of the swings, I felt a soft tap on my back. I turned around and saw a cute, red-haired girl my age smiling at me.

I was too young for boy girl romantic feelings and the power of flirtations back then, but something in me besides my back was touched. I think it was a budding romantic heart.
Before any words were spoken, the red-haired girl’s mother took her hand and walked away with her while she was looking back at me smiling.

I never saw that red-haired girl again, but, curiously, I think about her now and then even as an old man. I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d met her again when she and I were old enough to fall in love, and I feel that would have happened.

I wonder how her life turned out. Did she have a full and happy life? Is she still alive? What was her name? But, alas, I’ll never find out any of those things. Sometimes in overly imaginative moments, I’ve wondered if I’ll see her again in the afterlife.

Maybe she’ll be there as a beautiful, red-haired woman and tap me softly on my back, and I’ll turn around and fall in love with her. And for reasons unclear to me, I got a little teary-eyed writing this story.

Bob Boyd

On April 17, 1976 Owlman made his frightening debut.
Two young girls, Vicky and June Melling, saw him hovering
above a church in a village in Mawnan, England.And they
described him as a feathered-bird man. It had pointed ears,
glowing red eyes and large crab claws for feet.

It was seen again on July 3 by two other young girls, Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry. Big as a man with glowing eyes and pincer-like claws. Sparse sightings of Owlman in and around that village church continued through the 70s, 80s and 90s.

In June of 2020 a husband and wife said while driving on Kirchoff Road in Rolling Meadows, Illinois USA, they saw a creature as big as an SUV with large massive wings they described as an owl man.

Now I’m not a believer in an Owlman, but I find these stories fascinating and a fun distraction from the routines of everyday life. Of course, it might be that cryptids like Owlman are real and appear and disappear in dimensions inaccessible to us. Bigfoot, for example, could be an interdimensional creature when hunters who allege to have seen him say when they shot at him he vanished.

Cryptids, real or unreal, monsters or imaginations, I’ve never seen any of them. I’ve seen enough monsters among men.

Bob Boyd

Decades ago heard a song about not letting the sun catch you crying. Why not? Wouldn’t the heat of the sun dry your tears, and I don’t think it would care one way or the other if you were crying. Did that song mean it would be better to have the moon catch you crying when many people and werewolves go bonkers when the moon is full? I truly doubt that. But what if I was crying then?

Would the tears turn into craziness and cause me to do something totally irrational like trying to fly off a tall building, like some deluded bird man? Or, does the sun have a problem with overly sentimental people who for human reasons cry now and then. Is it some kind of solar condition that makes the sun allergic to tears?

Or is the sun so sentimental that it would cry too if it caught you crying. Is the sun that sensitive, that thin skinned, like some people have skin sensitive to the sun? If I wrote that song, I’d be more concerned about the moon catching people crying, especially a full moon for aforementioned reasons.

Bob Boyd

I like Chinese dragons. Unlike western dragons, they’re usually seen as benevolent and bringers of good fortune. I hate how in the west dragons are seen as malevolent monsters one has to destroy. I like how I once read that Chinese emperors were “the descendants of dragons.” That is powerful and honorable, in my opinion.

Imagine if on some unseeable level that were true. Imagine if in realms beyond our vision and comprehension in some way along with human conception there were really the descendants of dragons. Sure it’s mythical, but I like the thought of believing it is true. I also like that Chinese emperors wore dragon robes.

I like how there are different meanings for different colors of Chinese dragons. For example, white, “purity and the cycle of life.” Red, “luck and good fortune.” The Chinese take dragon lore a lot further. I like how in 8th century Chinese poetry I’ve seen dragons included in some of the poems.

And speaking of 8th century Chinese poetry, it’s my favorite kind of poetry. And if there’s an afterlife, I’d like to meet Li Po and Du Fu there and learn how to write better poems from them – and maybe ride dragons with them in search of pearls of wisdom and enlightenment.

Bob Boyd

Riding in a car with a friend back in 63. He’s driving. I’m riding shotgun. We’re both 16, hormones galore, bursting with testosterone. A hot girl our age, blonde and built, sexy as a cat in heat, was thumbing a ride. My friend gave her a lift. She hopped into the front seat and snuggled up next to me. She looked into my eyes with her beautiful blue eyes, smiled, touched my leg and called me chicken.

The message was clear, an SOS for sex. But despite my hormones galore and bursting testosterone, I wasn’t enticed, not even a little. She was drunk on her ass, fuming with alcohol, and I was repelled. Don’t get me wrong, as achingly beautiful as she was, as good as she looked, if I’d met her under sober circumstances, I would have been totally enamored. I would have felt blessed by the angels above. I would have wanted to be with her forever and ever.

Now some would say I missed an easy opportunity to savor her ample goods. But despite my 16 years of age and all the testosterone, IT WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN RIGHT. To me it would have been like rape, since she was not in control of her mental faculties. And to me to have sex with a drunk or drugged out woman is criminal, unconscionable, and evil as hell.

Here’s where this true story took an unexpected twist. When we arrived at her destination and she got out of the car, she thanked me for not taking advantage of her, which blew my mind. I hadn’t expected that after all her seduction attempts. But it felt good that she was grateful for my respectful and gentlemanly treatment of her.

And that was one of the few things I did right in my wild and wasted, screwed up teenage years. And that’s why I remember it to this day.

Bob Boyd

We might be from countries that are considered enemies, but I don’t think most of us are much different. I think we want the same things, happiness and a peaceful life. For example, Russia is considered an enemy of my county, the United States, and my country is considered an enemy of Russia.

But when I see Russian people in many YouTube videos they are not like enemies to me. I see them as good, often fun, people, not really different from me. And I feel person to person we could harmoniously coexist without being enemies, as long as neither of us was too brainwashed to think the other was evil because of the countries we’re from.

I feel this is the same with countries all over the world. Despite all the dueling dogmas, people just want to be happy and get along instead of fighting and dying or being blown to bits by nuclear bombs.

And it’s a crying shame the leaders of so-called enemy countries don’t seem to think the same way. If they did, we could have a better world with more peace and happiness and less hate and no more insane wars.

Bob Boyd

They met when she was 16 and he was 19 and married 2 years later. They stayed married for 30 years. Both were deeply religious. The husband was a detective, a deacon at his church, and part of a missionary program with his church that helped people locally and internationally. She was a stay at home mother and active in the church.

Their marriage ended with a bullet in her head, her body on the floor of a room in her home – dead. The husband claimed suicide, said she’d been depressed and they’d had arguments about retirement plans and about selling a house that needed a lot of upkeep. She wanted to keep it. He wanted to sell it. He wanted to travel in retirement. She wanted to stay close to her family.

He had been secretly communicating with a woman he met through a church mission who lived far away. He claimed they had only kissed, but both had proclaimed their love for each other and were anxious to be together. The woman told her husband, who was unaware of her detective lover, that she wanted a divorce.

He had been googling ways to kill his wife and the forensics proved his wife’s death was not a suicide. You already know the rest of the story: life imprisonment for the husband who shot his wife of 30 years to death.

Bob Boyd

In the Philippines cats get no respect, never pampered unlike in the US. No cat hospitals, probably no cat vets. Feral street cats no one there wants; they leap from roof to roof on one story Philippines houses, a racket on the roofs, and scrounge for food wherever they can find it. Theirs is a hard luck life.

Once as a dumb and foolish experiment, I hissed at one to see how he’d respond. Big mistake. Regretted it. Cat took offense. Every time he saw me after that, his eyes glared, his teeth bared, and he hissed at me, an enemy.

My conscious guilty, I really felt bad for teasing that poor cat. I should have been better than that. I began bringing him food to atone for my offense. Six meals later, friends at last.

Bob Boyd

My friend Tom attended a three month meditation residence course where he meditated up to 12 times daily for 20 minutes, each meditation session preceded by and followed by a pranayama (an alternate nostril breathing exercise) and a few hatha yoga poses.

About a month into the course, he called me. Instead of being at the residence course, he was at an Emergency Room. He said he had won a duel with Satan and that he had attained cosmic consciousness. He also said he could look me in the eyes and take me to cosmic consciousness.

As he talked on, his words became more erratic and he said crazier things. Sadly, I could see by his words that he had had a break with reality. He was sent to a psychiatric ward and stayed there for a couple of weeks. I saw him after that. It seemed his sanity was restored. He said he hadn’t had a breakdown. He had a breakthrough. And there may have been a kernel of truth to that. Perhaps with a break with reality ordinarily closed doors might open for some with profound insights or glimpses of cosmic consciousness. But based on my conversations with Tom, I don’t think he really gained any profound insights or glimpses of cosmic consciousness.

For the rest of the time I knew Tom, he bounced in and out of psych wards. I lost touch with him decades ago, but his break with reality is clear in my memory. It’s an indication of how even with meditation, like with most things, moderation is necessary. And it’s important to know that just as with drugs, you can overdose with meditation.

Bob Boyd

He went to the Emergency Room with what he thought would be a routine problem waiting for a few hours, seen for a few minutes and back home. But to his astonishment, he was tested with instruments and machines and told he was staying there; they’d get him a hospital room when one was available.

They gave him more and more tests and blood drawn constantly. He felt like a rat in a lab. Then came the diagnosis, a blood cancer.

How the hell is this happening?, he thought. I’m Mister perfect health. I’m Mister don’t eat red meat, and with no cancer in my family and have worked out for decades. Yet there he was diagnosed with a blood cancer that was trying to kill him. It seemed impossible that something that only happened to others had happened to him. It seemed impossible that the cancer he was sure he’d never get had invaded and weakened him and was intent on killing him.

It took months of infusions and medications. For a while it looked like he was going to be doomed when the infusions and medications were not killing the cancer. And his cancer doctor was having difficulty in finding the right combination of treatments to put it in remission.

Then his doctor sent him to another cancer doctor for her suggestions. He returned with the outline for a new treatment, and ever so gradually, the cancer began losing its death grip on him. More months of different infusions, a new medication, and eventually he was cancer free, sort of like being reborn with a second chance at living.

And he’s been that way for three years and kind of grateful he had the cancer. He derived enormous personal and spiritual growth from it and an appreciation for the medical field and the loss of his fear of going to doctors. And his hard-won battle against the cancer became like a happy ending. And should the cancer return, he’s perfectly okay with that. So far so good, no symptoms, no cancer.

Bob Boyd

She was a veterinarian loved by those whose animals she healed. She seemed like a good person with no infamy in her. Somehow her path crossed with an arrogant doctor who thought he was a handsome lady’s man and a great doctor. But his conceit was his mirage. He wasn’t what he thought himself to be. He was far worse.

The veterinarian saw through him when they first met. Inexplicably, she began going out with him anyway. Maybe she liked bad boys. Maybe she thought she could change him. He also had a court case pending for stalking and harassing an ex-girlfriend.

The veterinarian was involved in a heated custody battle with an ex-husband for their two children. The doctor somehow talked her into a diabolic solution for winning custody of her kids. He talked her into hiring a hitman to kill her husband and his ex-girlfriend.

Unbelievably, the veterinarian agreed to hire a hitman. Why this woman oved by her clientele had agreed to hire a hitman to murder her husband is a mystery. Perhaps the doctor exercised something akin to a hypnotic power over her.

She found a hitman somehow, maybe online. She and the doctor met with him, exchanged some money for the murders. Then, as often is the case, the hitman was a cop posing as a hitman and the veterinarian and the doctor were arrested.

After she was released on bail, the veterinarian climbed up a tall building and jumped off it to her death. I believe if her path had never crossed with that evil doctor, she never would have done anything criminal. But, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she was a psychopath at heart.

Bob Boyd

I once read there are over 75,000 alleged sightings of Bigfoot. That begs the question: could all these people be liars? That begs the question: could all these people be mistaken? If you look deeply enough into this Bigfoot fascination, you will find some scientists and many people with impressive credentials who believe Bigfoot exists.

I’ve always though all the Bigfoot talk was nonsense, pranks and foolishness that only fools would believe. But after listening to various accounts by credible people, I’m open to the idea that Bigfoot may be real. He may be real, in my opinion and that of others, if Bigfoot is interdimensional, which would explain why after all the alleged sightings no definitive proof exists since, according to many sightings, he can appear and disappear at will, suggesting he may live one or more dimensions.

Another theory is he’s like a puppet that aliens drop on this earth for unknown scientific purposes and bring him back up to UFOs to examine what he discovered inside his receptor brain.

Maybe Bigfoot isn’t real. Maybe none of the theories are true, but these Bigfoot speculations fascinate me just the same.

Bob Boyd

After spiritual energy awakened in me from the base of my spine to the crown of my head, I could feel the spiritual energy emanating out of highly evolved or enlightened beings in their photos, their videos, their written and spoken words.

This wasn’t a psychic power. I couldn’t do anything with it except perceive the energy like a receiver.

Once I was reading a book by a powerful spiritual master who was a Sanskrit scholar and an MD and whose path primarily consisted of a practice called Nada Yoga where you would meditate on the sounds in your head seeking enlightenment via the sound currents.

I was feeling his potent energy emanating out of the book, and all of a sudden a ringing in my ears accompanied the flow of energy, like an unexpected initiation into the spiritual master’s path.

I found the ringing disturbing, and it was unrelenting. I contacted the spiritual master for help with it.

He told me to come see him in upstate New York. I arrived at his ashram a day later and felt the pervasive abundance of spiritual energy that flowed from his powerful presence.

This spiritual energy was so powerful and pervasive that practically anyone would feel it, as is the case with enlightened spiritual masters or highly evolved adepts. They are like powerhouses of radiant, spiritual energy.

The spiritual master initiated me with a fire ceremony. I was amazed at how high staring at the fire made me. I’d read of yogis meditating on candles, but I never thought staring at fire could have such a potent effect.

After the fire ceremony, the spiritual master pulled a small stick out of his robe and tapped me on the head with it. And WOW! my consciousness was amped up a hundredth fold and I was spiritually higher than ever in my life.

The supercharged state was the result of a shaktipat where a guru by the touch of his hand transmits some of his energy reservoir into your consciousness like a small tuning fork being supercharged by a bigger tuning fork’s more powerful vibration.

I remained in the elevated state of consciousness on my drive home and throughout the night. It lasted for about eight hours.

The next day the ringing was gone.

Bob Boyd

Miranda had been getting lonely despite having a great job and many friends because she lacked a romantic partner. She explored Tinder seeking a girlfriend. She met a woman her age named Aubrey who seemed like an ideal match for her.

They met in person, enjoyed each other’s company, and arranged a date. On their first date, Miranda began having feelings for Aubrey, and they made a second date after which Miranda mysteriously vanished.

Aubrey had taken Miranda to her apartment that she shared with an evil man who identified as a vampire and was the leader of a small cult of three women he controlled, ravished, and called witches. But when the three women learned he was going to find a woman to kill for the sheer pleasure of it, shocked, they ran away from him. They didn’t want to be a part of something that evil and knew he meant what he said.

Tragically, Miranda became that woman. Aubrey and her boyfriend battered her and strangled her to death. They hacked her body into pieces and stuffed her body parts in garbage bags they dumped in a remote location.

Partly by luck, mostly by good detective work, the police caught the two killers a few weeks into their investigation. One is on death row. The other is in prison for life. And it’s a goddamn shame Miranda got murdered simply because she was looking for someone to love and be loved by. And it’s a goddamn shame we live in a world where many women are murdered and so much evil flourishes.

Bob Boyd