The pope.

I remember when I was about six-years old I had to climb a short flight of fourteen stairs to go to my bedroom.  About midway up the flight I would close my eyes and hold the handrail.  I would keep my eyes closed until I reached the top of the stairs and after I turned down the hallway towards my room.  I was afraid until I made the turn.  At the top of the stairs my parents had a large, framed photograph of President Kennedy and his wife Jackie.  I had no idea who they were at that age but the way the light hit the photo creeped me out.  It was one of those photos where the eyes seem to follow you around the room.  When I was about eight-years old my parents had a rare visit with some friends over for dinner. They were talking about J.F.K.’s assasination as I played with my Fort Apache near the kitchen table.  By then I knew who was in the photo at the top of the stairs and how he died.  I knew that his son was only a year older than me when his famous father was killed and how beautiful the First Lady was to my mother.

I often heard my mom tell her story about where she was when the tragic shooting in Dallas happened.  She told her story about how shocked she was and how some of her co-workers were crying when they heard the news.  She went home that day and cried herself when she saw the news reports and she could not believe someone would shoot such a wonderful president.  And poor Jackie, poor, beautiful Jacqueline. I never heard my father talk about his thoughts until the night their company came over for dinner.

“The C.I.A. knocked him off.”

He went on to talk about Vietnam and the escalation of the war, that he believed, Kennedy did not want America to be involved in.  My father understood that there is money in war and he believed that if Kennedy didn’t want to get the war machinery going, the government could, would and did, “knock him off.”

I stopped playing with my cowboys and listened intently to the conversation above me at the table. That evening I was listening to my very first conspiracy story.  Throughout my childhood my dad would tell his stories about travels throughout America after he came home from WW II.  More than once he told a tale about a farmer that gave him a lift while he was hitchhiking in New Hampshire.  It was my favorite story because he talked about seeing a huge, ball of light that stopped about a mile in front of the pick-up truck in the darkness.  It glowed red and orange while it swung back and forth over the road they were on. Then it suddenly and silently vanished over the trees.  The farmer could barely drive his truck home afterwards and they were both in shock about what they had just witnessed.  My father was convinced what they saw could not be explained away by a natural occurrence.

So, I grew up reading books about U.F.O.’s and detective magazines as a kid. 

I remember tearing photos from my dad’s  paperback about U.F.O.s for my eighth grade science project.  Mr.Kolifrath gave me a high B because he liked my enthusthiasm but he didn’t think the content was very scientific.

About seven years ago I picked up a small piece of paper torn from a magazine in my father-in-law’s bedroom.  The house phone was ringing and I picked it up in his room.  As I stood there talking on the phone I was just able to read a small portion of the article that was on the floor.  It was about global secret societies and their plans for total, global domination.  I had never heard about such things so when I hung up the phone I pulled the paper that was half under his dresser and read the full page.  Then I made a very bad decision and one that would eventually drag me into a pit of fear, anxiety and a sense of hopeless dread for about three years; I went home, got online and searched the names of the companies, government agencies and various players listed in the article.

Some doors should never be opened.

TO BE CONTINUED........