Going Down Slow
Dream of Death – 1 It’s not what he expected, this dying. It’s taking longer than he thought, for one thing. He’s more familiar with faster ways to die: like the abrupt heart attack that felled his father like a tree; or the fever that took his mother within a week; or the rogue bullet that claimed a classmate’s future one hunting season. But this. They saved him from a massive coronary death, yes–but just so he could go down slow, taking months. Not that he is complaining about the extra time. It’s just not what he expected. And something else he didn’t expect, since after all it’s his heart giving out, is how his mind is unraveling. It started with the forgetting. He’d be chugging along a thought, maybe trying to say something, and...
Read MoreA Second Chance Life
I am happy to announce the publication of my psi fiction novel “A Second Chance Life,” available at http://www.thirdplacebooks.com/second-chance-life-teresa-hayden Twenty-six year-old Jude has had strange and deeply disturbing experiences since childhood: talking raccoons, prescient crows, and visions predicting the deaths of people he knows. Only an undemanding job, rock climbing, and a new girlfriend every few months can keep the weirdness at bay. He meets Sara, a grad student in counseling who has an intense interest in studying ESP, especially telepathy. They are drawn to each other, but Jude is afraid to reveal his premonitions, and Sara, who’s been unlucky in love, is wary of his evasiveness. They go their separate ways, though each...
Read MoreTelepathy Goes to the Dogs
Telepathy: “The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas between minds by means other than the known senses.” (Stevenson, A. & Lindberg, C.A. (Eds.), (2010). New Oxford American Dictionary, 3rd Edition). New York, N.Y: Oxford University Press, Inc.) Almost all dog owners believe that dogs have minds, and are not just machines driven by instinct. During the last century, academic psychologists have caught up with that conventional wisdom. The strict behaviorist theories of the 1920s-1960s ignored the mental determinants of animal behavior, but have been supplanted by cognitive theories. These cognitive theories include mental constructs such as expectancies, values, intentions and the like to best explain why animals do what they do. (Zentall, T.R....
Read MoreThe Mission
Army K-9 kennel, Monterey,California: 1957 Joe crept past the pen where Lady was kept, signaling her to keep silent. Since his retirement a week before, he had no authorization to be on the premises of the Army kennel, certainly not at 0245 hours. He could smell the faint, acrid scent of his own fear along with the stronger, almost skunky odor of dog urine. But he knew, in spite of the churning cramps in his stomach, what he had to do. Without a doubt, Lady was telepathic. The ESP experiments were proof. It made sense that some of the pups in her litter had the ability, too. He knew the Army suspected as much, and he knew how they operated They could go to any lengths. A puppy could be brutally injured to find out if it would mentally “call” another...
Read MoreTime in the Desert: Memory Mirages
In my novel, A Second Chance Life, Sara is telling Jude about a dream she’d recently had: “I dreamt about the summer I drove across the desert from California to Utah, to my first job. In my dream I was me, now—well, maybe (in my forties), because Casey was with me. We were driving on a two-lane highway across the Nevada desert when we saw a young woman walking on the shoulder. We stopped to see if we could help her and it was me. Me, as a young woman, walking on the road.” Jude nodded, looking thoughtful. “But Jude, the really weird part is that the whole thing really happened twenty-seven years ago. As I remember it, a couple picked me up when I ran out of gas on my way to Salt Lake. The woman had on a big sunhat tied with a scarf...
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