Mike Clelland, author, illustrator, and UFO researcher
Have you heard the myths about owls and UFOs? 🦉 Some say owls are messengers of the supernatural, while others believe they’re connected to ancient mythologies. They also show up in relation to highly charged events like synchronicities, ancient archetypes, dreams, shamanic initiation, magic, psychedelic hallucination, spiritual transformation and death. Is there truth to these myths? Author and Illustrator Mike Clelland, aka The Owl Guy, helps us unravel this mystery with his compelling storytelling from numerous real life accounts as well as his fiction.
Highlights:
What’s the mysterious connection between owls and UFOs?
How did MIke get inducted into the world of owls, synchronicities and UFOs?
What’s the spiritual significance of encountering an owl?
How does owl totem energy differ from other birds?
How did Mike's experiences with owl stories shift his perspective on the intersection of UFOs, spirituality, and the role of owls as messengers?
What patterns does he recognize from his research around UFO contact?
Does Mike consider himself to be a UFO abductee?
What did Mike experience in hypnosis that led to him being depression-free for a decade now?
What led Mike to believe his life events were orchestrated for him to write “The Messengers?”
In what ways does his novel, "The Unseen," reflect the ineffable nature of owl encounters and the mysteries they symbolize?
MIKE CLELLAND is an author, illustrator & UFO researcher. He’ s also considered an expert in the skills of ultralight backpacking, and is the author and illustrator of a series of instructional books on advanced outdoor techniques. His books include The Unseen, The Messengers, Stories from the Messengers, and Hidden Experience. https://mikeclelland.com.
TIANNA ROSER is an Usui Reiki Master Teacher, Soul Plan Practitioner & Certified Clinical Hypnotist specializing in Past Life Regression, Life Between Lives Regression & Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT). She uses tools to help people experience their true self, the source of real healing & growth. https://www.awakeningtransformation.com. Tianna is the author of “Awakening Transformation: A Beginner’s Guide to Becoming Your Higher Self.” Her book is filled with practices to lighten your spiritual journey & accelerate growth, available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Awakening-Transformation-Beginners-Becoming-Higher/dp/1737705303
TIM HOWE has always been interested in unusual and strange phenomena and considers himself to be a consciousness explorer. He was born and raised in Table Rock Village, Wyoming, which happens to no longer exist. He currently makes his home in Austin, Texas where he’s constantly surrounded by beautiful females (wife, daughter and cat).
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 TRANSCRIPT
    Tim: So. Mike, you are like a multi talented person. We know you're an author, ,you have a podcast, at least I think you still do, or at least you did, and you're an artist and you're an outdoorsman. You're also a researcher. So can you kind of tell us about your background and what you do and all that good stuff for us?
Mike: Just beyond the research and such?
Tim: Yeah, yeah. Just, maybe you could even start with how you got into the whole research thing and writing and all that, cause I definitely want to ask you about your book, the messengers, which has to do with UFOs, owls and synchronicities and definitely want to go into that for sure.
Mike: So in 2006, I was living in a little town near Jackson Hole, Wyoming on the Idaho side of the border. The Grand Teton National Park is right on the border between Idaho and Wyoming. And I lived on the Idaho side, I was two miles from the Wyoming border. And, , I had , been working for an outdoor school. I did outdoor education, pretty ambitious expeditions into Alaska and into the northern Rockies and into the desert Southwest and also in the winter to I did expedition in the winter in the summertime. The trips were 30 days long, so I would go out with students for 30 days, which was a remarkable, powerful experience.
Mike: So I had spent the summer in Alaska and I came back down to the lower 48 in the fall. And I met this woman in the town I was living in. And I've told the story many times, but it paints a way into this and there's details typical of so many of these stories. You sort of tell one story and there's like, there's little threads tied to about 10 other little different things. So I'll do my best to get the key points here because I have to tell the story properly would take Half hour. So her name is Kristen. I met her in the town. I was living in. I didn't really know her and I said, oh you must have been camping all summer long This probably was October by the time I was there and she said, Because she'd been living in the area right around Yellowstone and right around Grand Teton So it's like no, I didn't go camping once and I was like, that's terrible. I'll take you out for one night
Mike: So this was a complete stranger and I took her out for one night. This would have been I would have been 44 at the time in 2006. I'm 61 now and Kristen and I are still good friends. I just talked to her the other day about this stuff, this kind of stuff. And so , we walked into the mountains and we went with a very light packs. It was going to be a beautiful night. So I didn't bother to bring a tent. We just were planning on sleeping out under the stars. And we went. With our light packs, we left in the afternoon, and the sun stays up late, and we went deep, deep, deep into the mountains, so there came a point as the sun was setting, I was making, I was on a big flat rock making a dinner with a camp stove, and she said something, and I was like, oh, oh, this is interesting, like, she was much smarter, and much more insightful, and much more open in ways that surprised me.
Mike: I'll get back to this, but as I had that thought, like, wow, there's a depth to this person I didn't suspect. An owl flew over us and then a second owl, and then a third owl, and then for the next two hours as the sun was setting, And we finished dinner. We actually finished dinner and walked up the trail a ways because it was bare terrain. We wanted to make sure we were sleeping near where we were eating, so we walked up the trail up maybe a mile or so. These owls followed us. And then when we laid down to go to sleep, so nighttime, big, beautiful sky full of stars, these owls would swoop down across our faces and blot out the stars for just one second. It was totally magical. and after this, so after this trip, we were both like, wow, that was great.
MIke: Let's do it again. So four days later, we went out to a different part of the mountains. It was much colder this time. And we did have a tent, a shelter, And as the sun was setting, we had this shelter all set up, and I said, you know, it's chilly. before the sun goes down, let's walk up to the top of that hill. It was a five minute walk. There's a weird big open terrain at that elevation. Let's just walk up to the top of that hill and get the view of the sunset, and then we'll be warm when we get back into the shelter. We walk to the top of the hill. As soon as we get there, the sun is setting. Three owls fly around us, swoop near us. When it happened to the first time they kind of kept their distance Yeah, this is funny. I like I'm convinced. It's the same three owls. I'm absolutely convinced. It was the same three There's no way I can prove that obviously, but wow, and these were short eared owls They were little they were probably maybe 10 inches tall the biggest 9 or 10 inches tall.
Mike: They were cute and playful and they seemed young which is my understanding that young owls can in fact flock together like that. And so before, they kind of kept their distance. They would land on a branch way over there, and they would swoop kind of low, but not so low,. but this time, one landed at our feet. They were landing on branches right near us. They were swooping close enough to touch, and there was one at our feet, and I remember the look on Kristen's face. Her face was just astonished. And what I didn't say at the time, and I'm saying now, is that both nights I heard a voice in my head that said, “this has something to do with the UFOs.”
Mike: And at the time I had been dealing with, there were some events that took place in my youth. Close up UFO sighting, missing time event, and then when I was 30, there was a kind of a powerful event where I saw what certainly seemed to be five gray beings outside my bedroom window at night. Now, but back to the owl thing. So, so after that, to have it happen once was pretty cool, to have it happen twice was like kind of overwhelming. So both Kristen and I started like researching the owl thing, but because I had that voice in my head, I started like looking into the UFO thing too. , and I reached out to UFO researchers , and I would ask these UFO researchers like Bud Hopkins. There's a researcher named Leo Sprinkle who's since passed away, and Bud died in 2011.
Mike: And I asked them, the researchers, like, do you have any odd experiences with owls? And they said, Oh, we get these all the time. And Leo, this wonderful gentleman who was a psychologist in Wyoming, He would say, “Oh, you should talk to this person.” He'd give me someone's phone number and I'd call them up and they would have experiences somewhat similar to mine. And I found I was bonding with these people and I would ask them, have you ever had any odd experiences with owls? And they would say,” that's a funny question. No one's ever asked me that.” So little by little, I got kind of pulled into this and I started a blog in 2009, which was three years after the event with the owls.
Mike: And in that time, Kristen had moved out of the valley. But I told this story, the story I'm sharing right here, on one of the first blog posts. Now, my blog was mostly about synchronicities, which I had a lot of at that point in my life. So when I wrote it out, that story and put it online, I was like, What was I talking about? What were we talking about when Kristen and I saw the first set of owls? I remember she said something very powerful. So I reached out to her I called her up on the phone and I said, Kristen, what were we talking about the first night when we saw the first owls? She said, I remember exactly what I was talking about.
Mike: I was trying to define my deepest beliefs as far as what God means to me. Now I'm not at all like churchy, let's say, but I certainly recognize. the sort of mythic power in what she said. And when she said that at the same time as starting the blog, like it was a, it forced me to look at the outline details. Like asking that kind of question, what we're talking about in the moment. And very soon, my blog, which I did not plan on it, flipped over and started to be about owls and UFOs. I started writing about some experiences that I had. And it didn't take long before people started reaching out to me with their stories, and then I started telling people about my stories.
Mike: So very early on, in 2009, if anyone anywhere in the world had an experience with a UFO and an owl they could just google UFOs and owls My name would come up. It still comes up. You could do it right now. I'm the first thing that comes up I'm about the next 15 things under that and because of that I have been receiving Powerful owl stories. Not all of them involve UFOs, lots of other things too. But that initially was my way into this subject. And what happened was, I was just flooded. And , I just was getting so many powerful stories. I was reaching out to people, I was talking with people, I was asking the question. So as people were reaching out to me with their stories.
Mike: I was asking, please send me your stories and because of that, I have just, oh, I've got thousands at this point, thousands of beautiful, powerful owl stories. I get them every day. I got a couple already today and I can't keep up with it. So I apologize for the people who are reaching out to me. I wish I could do better at getting back to you. But what happened is I am now in a position where I can archive and try to make sense of the patterns within these stories. So that was a long answer, but it shows you how I can. My way into this and that was now 17 years ago or so So for the last 17 years i've been getting it ebbs and flows, but wow, has it been increasing recently?
Mike: I've been getting so many remarkably powerful owl stories that go beyond the simple premise that i'm no longer like so attached to the ufo thing It's certainly part of it. But what it tells me is that there is an ancient Mythology connected to owls and the real life present day experiences people are having are the same as the ancient mythology. So something is alive and well, after all of these millennia of human history on earth there. That was a long answer to a very simple question
Tianna: we've never talked about owls on our podcast before. Through all of that time, I guess what have you come to understand about maybe the symbology of owls or what their connection is with us as humans
Mike: So on a very simple level, like the world's mythologies kind of different ebb and flow, but there's kind of a universal thread within those. And that the owl can fly into the night. The owl can fly in the darkness, in what we would call complete darkness, the owl can fly through the forest. Now to ancient man, that must have seemed absolutely like magic. Now today as modern man, we can say, Oh, they have evolutionarily developed eyes that allow them to take in light from the visible spectrum that we can't see in ways that allow them to fly through the forest. They are completely comfortable in what we would call complete darkness. the darkness flying around from branch to branch hunting in the forest. So for ancient man, that traveling through the forest became a metaphor for traveling to the land of the dead, for traveling to the land of the ancestors, for traveling to the land of the gods, for traveling to that other realm. And then the next step would be, They would come back with a message. So the owls are universally seen as messengers. So are other things, birds, other birds, crows and ravens, for instance, are considered messengers. And in many, many traditions.
Mike: So now, Athena is the ancient goddess of wisdom. That's where we get the owls show up at graduation time and stuff like that as a symbol of wisdom. She's a Greek goddess from 3, 000 years ago. Present day, Harry Potter has an owl that delivers the mail. So present day, , we have part of our pop culture, the single most popular book in the history of publications, Harry Potter. The owl delivers the mail. The owl as messenger. It's perfect. It's perfect. It's not lost in some dusty shelf. It is alive. Presently in our pop culture, so that would be the ancient mythology playing out present day. So I'll tell a story.. This is when I got not too long ago,
Mike: okay, a guy gets ahold of me, and he meditates in his backyard, he has an apple orchard, there's no UFOs in the story, he meditates in his backyard where there's an apple orchard, and it's right at the edge of the forest, and his family grows organic apples, that's their job, so he's there, and as he's meditating, There's this screech, this ear piercing screech comes in from the forest. And he's like, his instinct is like, Whoa, like, this is scary. I should leave. Like the hair in the back of his neck rose up and he was like, I got to get out of here. But he said, no, no, no. I want to figure out what this noise is. I'm going to face this. So he walked into the forest and looked around a little bit and he came to an owl on a branch, and it was low on a branch, and it was facing him, and this owl was looking right at him, and it was screeching and squawking, and looking right at him, and he felt that this owl was like chewing him out, like this owl was angry at him, and chewing him out, and then the owl flew off, and he went back to his family, and he told his wife, and he told his kids, and they were like, his wife was like, “that's great, honey. You saw an owl in the woods. Can you set the table?” And he told the kids, it was this owl. It was looking right at me. It like screeched and hooted. And it was like, it was angry at me. The kids were like, “dad!” So after dinner, he takes his camera and goes back in the forest.
Mike: And he says out loud, he says, “my family doesn't believe me. Can I need a picture?” This owl flies and lands in a branch, click, he gets a picture and the owl flies off. I asked, what were you meditating about? And he said, I was struggling. Was there a God? So that mirrors the story with Kristen in some ways, , but this is what is emerging. In these stories, I've got like that one's nice because I can tell that one quick. Some of the stories take a little bit longer to tell, but that's the flavor and the mood of these stories. They have this richness. The way I say it is the owl is not a light and fluffy totem. Like the owl is kind of a tough totem.
Mike: It represents a challenge. It represents a transformational event. Other birds, hummingbirds, for instance, have a real light and they show up at weddings and when you play music and stuff like that. So they have a different kind of. Totem energy, but the owl is pretty heavy and doesn't necessarily make it bad, but it does have a weight and heaviness to it , that I would say if someone has a powerful owl experience, that you should pay very close attention and try to make sense of what it might mean for you. It's difficult for me to try to figure out what someone else's personal experience may or may not mean but I encourage people to look within when they have these kinds of experiences.
Tim: Yeah. Oh my gosh, there's so much there. I want to talk about the synchronicities you mentioned earlier and you've mentioned this on other podcasts too. I think that it's important for people to take note of when those happen and don't brush them off so much. Because like you were saying with the meditation story, like maybe you should think about like the context of when these things occur in your life and the importance of that. And I feel like I also went down like a UFO investigation path research and I read dozens and dozens of books. And yours was one of the first ones I bought the messengers and it sat on my shelf and I never really could bring myself to read it. And now looking back, I understand why.
Tim: Because as I went through the process of researching, you know, UFOs and abductions and all these things, it started to occur to me that there was a lot more going on there, , there was like an undertone of spirituality that was trying to be expressed with, all these events that were happening in people's lives. And once that occurred to me, then I was interested in your book. Then I picked your book up and read it. And of course it, fit right in with what I was thinking at that time. And so, you do a really good job of kind of explaining that there's a much richer and deeper thing happening here than just like you say, a lot of times, than just little scientists in a metal capsule coming to earth. There's a story there, there's a richness, there's a mythology. That we're expressing and it even comes out in our pop culture. And I love how you, mentioned that earlier that, there's something going on. that's happening on a broad scale to everybody all at once.
Tim: And it finds its way into our art, into our expression of what we feel is creative. And I love that about your book. I also feel like I want to bring this up right now is your novel. You wrote this novel called “The Unseen” and I just finished reading it. It's an absolutely fantastic book, but it feels like you kind of tie all these things together in that novel somehow. And want to ask you about like how that process went for you. Was a lot of it based on your real life experiences and then you just somehow figured a way to like weave it together. yeah, maybe you could talk about that process.
Mike: Well, so in the last 16 or 17 years or however it works out to be, I've been collecting these owl stories. And the amount of times people will say, Oh, I had this experience with an owl. And then they'll tell me the story. And maybe I haven't heard that exact one. But I've heard so many similar ones. And when I ended up replying and telling people, and I can't even begin to tell you how many times I've typed this exact phrase. I said, I have not heard that exact story, but I've heard many with that flavor and mood. And that. Was what I wanted to imbue in the novel, was that flavor and mood, that mystery, that sense of kind of like the question without an answer, the mystery that will never get solved in a way, and so some of the stories were my own.
Mike: Many of the stories came from my research, and I kind of played with them and I tweaked with them a little bit. There's one scene that takes place on a swing set, and there are two owls on each side of a swing set. That traces back to a real life event where a woman , here I'll tell the story, this is a good one, her name is Susan Kornacki, she's given me permission to use her name. She had been to an Easter party with her husband, she's since divorced, and her young daughter. She all of a sudden felt like totally agitated She said she felt like there was this energy running up and down her spine and she told her husband I gotta get I get to get out of here So she like ran home and he brought the daughter home in a separate car and then his car But she went home and she was a beautiful spring day Easter time and she laid in a hammock in her backyard and as soon as she lay in the hammock and I'll land on one branch on one of the trees, in a branch of one of the trees that was connected to the hammock, the hammock is strung between two trees.
Mike: On the other tree, another owl landed, and they were squawking at each other, hooting at each other in full daylight. She said, and she did not mince words, she said, I felt an energy running through me, and it was like a component on a circuit board, right? Where energy is running through you, three components, and Susan is in the middle, and the two owls are at each end. And she said, they were recalibrating me. And afterwards, her husband came home, and he's like, how do you feel, are you okay? And she said, what do you notice? And he said, well, there's an owl in that tree, and there's an owl in that tree, and they're hooting at each other. And she's like, yeah, uh huh, uh huh.
Mike: So after that event she started spontaneously doing hands on healing. She's never trained in Reiki She just felt all she spontaneously started doing healing which is another thing right along with like spiritual awakening and that newfound psychic abilities that this healing ability is tied into this So that story is not played out it's different setting but I used a real life story and as a sort of starting off point for so much of what is in that book. And then at the same time, the book is totally a fantasy. I just made it up. There's stuff in there that's like, there's a town that doesn't exist. And there's a canyon that doesn't exist. And so that book was tons of fun, but I was trying to imbue the power of these stories.
Mike: And also I talked to a lot of people who've had the UFO contact experience. And what I found is. if you read some books, if you read Bud Hopkins book and Dave Jacobs book, you would think the only thing that happens is people are taken out of their bedrooms at night or taken from lonely roads. And they get put on a flying saucer, and they get put on a table and creepy medical exams happen. I talk to people all the time, day after day after day. I'm talking to multiple people every week. It would be incorrect to say I've never heard that story, but wow, it is so close to zero. It's not part of this. It's not part of the people's experience. I don't understand why it floated to the surface in the way the researchers are reporting this, but in my personal experience, people are talking about what the people who have the close up UFO contact experience will tell you is they'll say, I have had the strangest set of coincidences.
MIke: It feels like events were orchestrated specifically for me in my life. And that is how the characters in that book seem to be. Moved about the chessboard. Let's say they're being orchestrated by events are being orchestrated around them and life changes that are being orchestrated for those characters in ways that match what people with UFO contact experiences say. I'll also say the word UFO never shows up in the book I never use it once neither. Do I use abduction? I never say synchronicity I tried really hard to tell like a mythic tale without clouding it with like, preconceived pop culture ideas like flying saucers
Tianna: Sorry, because I haven't read your book. I'm glad that Tim has, but I just haven't read any fiction in a really long time, but I'm understanding that you're also a UFO experiencer?
Mike: So the problem is, yeah, so yes, I can say. You know, there's a point in the messengers where I kind of begrudgingly say, I am a UFO abductee. And then I quickly follow that up with, but I don't know what that means, right? Because it's like, , I don't have any memories of being on a table. Like people say, I have some very strange experiences that seem to imply some sort of contact event. So like if you have a jigsaw puzzle on the table, you can put most of the pieces together and you can stand back and say, Oh, it's a sailboat on the lake, right? But if the pieces are missing, but it's still, you can say, so I feel like that's what's happening.
Mike: Like, I don't have all the pieces, but I can kind of look at the big puzzle and say, Ooh, I would fit into that. Definition of what would be called a UFO abductee, but I then take a step back and say, I don't know what that means. And then more recently, I've been a little more gentle in the… I say I'm someone who has had direct contact. It's a synonym, it's the same thing, but I just feel a little more comfortable with that word or that phrase rather than abductee. I mean, like you abduct someone, the police could, has every right to come to your house and put you in jail, right? So that doesn't seem to be what's playing out. Yeah. I'm happy to talk about any of this if you want.
Tianna: Oh yeah, yeah. And that's why I said, experiencer, because I think the same. Yeah, I think abductee, it sounds like against your will. And experiencer, whether it might not be on your personality level choice, but maybe on your higher self level choice or on some other aspect that you're not conscious of, there could be an agreement or a choice. And as a researcher, maybe you just stay really open and you're collecting all of this information and people's stories and data, or maybe at this point you have some preliminary sort of hypothesis or ideas about maybe why these experiences are happening to some people on the planet, including yourself.
Mike: Hmm. I could guess. I could make some good speculations. Don't make it right. So don't like that. Like I could say something today and then the way the wind might blow a little different tomorrow and I'd say something else later. The people who are having these contact experiences. And I've spoken to conferences and I have a pretty tidy slideshow. And so I have the PowerPoint and, I stand on the stage and I say, people who have had these experiences will often tell of spiritual awakening. I click the slide and I have this big thing that says spiritual awakening.
Mike: And I remember I was at the conference and I was like going to be talking that afternoon in the morning. I was like, Ooh, that's really bold. That's like a really bold thing to say. Like it shows up, is it a consistent pattern? Is it a minimal pattern? So I was going to say, I'm going to take that out. Just doesn't feel right. Like having that slide, spiritual awakening. And it's easy, right? You just open your laptop and you just push a button and you hit delete and the slides out. And so as I was thinking about this guy comes up to me and said, Mike, I really looking forward to your talk. You know, Hey, I just want to tell you, I had an experience with the UFO and an owl and you know, afterwards I had a spiritual awakening and that happened almost at the, I was like, as I was considering.deleting the slide. So it's like, okay, I’ve got to trust that kind of thing.
Mike: And, so I can't say why it's happening, but I can say the people are having these experiences. It's not across the board. It's a pattern. Anyone who's doing this kind of research will recognize this pattern. People are having spiritual awakenings. Newfound healing skills. magical healing skills, and then psychic abilities. And then if you follow the research of someone like Diana Pasulka, she would argue that scientists are having breakthrough events. And these scientists have had UFO contact experiences. And I would then go on and say, art is being created at this level. I would go on and say, music is being created at this level.
Mike: So there's something going on. like humanity is being poked and prodded in a way by these outside forces for some reason. And the reason does not seem to be to make a lot of money. Although sounds like some of the Scientists have done very well with their inventions, but here, look, I had a UFO event. Well, let's say this, I had an event in 2013, March 10th, 2013. In the messengers, it takes up about the last 30 pages of the book, this story of what happened, what I call my confirmation event. I'll tell it very quickly, like, I was camped outside this night in Southern Utah, actually the location, essentially the location of the fictional story of the novel is where I was camped, right?
Mike: That part of Southern Utah. And a bunch of things happened that night. I saw what I call a round structure on a hilltop. I was sleeping out under the stars. I was driving across , from Arizona to where my home in Idaho. And I spent one night sleeping under the stars in Southern Utah, which is what I do, is do a lot of outdoor work. To tell this story properly takes, ooh, it takes a half hour, but I saw what felt like big, round structure on a hill, and it looked just like a flying saucer, but I was like, no, no, no, it can't be a flying saucer, it's like some building, and I fell back asleep, and I looked up, woke up later, and there was a coyote howling near my head, and , I've slept out a thousand nights, and I've heard a lot of coyotes, I've never, ever, ever, ever heard one that close and that loud, I couldn't see it.
Mike: I mean, it could have been right behind a bush or something like that, but it felt like it was right there. It felt like I could have just, like, put my hand out with a dog bisque and it could have taken it right there, but I never saw it. I speculate That that may have been, let's say, of audio screen memory. That I may have had something. There may not have been a coyote there, but it certainly sounded like there was one right there. And then also that night I woke up and there was a bright light behind this bush. So after that event. That would have been on March 10th. March 11th, I got home to my house in Idaho. First thing I did is looked up and see if I could find that house on the hill in Google Maps. There was nothing there. I've since been back to that spot many times. There's no big house on the, on the hill. It was two and a half miles from where I was lying. So whatever it was big It was big. And then the next day, so that was , March 12th, I had a psychic vision of, let's say, there was three points on a map, and to tell the story properly, all three points lined up with an eerie Precision. These were three separate points in around southern Utah, and each point feels like it was a UFO abduction or contact event.
Mike: And the one on March 10th was the one with the round structure on the hill. When that happened, It was like my old life ended when I, , it wasn't the seeing the round structure on the hill. It was seeing the psychic vision in my mind where these events lined up. and then I looked it up on the map and they lined up perfectly and , I went a little crazy for a while trying to solve all this stuff. The next day I started writing the book, The Messengers. So I had a UFO contact experience. I spent a couple days trying to make sense or what appeared to be a UFO contact experience. I spent a couple of days trying to make sense of it. And then right after that, I started writing the book, The Messengers, the book that would has since come to define my life.
Mike: I'm called the owl guy. It's like, it's taken over everything. And I'm content with that. Like the owl stuff is fascinating. It points to a, it's a very narrow spectrum of the UFO lore, so why are they here? Like, I could argue that I was mind controlled, or let me just, I'll be really heavy handed the way I describe it. I could argue that I was mind controlled by forces outside myself to write. That book, The Messengers, and then write three more books, including the fiction book, and I have to be careful because I'm speculating, but what I can say is that is how it feels, looking back on this now, 11 years later, that's how it feels, that my life has been somehow guided, orchestrated, so that I would write this book. The impetus was an event that took place that night, I've also had hypnosis session, like after the book was written, I went through a hypnosis session about that night , and it , was telling, I'm cautious to Treated as truth, but it was very interesting. So I'm doing this thing where you ask us a question. I go on and on. You feel free to butt in anytime you want when I'm going on when I'm rolling around like this.
Tianna: No, we love your stories.
Tim: yeah, it's great. Yeah. Thank you. I didn't know that story. That's fascinating. I also feel like the way that you are, the way you live your life, you sort of lend yourself to this experience as well. And the reason I say that is because I feel like, at least for myself, whenever I'm more connected to nature and I'm less obsessed with The mind games that our society can play and, , just all the cultural programming and societal expectations, like having a job, doing this, that way, or a certain way, or living your life a certain, inside a certain box, when I disconnect from that idea or those ideas, then I feel like there's like a magic that starts to happen in my life and I notice things that are just unusual.
Tim: And, I kind of feel like since you, from my perspective, it seems like, you're an artist. You're a creative person and you're really connected to the outdoors. And to me, that seems like that kind of lend you to be open to these experiences or to be available for whatever is out there making this stuff happen, whether it's ourselves or something else. What are your thoughts about that? Like as far as that idea, like being more connected to nature, less connected to our ideas about what life should be.
Mike: Well I'm not doing the outdoor work the same way that I was, so I'm no longer spending a month in the mountains. I haven't done that for a decade now, and then, so in the fiction book, the character That was me, the main character. I don't know if that was clear to you, but , that main character of John was me. There's a point when he talks about like, oh, I love to sleep under the stars. , and he talks about how he, oh, like does his, so like a few things in that story were me. Like I went through a really strong period where I was like screw it to the world. And I was like, I did my laundry in a bucket and washed and dried everything on a clothesline. And I don't talk about this, I'm open to talking about it, but it's relevant to your question. When I was 30, and that's over half my life ago, 61 now, seems like a long time ago, I went through a bout of severe clinical depression and then it ebbed and flowed for like 20 years.
Mike: I've been depression free for over a decade, and that's a wonderful thing for me to say. But what happened was, like, it was hard, and I pushed my way, Like, I got into different work, that's when I started doing the outdoor work, that's when I started doing the book illustrations, I had been working in New York City working for ad agencies and things like that, I turned my back on all that, and, I found that if I talked about being depressed, like, let's say around a dinner table, and let's say there's five or six people at the dinner table, You could see everyone you could see almost every person at the dinner table saying like, Mike is talking about something that is socially unacceptable.
And you could see him kind of squirming in their shoes. It's like one out of eight people has had the malady of being depressed. So it's very common. And then one person would come up to me afterwards and say like, Mike, I'm so glad you said that. My wife is having this experience and I don't know how to help her.
And it really helped me to hear you say it so plainly. So. The lesson I learned from being depressed was that it's socially unacceptable to talk about it, but you're gonna touch one person in a group is gonna come up to you and thank you. , and I thought about this, like, I don't think I would have been able to be so open about my experiences.
Had it not have been for my depressive episode where I talked about it and like too bad those people were annoyed or uncomfortable. I'm so proud of myself , that I shared that stuff , because of the help it gave to the one person who found it beneficial. And I feel the same way.
about the UFO stuff. , I don't know how else to be, but I do have my very best to be truthful. And if I don't know something, I'll make sure to say, I don't know., and then even my own memories, I recognize that things get foggy and , can morph and such like that. , so I hope I answered your question.
I like that you shared that. I feel that It's true with mental health that it's getting more and more, , acceptable to have that conversation and for people to seek out help and as the parallel also with the UFO experiences, I feel like the times that we're in now more people are speaking about this as well.
And then. , from our podcast perspective, , we talk about astrology and like, oh, this is the age of Aquarius and there's Aquarian energies are more futuristic and open to this, , kind of thing. And , so anyway, , I'm really happy that you did have the courage to do that because someone has to lead the way right for other people to do that.
I'm curious. Going back to the owls or tying in the owls, well, okay, , let me just preface this by saying that I am a hypnotherapist and I do past life regression and I do between lives regression and I'm coming from a perspective that I believe that, , , our soul chose to be here and came up, with a little bit of a lesson plan.
I mean, we have free will to deviate from that, but yeah, I'm curious about what your perspective is around that. Like, do you think that, this was some random thing that happened to you and then kind of brought you on a certain path in this life? Or do you think that it was something that you might have chosen or agreed upon or was pre planned? Because yeah, being the owl guy is very, very, very unique.
Mike: I know just what you're saying. Yeah. So first of all, let me say that I did not know you were doing hypnotherapy and doing past life regressions. When I said, Oh, I've been depression free for a decade it was actually 2014, which is a decade ago. I did a past life hypnotherapy session and I talked to this hypnotherapist and said, I want to look into my UFO stuff. And she kind of heard me talk and I told some stuff about my life and my struggles. And she said, no, no, her name is Lorraine Flaherty. She lives in England. And she said, Oh, Oh, you should do a past life hypnotherapy. And I said, great, I'll do that. So I didn't know what to expect. Went into this room and it was probably two and a half hours. It felt like 10 hours, but, well, it was 10 hours in the story, but it felt like I just closed my eyes and opened them back up. but it was through the past life hypnotherapy.
Mike: My stated goal was to alleviate Depression. Now, so a story came up, I can go into the story. It's kind of feels like it's so absurd that I don't trust it. And I feel the same way about hypnotherapy, where I was a boy, a young college student in the 1920s, and I was very arrogant, and I went to art school, and Because of my arrogance, and it was funny, I actually said this, I'm open to saying this, I had all my hair and I just remember like in the in the session like, oh my god, all my hair I can like comb it like you can imagine like in the 1920s like a young student combing a hair back I got all my hair and I'm dressed really nice and I kind of went I think I might be gay Which was a funny thing to say, but that's I blurted it out and it made sense in the moment then I said Oh, the hypnotherapist said my face actually swelled up At a certain point, I said, something's wrong with my face.
Mike: And I said, I've been beaten. And now I'm blind. I was beaten so badly, I went blind. As a young artist, to be beaten blind. And the hypnotherapist said, who beat you? And I said, my father. And then I said, my father committed suicide because he felt so guilty of beating me. And so it was that. Which I don't necessarily think this is true, but that's the story that emerged. And I cried and I purged,and afterwards, I remember sitting up in the chair saying, like, Ugh, I'm cured! And I haven't been depressed since., so my struggles with depression, given this model, would be that I was hesitant, or ashamed, or felt threatened by being open with my creativity.
Mike: Right. So I had worked in an ad agency. My creativity was like, I was drawing like dishwashing liquid detergent storyboards for TV commercials. It wasn't very creative. And then, so it wasn't very fulfilling. And that's when I had the nervous breakdown. So, it fits the model of why I would have been troubled. I was not able to embrace my own creativity. And the story, the fiction story is all about that. The main character goes through a creative block and his world unravels now. Stuff came out during that hypnosis session with Lorraine, stuff that I had read about in books and such like that. So you asked do I feel like I came here and with a mission?
Mike: So, can I tell a story? It's gonna take a little bit to tell it. Yeah, please. Okay. So I did a hypnotherapy session in 2018 with a therapist named Yvonne Smith out of California. I'm not sure if you've heard of her. She's a family clinician. She does totally normal, relieving stress with hypnotherapy and stopping smoking and totally standard family clinical stuff. But she also does the UFO contact experience as part of her work. I was going to be in California in 2018. The book had already been out. A bunch of years at that point. And I called her up, and I'd met her at conferences. And we'd talked before, so she knew who I was. And I said, Yvonne, I'm going to be in California. I would love to do a hypnotherapy session. I've never actually done one.
Mike: And she said, great! And she said, You know, this is so funny. I started reading your book, “The Messengers,” this morning. Wow. So that's the kind of synchronicity, like you can't tell these stories without those details. So I lay down on a couch, before I lay down on a couch and said, listen, when I go under, ask me about the owls. I want to know about the owls. Like I don't know how clear I made it. Owls seem to show up in a lot of people's experiences. The same way they showed up in that guy's backyard when he was meditating about God. And, so I'm kind of the owl guy, I get up every morning, I just answer all emails all day long, and I've done that for a decade.
Mike: And so I'm like, what's up with the owls? Ask me when I'm under. She said, fine, no problem. We went to that night of March 10th, 2013. I have no fear associated with that night. Now, before I start this, I don't believe it as literal truth. It's a great story, but I don't believe it's literally true. So, she takes me back to the night and I'm sleeping on the side of the road and there's a hill there and my car's parked there and there's a bush right there and it's a pretty night and it's cold and I've got a big thick sleeping bag and I explain all this stuff and then she says, and Mike, what happens next? And then I go, I go, it's them. It's them. I know it's them. And I'm describing the bright light behind the bush. And the next thing I know is , I'm like looking down. I say, I'm looking down at this big round structure on a hill. I'm floating above this big thing and I'm looking down at it.
Mike: And I describe it as this big, it's black in the nighttime. It's got a ring of lights around it. Same thing that I was seeing from the ground, but now I'm looking straight down from above and I'm floating above it. And I say, I think I'm still in the sleeping bag. And she goes, Mike, are you out of body? And I say, I have no idea, but I'm looking down at this thing and I think I'm still in the sleeping bag. and then there's like this, and I'm on board and I'm like walking down this hall and it's like a round curved hall and it's shiny and kind of like aluminum, light gray, white. and everything's super smooth. And so it's just, it's like a circular hallway. And I'm just going to say like, if there was a hallway that went around the inside of a flying saucer, this is what the hallway would look like. So I'm walking down this hall and my very first thought was, I'm not tall. Like I'm six foot tall. So I'm like, I'm not tall.
Mike: And Yvonne says, look around. I said, I'm not tall. Something's up. So look around. So I look to my right and I look to my left and on each side of me are these gray aliens with the big bald heads and the black eyes. Like the quintessential thing that everyone describes. And I'm the exact same height. And I say that to her, and she goes, look down at yourself. And I look down at myself, and I got these long, long, long skinny fingers, and I got this space suit on, and I've got these skinny, skinny legs, and I go, I say, Yvonne, I think I'm a gray alien. And it feels so normal. Like, this feels totally normal. And she doesn't skip a beat. I asked her about this afterwards, and I said, does this happen a lot? She said, oh, all the time. People say this all the time. , so I'm walking down this way. So the next thing I know, I'm in this. In the conference room is kind of ugly and tacky. It's got beige carpeting and ugly wallpaper and fluorescent lights. And there's like a plastic folding table. And on the other side of the folding table is like five to eight beings and they seem to be kind of fuzzed out, but wow, they're great aliens. Like, I don't really get a good look at them, but they sure seem to be great aliens. And I go, why am I here?
Mike: And there's like this collective telepathic voice that says, You volunteered for this. I go, what does that mean? I volunteered for this. Why am I here? And they say, now is the time. Goes back and forth like that for a little while. And there comes a point when I just , like, Something snaps and I kind of freak out and I start swearing and yelling at these things these beings and I'm like you never told Me it would be this hard being here. You never told me it would be this hard You never told me there would be pain. You never told me there'd be anger. You never told me there'd be depression You never told me there'd be loneliness. You never told me it would be this hard being here I'm saying it very nicely here, but I was like screaming and sobbing and I transcribed my own Hypnosis session and wow, is that tough to listen to my own?
Mike: Sobbing. Now the implication is that I was one of them in a previous incarnation, I arrived here on Earth in this incarnation,, and she was like, Mike, what do they want? And , I was swearing so much, I was like, this is like some business deal. Like, they don't understand if it's all normal and pragmatic and unemotional for them, but they don't understand how hard it is. And then she says, Mike, what do they want? And I kind of screamed, they want me to play some role. , and then I'd go from this. Freaked out as I can possibly be to being totally You can actually hear it on the audio you can hear me go Like I just deflate and I went from being as tense as I've ever been in my life To being as calm as I've ever been in my life.
Mike: It felt like my heart stopped my breathing stopped the audio is quiet for like 45 seconds and Yvonne says Mike what happens next and I say I think I'm back in the sleeping bag. And she asked some questions, what do they want? And I kind of said, I don't know. It said like, you know what it felt like? It felt like I was in a spy movie and I was holding the envelope, but I wasn't allowed to open the envelope. And then she says, and Mike, what is your connection to owls? Like I'd asked her earlier. And without skipping a beat, I say, The owls aren't important, right? Now I'd been like full time owls, owls, owls every day.
Like that was my life. I'm the owl guy. That's all I do is answer emails about owls and write books about owls. So here's what I said. And this is seared into my memory. I said, t”he owls aren't important. I am an artist and I understand how people need a symbol. The owls aren't important.
The owl is a symbol on a door, but the owls aren't important. The door is important. The owl is the correct symbol for the door. And we are on this side of the door, in a tight, claustrophobic little hallway. And on the other side of the door is an infinite Vastness. “
Tianna: Chills….when you say that…
Mike: Oh, I asked her, did I channel that? And she gave a good answer. She said, how would I know? But it sounded different. It didn't sound like the hypnosis. I mean, you make people talk in these really short sentences and they whisper and there's long pauses. I just spoke this like poetry. Now that was describing the night of March 10th, 2013. I have no memory of that at the time. Of being in a conference room of being a great alien like I don't buy it Like there's no ugly conference room with Beige carpeting on a flying saucer, right? Like, it's not there. This was like a dream realm for me now.
Mike: But at the end of that whole tirade, I scream like, they want me to play some role. So if that happened the night of March 10th, 2013, two days later, I started writing, less than 48 hours later, I figured it out, less than 48 hours after that event, I started writing the book, “The Messengers.” This is the book on owls that has defined my life. So your question was, do I feel like I arrived here with some role? Like, if I follow the logic of that story, it is unquestionable that I'm here to play some role. At the same time, I don't buy the story, right? It's a great story. It's got tons of mythic power to it. Like, wow, I'm like really cautious to say that happened literally.
Mike: So the conference room, just follow me on this one. The conference room, like you watch Saturday Night Live and they're like got a set. It's like an office or something like that, right? The set has got three walls. It's got a back wall and two side walls and the front wall is open to the audience. That's what I saw in my mind's eye. I saw a three sided set. I saw theater. I saw theatrical set. In my mind's eye, I told this story to a shaman , and it was really funny. He said, Oh Mike, boy, I lost you there with the aliens behind the desk. But if you had said there were eight crows behind the desk, I'd be all there for you.
Mike: I'd be right there. I was like, well, I mean, they're both kind of mythic beings, right? So, he called them the guides. He said, well, if they're crows, they're your guides. They're aliens. I mean, is it theater? Are we confronted with theater? Are these beings with the bald heads and the big black eyes? Are they just a costume? I mean, I don't think ravens, like the physical bird that flies through my backyard, I don't think the raven embodies anything mythic, but it is symbolic of some mythic power. An owl is just a bird, right? I see owls all the time. I hear them hooting all the time. Often they're just birds.Sometimes they arrive at a potent moment. They are somehow actors on a stage. Playing a role for some specific purpose in an individual's life. So that's what I'm struggling with once again, I did this thing. I just went on and on and on. Yeah, please interrupt me.
Tianna: No, I love it. I'm like, it's real my perspective I mean when I guide people into past lives and exactly Like what you're saying people will have this wonderful powerful experience and then as soon as they get back in their left brain logical mind, they're like “Did I just make that up? And how do I know that that's really real?” And I'm always like. “How do you know that this is really real? What is really real?” Like, aren't these just all different states of consciousness? And if it shifts us or transforms us or heals us as you had all of that powerful transformation, then is it useful to make a differentiation between something in the tangible, 3d realm or something, if that happened on the fourth dimensional astral realm. And so that's the way that your consciousness chose to symbolize that energy, because your consciousness is familiar with a ugly conference room, but the energy that you touched and the emotions that you felt and the wisdom that you gained, like that's gold, right? Like it had a big transformation in your life. So I always try to , you know, we don't have to figure out what's real. Cause I think like you're saying about the stage thing, that's like what Shakespeare said, right? Like all the world, so I'm always telling my clients, “well, probably when our body dies in this life, then our soul is like, “Oh, that was a cool dream. “ We have these experiences in our dreams as well. And then we wake up and go, “Oh, that was so cool, but it was just a dream.” But all of these experiences, right? Or even your fictional world that you create, but it's powerful and it moves somebody and it awakens something within them. Like, is that less real than what's here in front of me,? I just think there's so much there. I don't know. I just love that story. Of course, I'm partial because I am a hypnotherapist, but how beautiful that was.
Mike: Well, let me say that right at the moment I had the conversation with Lorraine Flaherty, I said, like, could that have just been a metaphor? And she's very English. And , she said. , like, very proper. She said, well, it very well could be, but from my direct experience, people don't cry, stob uncontrollably from a metaphor. And , so what I can say is like, I don't care. I'm going to reap the benefit , from what I learned. So I'm going to reap the benefit from the story of like, I don't feel like I was a grey alien. But that was what was presented to me in this, it's funny. I call it a dream. I described the hypnosis session. I'll just say it was a dream. And then I have to back like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. It wasn't a dream. It was a hypnosis session, but it has that kind of dream logic to it.
Mike: And I very much follow my dreams . As far as the symbology and , like , I proceed forward based on synchronicities. I proceed forward based on dreams. I proceed forward based on these. I've had a handful of. Well, synchronistic events, let's say. Well, let's keep to the hypnosis thing. I'm going to reap the benefit of that. And what it did for me in a way, in a very real way, was I was able to resist clinging to the UFO and owl. It's so much wide open now for me, much wider open. So, yes, UFOs are involved. So what I say now is that and I'll just do this real quick here. I should be able to do this right off the top of my head. I started out with owls and UFOs, very quickly learned that owls were connected to. Psychedelics, most often mushrooms, people taking mushrooms will have owl experiences that play out very similar to the UFO thing. And then meditation, people meditating.
Mike: I got lots of stories where people close their eyes meditating, they'll open their eyes, there'll be an owl on the window looking in at them. Or they'll be in the forest meditating and there'll be an owl on a branch. Sometimes like close enough to touch. And , I got a lot of stories like that. Owls and shamanic initiation. So people going through a shamanic initiation will have experiences with owls. I talked to shamans and they say, oh, yeah, we it's well understood in the shamanic community That owls show up at the time of the initiation and then death owls and death I could do a big fat book on owls and death It's so, the lore of Owls in Death is that an owl is a harbinger of doom, and you see an owl or hear an owl and it means someone's going to die.
Mike: I've got some stories like that, but they are far outnumbered by owls showing up after someone dies, most often a parent. Can tell one story real quick. Okay. So, this happened to me. My mom, this is like, I'm gushing here with all my personal stuff, but my mom died in 2013. So that would be 11 years ago. And she had been suffering terribly from Alzheimer's, and so my sister and brother were all there, and I was with my sister as she passed, and I was holding her hand on one side, my sister was holding her hand on the other, and it was this, it was a really important human experience. Like, I'm not the only person who's experienced it.
Mike: But wow, was it powerful. It happened at like three in the morning. So the next day we were all trying to like organize the funeral and issues and obituaries and phone calls and doctors and oh, we're all strung, we're all like no sleep. And so as the sun is setting, I'm at my sister's house in North Carolina. My mother was at an assisted living facility just down the road from my mother. So I'm at my sister's house. In the back porch, this is in the south, it's summertime, it's a beautiful big trees and a porch, and my sister's very best friend, Ruthie, is sitting across from my brother and sister and I. So my brother Jim is on one side, my sister Jeannie is on the other side, and I'm in the middle.
Mike: And Ruthie Very proper, very southern, says Jim, Gene, Mike, I know there's an afterlife. And I know because of an experience that I had with an owl. And my sister knew of my owl research. She didn't know what to make of it. She literally did the thing where she was like, she put her hands over her ears like, no, no, no, owls, owls, oh, no, no, no, no. And my brother, my brother is more accepting now, but he was really uncomfortable with this research at the time. And he gave me this look like, He basically gave me this look like you paid her to say this and I'm like Jim no like no wait like and poor Ruthie is like sees both of us and she's like well and so I say Ruthie you don't know but I've been doing research on owls and their spiritual connection to human events but I want to hear your story and so she said after my daddy died, she's southern, very proper, but she called him daddy, she said, after my daddy died, I would walk the nature trail around the neighborhood.
Mike: I was walking my sister's dog around the nature trail for her during this chaotic chapter where mom was in the hospice. And so I knew exactly the nature trail. And she said, and every day I would get to This tree, and an owl would be there, and I would pass this owl, and then there came a day when I was passing the tree, and the owl hooted, and I stopped, and I looked at this owl, and I said, Are you my daddy? And she said at that moment, all her grief, it was alleviated. And the owl flew off, and she said, I feel so blessed, she's very Christian, very Southern, she said, I feel so blessed, I'm doing this by memory, but I feel so blessed that such a beautiful animal could be God's messenger to tell me that my father was okay.
Mike: I have that story. Over and over and over from all over the world People have told me that almost that same story word for word most often with a parent now When I set out to write this book the messengers like I mean UFO books kind of heavy and a drama and they're scary Like I kind of I didn't know what I was gonna get into when I really started So the researching of the book I did not expect to find I don't want to say, because people ask me all the time, are owls good or bad? Oh, that's a tough one. So what I can say is, I followed the data, and the book that emerged was a hopeful book. So I feel there's a hopeful message interwoven into this owl thing. I gotta be really careful. I could cherry pick the data and tell you that this All love and light and wonderful, but I would have to willfully ignore some stories in order to do that So what I can say is that the overall message seems to be very hopeful.
Tim: That's beautiful Thank you for sharing those stories with us. Those are fantastic I think we're running to the end of time and this conversation has been amazing Thank you so much again Mike for coming on and taking the time out of your day to talk with us We really appreciate it.
Mike: Well, thank you. I gotta say like I don't know what happened, but we did the little hopscotch. We leapfrogged right over like the middle ground. Like, I could tell sort of the introductory stories. It felt like we went right to the deepest parts of the subject in the deepest waters with this.
Tianna: That's our favorite way to go. That's where I want to swim. I want to swim in the deep waters. And I'm super excited now to read your book. You're a great storyteller. And I'm really interested in this topic now. So. Thank you for being willing to share your very personal stories. Those are my favorite ones actually.
MIke: Well, and I always say it's doesn't do any good to tell half a story. Are you going to tell it all, or you might as well just keep your mouth shut, so. Yes.
Tim: Thank you. Mike, can you just real quick let our listeners know where they can find your book and more about you if they want to find out more about you?
Mike: My homepage, the best place to start is MikeCleland. com, and that's Mike Cleland, all one word. Or you can just Google UFO Owl and I'm the first thing that comes up. You'll find my homepage right away that way too. and then from there I've had two podcasts. So both podcasts are available, linked there. My blog where it's a lot of writing and my books is available on Amazon and there's some artwork and then there's some stuff about my outdoor work too. So that's all linked from that main hub.
Tianna: Perfect.
Tim: Yeah. Thank you so much. We really enjoyed it. Yeah.
Mike: My honor. This was great. That was fantastic. Really, really appreciate it. Great. Oh, and I just, I want to thank you so much for getting back to me about the book.
Tim: So, but yeah, thanks for the novel has been a real funny thing for me. It's an amazing piece of work. I really, really enjoyed it. Yeah. It's funny story. Cause I actually, right when the book arrived, I got super sick. I mean, I was the sickest I've been in years and all I could do was just. sit around and read. And so that's what I did. I read like half of the book while I was just feeling miserable, but actually it was really nice because the book is written in a way where it just kind of sucks you into the little world of the main character. And so I was like, transported away from my sick. existence at that point and I went to this little world that you created and it was just awesome I loved it.
Mike: Oh good. Thank you so much because it was funny. I probably spent close to a year I bet like rereading six months easily like going back and rereading and cleaning up the dialogue and the text. And what I was doing is I was paring it down paring it down paring it down paring it down. And I did that on purpose because I wanted it to feel really really simple to just get right into it. I took out every big word. I made the sentences shorter. I made the paragraphs shorter. I did that completely because when I worked with an editor I said, I was trying to make it candy. I was trying to turn it into something that would just melt on your tongue. And so if you did by saying that, like, I feel like I worked really hard to make that happen. So that feels great that you had that experience.
Tim: Yeah, you did. And this kind of feels funny to say this, but have you ever read the book Siddhartha? No. Siddhartha is a fantastic book, but it has the exact same. Like cadence and feel as your book, it just kind of has this like really natural, simple way of like just explaining what's happening and it just, pulls you along like you don't realize like you're reading you don't think about like, Oh, I have to think to know what he's saying here. You don't have to do that. The story just hits you. And I feel like it was a lot like Siddharta in that way. So you'll have to read Siddharta if you've never read it.
Mike: I should. Yeah. Can I tell one little story? And it's getting darker, like I said, it would right here because the room's getting darker. When I was writing the, there's a point the swing set event in the story. So, Tianna, you haven't read it, so I'm going to a little spoiler, but not too much. That's okay. That's okay. A little. So, the characters, two characters, kind of a love interest. And they're on a swing set in this little kind of ghost town, this kind of haunted, little, lonely town at the end of the road, and they meet under very strange circumstances there and such, so, , but they knew each other as kids, little kids, and they've met again, and they're sitting on a swing set, and this is the thing where I was saying one owl lands on one side of the swing set and the other, , and they both, and Pass out, and they have what amounts to like a near death experience or an out of body experience that they share together.
And this is like the hub of the whole book. The whole book hinges on this very important event. And everything after plays out directly because of this event. And I knew I had to write this, and I stayed up late. I was using any excuse not to write this and I finally got inspired and I stayed up late and I wrote all night long and then the next day I was rereading it and I was like, wow, it was a powerful, I tried to write it as short as I could and I kind of overwrote it and then I was editing it and cleaning up commas and stuff like that and then I had this thought like, oh no, like what did I do?
Like two people had a shared near death experience Like that's a lot to ask an audience and I was like, oh god, I've been working on this book for years and I just painted myself into a corner because no one's gonna buy this it's not believable And as I came to my heart sank I was like, what did I get myself into I was like Oh this whole big book and I was I was at this desk here and all of a sudden I was just like, I'm so tired, I can't even sit up.
So I lay down on the couch and I went, boom, I was out. Like totally out, out. And then I woke up and it was like waking up in the morning after a full night's sleep. I was only out for about an hour and a half. And then I go back to my desk and I check, which I don't do very often, but I checked facemail and I don't do this very often either.
I looked up and said, oh, there's one woman wants to be my friend on Facebook. And there's all these bots and fake accounts. , and I was like, who is this person? So I don't do this. I've done it a little bit over the years, but I don't do it often. I googled her. Her name is Scarlett Heinbuck, and she had written a book about a shared near death experience that she had.
Wow. Oh my gosh. Wow. And I was like, okay. The book is beautiful, by the way. The book is absolutely gorgeous. But I'm like, okay, I got permission now. So I literally called her up like right then. I was like, we're talking right now. Like, I'm kind of weird that way. I was like, we're talking. So I talked to her right away.
This is going back a number of years, she was doing Reiki, and she met someone at a meeting, and it was this mother, and this mother said, My son is dying, he's dying, he's expected to die, I'm here in town, my son is dying, he's expected to die, the doctor says he does.
So the woman said, Oh, can I give Reiki? It's a soothing Reiki energy. Can I do Reiki for him? She said, of course, so she asked the mother gives permission. So she went to the hospital room. He's going through kidney failure. He had a breathing apparatus down his mouth. He had tubes up his nose.
He had his eyes taped shut. He was on a medically induced coma. So she couldn't even see him. He had like a head net on and she didn't even know what he looked like. And then \ She held his hand and started to do Reiki and then she's like vaulted into this other reality She's like in this in this timeless realm of infinite love and she said it was like everything was sparkling and every individual dot of sparkle was like this Magnificent, enormous power of love.
And then she sees this guy, like, floating away. He's, like, going into the light. , he's leaving. And she grabs his hand. And she recognizes him. That was the guy in the bed. They've been married for ten years. She never met him before. She met him in the other realm. She's holding his physical hand. She didn't even know what he looks like.
And then she meets him in the other realm, and they've been married for ten years. , it's so Like, the whole book. Was written in a cloud like that. That of the fiction book, The Unseen, so I don't mean like you read it, you might be able to tap into like, it has that synchronistic vibe about it.
It does. Yeah,
, I've had that experience a couple times where I feel like the energy , of what was created. . I don't know how to say it, but like when I was reading the book, I could feel I could feel the energy of the story somehow I know I'm doing a terrible job of describing that but I've had that experience, only a couple times in my life where like, I've had another time with, like a person was talking I think on this podcast actually.
They were describing a story, they were saying something that happened to them, and I literally could feel, like I was there, like I was in the story, , and that's what I felt, , during reading your book, there were a couple times where I was like, oh, wow, I actually feel like what's happening here in this book, and, , it's on a different level, , it's not on like a physical level, it's like on a spiritual level, , you feel this weird sensation, this energy.
And yeah, I had that when I
was reading your book. Oh, thank you. Oh, cause I mean, the book was like, I really had to let go to write that book because the stuff kind of wanted to go this direction. And I, didn't like, I was like, yes, I had to make the commas and put everything and spell the words right and stuff like that and do that kind of normal stuff.
But at the same time, I was like, I had to let the story do what it was going to do. Yeah.
And I'm also a Reiki master, my perspective , I just wonder, because , I believe in, , different dimensions and the astral realm and I've had out of body experiences and I just, I wonder, like, when you create this story and you put all of this energy and focus, if you don't like actually create a place on the astral realm, and then you The readers actually , can kind of go there like if Tim maybe, you connected with it and on some level you go there and you do receive that or have that experience.
I like that idea anyway. It may or may not be true, but I like this idea that those, , who are creators like that and all of the energy that you put into creating this world really does exist on an energetic level on an energetic realm. That you're allowing others to, you're inviting them in and allowing them to experience.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And then I think it happened with The Messengers too, less so with the other two books. The stories from The Messengers, less so. But I think it happened with The Messengers too, like I was putting so much energy into that UFO and owl thing, and it was crazy how in the midst of writing, I was getting letter after letter after letter, and I would get to a point when I was like, oh, , I haven't got, I got a pretty good idea how this chapter, let's say owls and shamanism or owls and the pop culture, like I kind of know how it wants to go.
And then I was like, but I need one story just to, to make it coalesce just the right way. And then the next morning I'd get up and there'd be a. Email waiting for me with exactly the right story that happened that happened so much with the messengers that that first book and in a different way it happened with the unseen to I could talk to you all night, but I should let you go forgive me.
I drink some coffee.
But I did want to say cuz cuz Tim stopped his recording but thankfully I hadn't stopped mine, and you just gave us some like really great stories and I just want to make sure I asked for your permission, feel
free to use whatever you need. Okay, I didn't say anything out of. And Scarlett, Heinbuck has given me complete permission to tell that exact story.
Yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. You're just a wealth of beautiful stories.
Mike: I also made a little thing of coffee beforehand. So , it's turns me into sort of a chatty pants. So.
Tianna: Well, we loved it.
That's all right. Yeah.
Okay. This was a joy. Thanks so much. And I'm really, this is like, I do podcasts all the time and like, I'm so grateful that there's like this. Honestly, like people who work at radio stations and there's podcasts, those are so deadly dull. And then there's like these people who are doing it for all the right reasons, kind of on the ground floor in the basement, let's say. Yeah. And they don't have the big budget of let's coast to coast or some. And then, yes, and these are the ones I just really, like, I'm really grateful that you and others are doing this hard work.
Thank you. Yeah. That's so kind. Thank you so much. That's really nice to hear. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. All right.
This was a good one. Thanks.