Owens History 05

Owens History 05

Okay. So they invited me over several times to make spirits, make noises in the room, to answer yes or no, raps, which happened, or things of that sort. But one night I got there, and Dr. Ryan surprised me. He says, Ted, we're going to change it tonight. He says, I'm propping these scissors up on this table. Well, you know all this. I've explained it to you before. And he says, what I want you to do is try to make the scissors fall down. And I'd never tried anything like that in my life. And frankly, I just thought he was a bit dotty, because I didn't know too much about all this at that time. I was crazy about it. I loved it. Read about it, Paul. But I'm just getting interested.

So anyway. Well, let's backtrack a bit. The séances, there was stuff happening there? Oh, yeah. What sort of things then? Well, I would call on it would be Dr. Ryan and Louie and a couple of other scientists there, Betty Humphries and Betty Mack, Betty Mack by hand, who were studying together. Their degree in parasitology. Anyway, I remember one night, you know, I said, is there any spirits around? Oh, you come in now and signal to us here. Let us know. Did you go into a trance? Oh, no. No, I didn't go into any trance. Uh-huh. No. What I was, I was telepathic. Mm-hmm. Now I know that. I didn't know that then. Okay, well, anyway, so suddenly there's this big flame. And I said, fine, all right, then once for yes and twice for no, all right?

There was another great big whang. And we went on like that for about 15, 20 minutes or half an hour. And you'd get one whang or two whangs and answer the questions I'd ask. Well, that was one night. And I forget, we got some results on some other night. I forget now what they were. But that was what to do with that. Right. You're talking about psychokinesis, but now back in New Caledonia, I invented a system of reading people's minds. It just came to me. First thing that happened, I found this book, The Law of Psychic Phenomena, by Dr. J. Hudson in the library, and that just lit me up like a light bulb. And for reading that, I'd go up and sit on top of this mountain where there wasn't anybody isolated, and read this book.

The idea just came to me in a flash of how to read somebody's mind. So I had to put it to the test, so I hurried back down to the base and began doing it, and sure enough, sure enough, for instance, one man, I used mostly officers, and I'd get written affirmation, confirmation from them. One man said, 'all right', I told him, I said, 'picture an object in your mind, any object in the world, let me know what it is'. Something had given me this system. I was using a system. The system was this. That man, the officer, sat across the card table from me, looked up at a light in the ceiling, and he had to do that.

Now, I would look at him, and between his eyes and the light, I would see two towers with lightning going towards each other and an object slowly taking form between those bolts of lightning. Well, for instance, this one officer, I saw a streetcar take form. So I wrote down 'streetcar' on my pad and drew a picture of it. And I said to the officer, 'all right', now, I said, 'what were you thinking about?' Well, he said, I'm from San Francisco. And I was thinking of the trolleys that go up the sides of the streets in San Francisco. And I flipped the pad over and there it was. So it was beautiful. And I wrote to Dr. Ryan from there.

And then he, at that point, while I was on New Caledonia, wrote to me and told me after the war, get down to Duke, he wanted to work with me there. And he told me how to solidify the controls around that, which I did, and then the officers continued to do the experiments, and I was continually successful, and sent Dr. Ryan the results, total results on the whole thing. But, so I was in a lot there. And so that's how you happened to go to Duke after the war? Yeah, right. When I got back, I was discharged from the Navy, I got back to And I loved this sort of thing, the paranormal. I just remembered that Dr. Ryan had told me, and my Aunt Eva just happened to be there visiting from New York.

And I mentioned to her that Dr. Ryan had written out the Pacific Invasion. Oh, well, she says, Ted, for heaven's sakes, you get on the telephone, call him along, just as right now. And I did. He says, well, this is an amazing thing, he said, Ryan. It's amazing, he said. She either quit or died just last week. But I don't have a secretary. And he said, I'm writing a book right now called The Reach of the Mind. And he said, I need help. And he said, you're a court reporter. I said, that's right. Well, he said, well, can you come on down? I said, I'll be right down. So Eva gave him the money off the bus and got right down there.

And I worked night and day with him to get that book out called The Reach of the Mind. William Sloan and Associates published it. And you did all the secretarial work on that book. Yeah, right. And it was a horrible job. And he got mad and wouldn't give me a credit in it. He thanked everybody else but me in the book because I had worked for weeks and weeks, night and day, for him. And he wouldn't give me any extra money or anything. And I brought it up to him and made him furious that I would ask for any extra money. You mean he paid you for eight hours a day and you were working more than that? Oh, 12, 14 hours a day. I see.

As a matter of fact, the rest of the staff bailed him out. They ignored him. They actually bailed him out in front of me for overworking me. When you said it was a horrible job, did that mean that you did a bad job? Oh, no, I did an excellent job. Oh, hell no, I did a fine job. I see. Of getting the material and typing it up for him and making the corrections, you know, as he corrected them. So essentially what you were doing was the typing. Oh, yeah, the typing. I was taking a shorthand, also transcribing it from these wax cylinders, old-timey wax cylinder deals. I don't imagine you ever saw one. No, I don't know. Yeah, that's before they had good tape machines and all that.

But anyway, so that was that. Well, how long did you work for Ryan? Ryan's secretary? I don't know. I don't remember how long it was. I really don't recall how long. It was quite a long while. And then came time for school, and he asked me why I didn't become a student. And I said, well, I made money. I made a cross-up fortune to go here. He says, you got the GI Bill. He says, we'll get it fixed up. So actually, he was instrumental in getting me in. Uh-huh. And then when you were a student, did you continue to work with him? Oh, yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah.

One of my jobs, for instance, would be a certain hour of the day to sit down and study a page of a magazine and send the pictures on it to the psychiatrist of South Africa who would be trying to pick it up. You would be the telepathic sender. Yeah, I'm the sender and he's the receiver. Yeah, and stuff like that. Dr. Ryan set up these experiments, you know. Or I'd come in and he'd say, 'Ted, I've got four coins put in the corner of the rug here. Can you tell me which coin's under which corner?' Or he'd ask me, one day he'd ask me to make a flop. Here in his buttonhole. I thought he was going crazy. Things like that. Or he'd come and tell me, 'Hey, Ted, I've lost my pearl-handled pocket knife.

I've lost it. Where is it? Can you tell me?' Things like that. He's got a hell of a wonderful personality. He'll charm the birds right out of the trees. But you put him in a classroom teaching, and everybody goes to sleep. So you developed quite a relationship with Ryan. Oh, hell. In the first place, he was almost a spitting image of my dad. My dad and I were real buddies. Or pals. And on top of it, Ryan was kind, understanding. He was petulant in some little ways, but what the hell. But he had character. He was fun to be with. All right, all right, all right. I hadn't been there a week, huh? I just got down to Ryan. I hadn't been there a week, okay? He says, Ted, I want you to.

He said, we're not going to work this afternoon here on the East Campus. We're going on a picnic. He said, have you got a bathing suit? Here on the East Campus? Yeah, I do. The West Campus is the men's campus. I see. We had our lab on the East Campus, the girls' campus. As a matter of fact, I got, I was a lucky break. I got to go in the dining room and meet with the girls. Okay, so he takes me on a picnic that afternoon. And we go to a swimming place. There's a swimming hole in the river. And Louie made all these sandwiches, and he's got his little kids with him, Ryan. He's got his little kids, about four of them.

And we go there, and Ryan and I undress, put on our bathing suits, go out to swim. And after that, Ryan gets his squeeze box, what he calls things, not accordion, but it's a little round thing-concertina. He loved to play the concertina. And he and the kids and Louie would sing all these, these uh hillbilly songs well you see you get to see that side on it yeah and yeah we got we got to be awful close uh i'd run into him at night running down after one of my dates i'd meet Ryan running down the street in his shirt in his shirt and in zero weather i remember one night i took my coat off put it around i said here boss i said you you go you need this worse than i do i said you you're more viable you take this thing what but i go over and He'd tell me, he said, Ted, why don't you come over and have dinner with us tonight?

You're pretty lonely down here by yourself. And I'd go that night, you know, and eat at the table with Louie and Dr. Ryan, JP we called them, and kids. It was wonderful. Helped him paint his house. Oh, Hank. I got a set of drums, and Louie says, 'Why don't you bring the drums over to my big living room? You can practice there.' And she told me, she says, 'Ted, if you have any dates, you don't have any place to take the dates?' She said, 'Most of these kids have got cars. You don't have a car. You don't have any place to take your girlfriends. Bring them over. You can sit in our parlor. Bring your date over.' This is how wonderful they were. But anyway. And it was at that time that you became sort of conscious of the fact that you had psychokinetic abilities of your own. Yeah. See, because I remember one night in particular, I was sitting there studying in this little room. I read it. And I noticed a handkerchief on the table to my left. By itself. The next morning, when I woke up, I was wide awake and my bed, the foot of my bed was about two or three feet up in the air.

Odd things going on that were certainly paranormal. I couldn't figure out what was causing them. I'd go on dates, and my girl and I would be sitting on the couch and the TV picture would go off and the sound would go off and come back on again. This happens here where I am every day. Different channels, different programs. Off I go to sound, and they'll say, please, Dad, make your mind quiet so we can get the picture back. Well, really. And that started happening when you were at Duke. Yeah, at Duke. I walked down the side. I walked down the street, and at Duke it had rows of these big night lights on both sides of the street. Well, the side I'd walk down, all the lights would go off.

The lights on the other side stay on. How long did they stay off, or did they just flash off? No, they'd stay off. And I called up my girl once at a sorority house, and she says, 'Ted, my God,' she said, 'the minute you called up over here, she said, all the lights of the sorority house are going out, all the power's going out over here.' This was what went on all the time. And Louie was so struck by me to someday get my electric potential checked. There might be something there. And I'd go on dates, and girls' earrings would disappear off their ears. One girl, when I'd take them to movies, and their pens and pencils would disappear out of their purse. And one girl went into a movie with tight gloves on.

She came out of the movie, the gloves were gone, and she hadn't taken them off. So things were disappearing. Disappearing. Disappearing, and it was so marked. And JB couldn't figure out now, is Ted doing this subconsciously? Is he stealing these things? Could he get earrings off a girl's ears without their knowing it? Or is it a phenomenon? So they began sending a team with me. Whenever I'd have a date, this team would go with me. This other guy and girl would observe. And the phenomenon kept happening with the team right there by our side. So it was still happening.

Of expensive pins, and a few weeks ago they all disappeared. I mean, it's vanished. Did this stuff happen before you were at Duke? No. It started then? Yeah, it started then. Ted, I think that probably what we've gone over so far is real good for a first introductory chapter. I don't think I want too much more information right now. All right. Well, neglect your old work now for this, because it's very important until you get your, you know. I know. You know, I'm really in a bind. I know. And it must be awfully difficult for you to take any time out whatsoever for anything else. Well, I figure I'm going to work real hard, get this stuff done in the next week, or maybe ten days or so, and then I've got to get back to my dissertation.

Right. But I just want to get it done now so I can get it to the publisher before I go back to my other work. Well, I'll tell you one thing. You are one terrific writer. In a tough medium, which is your scientific medium. It's one of the hardest mediums. Okay. So, hope you have a good day. Oh, I told you about President Carter today. President Carter? Yeah, yeah, that's right; when he made his State of the Union. No, no, no.