Forrest J Ackerman (1916-2008)
A recently published paranormal case study is An Atheist in Heaven by Paul Davids and Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D. with John Allison, Ph.D.
A mysterious series of strange occurrences and synchronicities for Paul Davids commenced one night in March 2009. He was alone in his Santa Fe house when he noticed that on a document printed two hours earlier there was a fresh 'inkblot obliteration' with a few words inexplicably blacked out. He knew something uncanny had just occurred and recalled something that happened the previous week when he attended a tribute in Hollywood for the late Forrest J Ackerman. He had heard an anecdote about some potentially anomalous computer 'messages' related to the name Ackerman and his 'death.'
A horror movie and science fiction enthusiast and writer, Forrest J Ackerman was the founding editor of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland. Earlier in his career he was a literary agent for science fiction authors. He also was known to be an inveterate punster who always omitted the period after the 'J' in his name. The man whose friends called 'Forry' was living in Hollywood—or 'Hollyweird' as he was known to call the famous Los Angeles district—on Russell Street at the time of his passing.
Paul first met Forry at a World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C. The following year, the teenage Paul was a winner in a Famous Monsters amateur filmmaking contest. In addition to film producing and directing, Paul and his wife Hollace are the coauthors of six "Star Wars" sequel books published in 1992 and 1993.
The document with the 'inkblot obliteration' resulted with a phrase being blacked out that indicated a telephone conversation: "Spoke to Joe Amodei" — Paul Davids commented:
The message, if message it was, proved to be a total mystery to me from the beginning, and that bothered me a great deal. I had expected that, given the mystery and drama with which the ink obliteration occurred, I should have been able to understand the intent. Was it something that need to be deciphered? Was it a code? An anagram of some kind?
Paul recalled that the conversation had occurred after he was referred to call DVD distributor Joe Amodei concerning potentially distributing a documentary Paul had made entitled "Jesus in India." What seems of significance here is that in documented cases of transcendental communication—many profiled in articles at this blog—there are usually messages about the importance of each person's spiritual development and some of the cases mention the life of Jesus of Nazareth in relation to exemplifying self-sacrifice.
The unexplained phenomena observed and reported by Paul includes numerous unusual occurrences involving such things as masks, sightings of synchronistically meaningful license plate 'messages,' and "appearing pennies." Paul also described a series of psychic medium consultations that he found to be evidential.
A recent blog article quoted transcendental communication stating: "We give you certain threads connected with yourselves and your past existences and you have to try to put that into a pattern. We try to help you, but it still revolves around yourself, as indeed do all things of any nature which means progress."
Paul was compelled to investigate the puzzling events and two experts with whom he consulted became co-authors of An Atheist in Heaven. Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D. and John Allison, Ph.D. contributed chapters about their own curious experiences.
Here are some excerpts from the ninth chapter of An Atheist in Heaven by Paul Davids. These particular events occurred on February 21, 2013.
The mask of Forry that I had obtained at the Ackerman estate auction was perched on top of a display case. The display case housed the audio-animatronic alien prop from "Roswell," the 1994 Showtime movie that I executive produced and co-wrote.
All the windows in my office are always closed, and there was nobody in the house while I went out for lunch and took a quick trip to the Norton Simon Museum with a friend . . .
While driving to the museum, I was startled when a black car pulled in front of me with a vanity plate that said AM LOVES FM (with a heart symbol meaning "loves").
It caught my attention instantly, and I took a picture of it, because it was as though that license plate held a special message for me: ACKERMAN (or ACKERMONSTER [one of Forry's puns] . . . . AM) LOVES FM — or FAMOUS MONSTERS.
When I opened the door to my home office about an hour and a half later, to my absolute shock, I saw that the mask of Forry's face had moved across the room.
No sooner had I returned the mask of Forry to its proper place than my computer inexplicably went down. (I had left it on during lunch and the trip to the Norton Simon Museum.)
In this case, when I rebooted my Mac, the computer screen and separate monitor both displayed open folders that had not been open when it went down. One of the folders was filled with articles about Forrest J Ackerman; the other was filled with articles and cover photos of Famous Monsters.
This is one of the masks that inexplicably moved.
This photo from chapter 9 shows one of the screens filled with files that reference Famous Monsters.
Paul reflected about having experienced "things that seemingly show the universe interacting with me in rhythm to my thoughts . . ."
During one of the anomalous incidents described, Paul mentioned having noticed an EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) word that sounded to him as "LENORE." The EVP word was heard during video footage of EMF readings taken near a mask from Zimbabwe. Paul commented: ". . . I make note of the fact that Lenore is the name of a famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe . . ."
The Poe connection with the mask is something to ponder — first, because of the award-winner envelope Forry had sent me in 1964 which had a stamp of Poe alongside stamps of Santa Fe. Secondly, something uncanny happened to me within about a year, in which I broke an ankle and was bedridden for about six weeks. During those six weeks, I began writing a massive amount of poetry, some serious, others humorous. I had not written poetry since my college days, when a free verse poem ("Wading in a Photograph of Autumn Pond Water") won an award. The new poetry was not free verse but was rhyming.
Several of the poems were about Edgar Allan Poe . . .
He explained further:
There are paranormal case studies that encompass poetry or proverbs, including the cases of Pearl Lenore Curran, Chico Xavier, Lynn Russell, Elizabeth Fuller and Truman Bethurum.
As longtime blog readers know, what is considered weird or outlandish experiences by some may be viewed as commonplace for others — as shown by many autobiographical books and case studies profiled at this blog. Paul Davids realized there was some important purpose for the sequence of events.
By 2012, I had published the poems in three volumes totaling about 450 pages. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before. It was as though a great gift descended upon me, leaving me with a sense of having a literary mission.
There are paranormal case studies that encompass poetry or proverbs, including the cases of Pearl Lenore Curran, Chico Xavier, Lynn Russell, Elizabeth Fuller and Truman Bethurum.
As longtime blog readers know, what is considered weird or outlandish experiences by some may be viewed as commonplace for others — as shown by many autobiographical books and case studies profiled at this blog. Paul Davids realized there was some important purpose for the sequence of events.
At this point, I am prepared to accept that those on the Other Side have essentially given me an assignment. The assignment is to complete the task of getting this message out and completing both the video and written documentation of what really has happened since Forry died.
One of Paul's strange anecdotes concerns a 4 x 6 card placed along with a pen on a nightstand. He asked aloud "if spirit would write something on it" yet nothing happened. Then:
So the following day I asked spirit if it would just do anything to the card with ink, it didn't have to be actual writing.When I awoke in the morning, to my shock again, there was a tiny little scribble in one corner — it looked sort of like an "M" plus another tiny scribble line.
"A closeup of the tiny scribble that Paul cannot explain."
Longtime blog readers will recognize many parallels between my own experiences and Paul's, such as the 'M' in the bird gravel message photographed by the family experiencing 'talking poltergeist' phenomena in Centrahoma. There are even anomalous accounts of a shaking bed, moving chair and vibrating sofa when a group of people sojourned in Forry's former house known as the 'Ackermansion' and a seance was videotaped. There obviously are correlations as well with other paranormal documentation, such as those mentioned in my review of the "Bell Witch Cave" episode of "Ghost Adventures" that was part of my 2015 series of 'The Centrahoma Poltergeist' retrospective articles.
One of the interesting synchronicities when considering a 'Forrest J Ackerman' pattern (for readers acquainted with 'The Michael Pattern' last mentioned in a May article) concerns Forry's personal life. Paul Davids mentioned Forry's wife "Wendayne's grown son by a previous marriage had lived in the house with them for a year or two." I conducted an Internet search and learned that this stepson made his own transition to the afterlife a few months before Forry and his name is Michael Porjes.
The series of events chronicled in An Atheist in Heaven are reminders about the importance of taking heed of one's intuitive feelings and of reflecting with an open mind about occurrences offering some new insight into reality.
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