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I guess they carried on until late that night. I fell asleep, woke up the next morning, came staggering into the kitchen in time to see them eating up more of my groceries in the form of breakfast at this time. I sat down, got a half cup of coffee into me and straightened up the table. Alexis looked at me and said, "What's with you?" I said, "I think last night I might have actually had a classic example of the O.B.E." That's the out-of-body experience. It means that somehow you find yourself out of your body and looking down on it or from a distance. Alexis looked at me and said, "Sure. You?" I said, "Yes, I have to be honest. It appears to me as if I did undergo such an experience."

"OK, give us a description," they replied. The two magicians at the table leaned closer over their bacon and eggs and wanted to hear what I had to say. "Well, I remember waking up in the middle of the night - I couldn't get to sleep at first because I was so tired, so I turned on the television. The program went on and on and I eventually fell asleep. I remember waking up in the middle of the night, and I felt that I was spread-eagled against the ceiling of my bedroom, looking down at the bed. Alice, my black cat, was curled up in a ball in the exact center of the bed so that I had to be way over to one side. And I was, of course, trying not to disturb the cat! As I was up against the ceiling I noticed that the room was lit in sort of a grayish light. I looked down toward the television set and saw nothing but static on the screen and heard nothing but white noise. What I saw was startling. I saw myself, in bed, scrunched over to one side, a chartreuse bedspread on it, with Alice the cat in the middle. I noted that as she opened her eyes they were green. It almost looked like two holes punched through her head. She looked at me and went, 'hmmph' and went right back to sleep."

Now that was a very strong experience for me. I really believed, from the evidence presented to me, that I had an out-of-body experience that matches the description that we've all heard about so many times. But, fortunately for me, I'm not really dead-set against having my belief structure disturbed or having new facts come in that would disturb my previous convictions. And, fortunately, I am able to tell you what actually happened. Alexis looked at me and said, "I've got two things to show you." He went to the foot of the stairs and came up with a big, transparent laundry bag. He had taken it half way down to the laundry room. He brought it all the way up the stairs, and inside noted sheets, pillowcases, and the chartreuse bedspread. He said, "That's been there since yesterday." The bedspread hadn't been on the bed last night! I dashed to the bedroom door, looked in, and the spread I used when the other one was in the laundry lay on the bed. They looked nothing alike. Alexis then called my attention to the patio, noting that he had put Alice outside yesterday afternoon because one of the magician guests was highly allergic to cats. She had remained outside, very unhappily, through the night and into this morning. She could not have been curled up in the middle of the bed last night.

It was a dream - a hallucination, if you will. I had two very good pieces of evidence that it could not have happened. That's important in that if I did not have one or both of those pieces of evidence, I would now have to say to you that, to the best of my knowledge, I had an out-of-body experience. But, all the other out-of-body experiences we hear of, we have to wonder. Those folks are not quite as skeptical about the subject as I am, in most cases. If they don't have some convincing evidence to the contrary, what's to stop them from saying, "I'm absolutely certain I've had an out-of-body experience?" There is no other explanation for it except the possible and rather parsimonious conclusion that they were either dreaming or had a hallucination. It might have been a bad pork chop, for all we know. Please consider that carefully, and don't forget it, because it's a good example of how even the arch-skeptic could possibly have been taken in.

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