Lorie Barnes - Things Seen and Unseen: My Visible And Invisible Life Story

My Visible and Invisible Life Story

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 Lorie Barnes

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We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth, and of all things seen andunseen.

Roman Catholic Profession of Faith

This book is dedicated

To Betty Joe McMillan

Who danced with me in a Broadway show in 1953,

then showed me how to finally publish this in2012.

l

by Whitley Strieber

Certain people, often people who are littleknown, live lives so unusual that they suggest that there is agreat deal about our world that most of us do not or cannot see.Lorie Barnes is such a person.

On the surface, her life has been a journeythrough a career in music and the theater, but under that surfaceit has been something very different and much stranger. Very muchstranger.

My wife Anne and I met Lorie about six monthsafter I published my book Communion, in which I described a closeencounter of the third kind.

After the book came out, we received tens ofthousands of letters from people who'd had similar experiences. Oneof these letters came from Lorie. After Anne read it, she handed itto me and said, 'You should take a look at this.'

I found myself reading a remarkablyarticulate account that was generally familiar to me, but in somecrucial respects unlike my own. By this time, though, I was used tofact that there was rich variety in this widely shared humanexperience.

One aspect of her narrative was particularlyinteresting to us at that time, because we were just beginning tosense the true depth and complexity of what

people were actually experiencing, which wasvery different from the reports then being published by mostresearchers.

Specifically, Lorie described not onlyexperiences that seemed to involve aliens of some sort, but also alifetime of involvement with what appears to be human beings whohave died.

At the time, Anne had a chart on the wall ofher office, on which she was listing details being provided in theletters we were receiving. As they were coming in at the rate ofthree or four thousand a day, she was considerably behind, but onething was already quite clear: what was happening may or may nothave something to do with aliens, but it certainly had something todo with people perceiving their dead friends and relatives livingin some sort of afterlife.

Lorie's letter was precisely like this, butwith the difference that her descriptions were much morearticulately expressed than most. Clearly, she could write.

We also noticed that she was living nearby,so Anne decided to call her. All three of us were rather astonishedto discover just what nearby met. Out of our back windows, we couldactually see her apartment on Bleecker Street.

We made arrangements to have lunch together,and found ourselves spending hours with this vividly alive,hilarious and razor-sharp womanwho was also having some veryinteresting experiences.

Additionally, it turned out that she was acompetent secretaryin fact, more than competent, she wasexcellent. Anne hired her on the spot, and she agreed to start thenext day. On our way home, we speculated about what would happenwhen she saw the mountains of unopened mail in our apartment, anddiscovered that just opening letters was going to be a full timetask.

At that time, Anne had probably readsomething on the order of ten thousand letters, and passed about athousand on to me. We were really very eager to find out what elsewas in the treasure-trove that had fallen into our laps, and whichwas continuing to fall in the form of three or four big gray bagsof mail every day.

The next morning at nine, Lorie arrived. Shecame in, stared for a moment at perhaps twenty mail sacks that werestacked up along one wall of our living room, and burst outlaughing. She commented that we definitely needed some secretarialhelp.

That day, she and Anne made an assembly lineout of mail opening, and by the end of the day they had somethingalong the lines of three thousand letters ready to read.

Over the next few years, Lorie would type outand categorize the most complete of the letters, and that file,although entirely ignored by science, still exists to this day,waiting to be made use of. But, sadly, that has never happened.

In those days, we were having groups ofpeople up to our cabin in upstate New York to meet what we werecalling 'the visitors.' These gatherings were working quite well,as close encounters were routinely taking place when friends werethere. In fact, they were also happening to our son's youngfriends, and we were quite concerned about this.

We first noticed that the visitors were notexactly shy about showing up at the cabin one morning when one ofour son's friendsthey were age seven at the timesuddenly shoutedout, 'a little flying saucer just went through the front yard.'

This, I had not expected. I'd thought of theexperience as something private, and of what was happening to me asa sort of secret. Why, given all these letters, I looked on it thatway I don't know, but I did. And certainly, I didn't expect thechildren to be involved.

Night was falling, and I really did not seehow I could keep this child with us under these circumstances. Ourown son had already reported a few strange encounters, so we werevery concerned.

I telephoned the parents of the little girland told them what had happened. They were mystified. Where had sheeven heard of flying saucers? She had never mentioned them before.But they were surprisingly unconcerned. They thought it was allquite fascinating, and wanted the child to stay.

I compromised by staying awake all night,sitting in a chair close to the bedroom where they children weresleeping, alert for any activity. The next day was Sunday, and weleft the cabin early. I was very glad to put it behind me.

*

On the way home, though, Anne had the thoughtthat the visitors might be responsive if we brought other peoplewho were interested in them to the cabin. What if we could havegroup experiences? What if we could, wonder of wonders, getpictures?

I was being pilloried in the media, and I hadbeen trying every means I knew to get some kind of documentation oftheir reality, but so far had not been successful. Maybe a housefull of people with cameras and with a familiarity with theexperience would change things.

This is where Lorie comes in. At that cabin,she participated in what is very simply one of the premiereencounter experiences of my life, and certainly the most fullydeveloped one we ever had there.

It really started with Lorie. On thisweekend, there were about fifteen people there. A number of themwere a film crew who were making a documentary about me in supportof the feature "Communion," which had just been completed. Amongthe cameras they had brought was what was then a state-of-the-artlow light device.

We set this up in the downstairs hallway,pointing down the hall where there were two bedrooms. In one ofthem was another woman Anne had selected as being an exceptionallyarticulate witness, Raven Dana. Lorie and another woman were in thenext room.

In the living room, the filmmaker and hiswife were sleeping on a convertible couch. Events had started thatafternoon when Lorie had returned from a walk along the privateroad that led to the cabin, eyes wide with amazement. She had tosit down. She was really quite shaken.