“Lost time is never found again.”
—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
That morning, Marc Dantonio, a bright, observant, well-adjusted school boy, clutched his brown-bag lunch as he stood more or less patiently waiting for the school bus. He was anticipating an exciting day filled with a welcome change in routine and fascinating, new experiences, as his class was scheduled for a field trip to Burr Pond. It was located at the center of the state park by the same name in Torrington, Connecticut (just up the road from Donna Fillie’s farmhouse).
As the bus came into sight his excitement grew. The bus stopped. The doors folded open. He looked up inside at the smiling face of the bus driver and placed his left foot on to the bottom step preparing to board. Those were the last things the boy remembered until he found himself making his way back down those same steps at his bus stop later that afternoon. He just stood there—fully perplexed. He was quite certain that it had only been seconds before when he had entered the bus. Why would he be back there? He looked down and found the brown bag containing his lunch still clutched firmly in his hand. He looked inside. It had not been touched—never opened, never eaten.
Shocked, frightened, and feeling lost, Marc tried to force some relevant memory. His brow furrowed. His lower lip drew up and quivered ever so slightly. He found himself caught between fascination and terror, what he knew had to be real and his inability to recall a single detail relating to it. He felt like crying and yet there was nothing to cry about. The prior 10 hours were represented in his mind by nothing but darkness—not so much as a fleeting image or sound or emotion.
Although he was not initially sure why, he decided to keep the experience—or lack of experience, or whatever—to himself. He didn’t mention it to his parents. He even kept it private from his closest friends with whom he shared everything. He didn’t ask the other students what they had done or seen that day. For some reason, not knowing seemed more comfortable at that moment—safer somehow. He didn’t want to appear in any way peculiar to the others and that line of questioning seemed likely to head him directly down the path to becoming “that kid”—the oddball or outcast every youngster feared being and would do whatever seemed necessary to avoid.
So, it just sat there somewhere deep inside him: a dark, terrifying, worrisome, conundrum. Among his first thoughts, of course, was that he might be losing his mind. At his age he couldn’t be certain just what that meant but, face it, time can’t just vanish. There had to be some explanation. Perhaps it would all come back in the minutes and hours ahead. He’d seen it happen on TV shows—memories returning after having been lost from a blow to the head. So, he quietly carried the heavy load of that fully unexplainable experience alone.
That evening it began. His body began shaking uncontrollably. It seemed obvious to his family: Marc was having a seizure. A few minutes later he was being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. In the emergency room the doctor agreed that it appeared to be seizure activity and the medical staff initiated treatment to stabilize the condition.
Once the obvious and dramatic symptoms were over and Marc was resting more comfortably, the doctor had several questions for him.
“Did anything out of the ordinary happen to you today? Any strange feelings, pains, or unexplainable aromas?”
Marc’s mind raced. The trip! Had something happened? Who knew? In his mind, there had been no trip. In his mind there had been no “today.” His plan had been to keep it all to himself. Why was the doctor interfering? It required that he provide an answer. To say “nothing” would only lead to more probing. He didn’t want more probing. He opened his mouth and provided a lie, which, from his fund of generally unfounded information about such medical things, he thought should handle the question and quash further questioning.
“I fell on a dock out at Burr Pond during the field trip today. Guess I hit my head.”
Rather than quieting the situation there in the hospital so he could quickly be rid of the place, it exacerbated things. After only moments of consultation, the emergency team decided that Marc needed to be treated as if he had a concussion in addition to the steps necessary to control the seizures. Epilepsy medication was prescribed. A series of “Don’t Do’s” was handed to his parents; keep quiet, no sudden moves, avoid bumping his head. Once that condition had been stabilized and he reported that he was feeling better (which, at that moment, was what he would have reported even if he suspected he was on his last legs), he was released from the hospital and his parents took him home.
That incident started years of what he would later determine was unnecessary epilepsy medication. During the following decade Marc experienced no hints of the condition. His doctors took that to mean the medication was working. Marc took it to mean he really didn’t need the medication. Apparently Marc was correct because he stopped taking it cold turkey and never experienced a problem again. Sometimes the medical profession forgets to “see” their patients in their larger milieu and therefore misses the obvious: Burr Pond had no docks. That information would have shed a different light on the problem: the need for the lie and all the additional information that might have then followed.
The Burr Pond missing time incident was just the beginning of Marc’s encounters with the paranormal. Years later, as an adult, doctors found a colloid cyst in his brain that needed to be removed. They operated successfully and there were apparently no after effects or complications. How long it had been there and whether or not it played any part in the Burr Pond incident is probably open for conjecture. However…
A number of significant problems occurred during the period following the surgery. Life became complicated, convoluted, and illusory. Marc had trouble working in his home office. He began hearing voices for which there were no obvious sources. He felt as though he was eavesdropping on an unseen group of people or as if there were a party going on in the room next door.
He reported those bizarre experiences to his doctor thinking they might have been some sort of aftermath from the surgery. Could they have been hallucinations induced by some aspect of the operation?
Not able to provide a conclusive answer, the doctor arranged for an MRI. The results came back normal. Marc described his visions to a number of medical specialists, all of whom said his descriptions did not match anything that would be related to his injury, the operation, or the subsequent treatment. They were at a loss to provide an answer.
The “visions” continued. What possible explanations might there be? Hallucinations seemed to accurately describe them, but of course description never answers the “why” or the “how did they come about” questions? So, if hallucinations, from what source? If not hallucinations, what other sources for the experiences might there be? Resurfaced memories, perhaps, of things he had seen years before that he simply did not remember because they were not effectively stored in his conscious mind? He decided to test that hypothesis during an event, which, from that day forward, changed Marc’s view of the world—and possibly many facets or faces of the “world.”
Many years after Burr Pond I had an unexplainable experience. Although the images I remember are not fully distinct, the experience is. I woke up and realized that I was having something implanted into my sinus. The “being” that was working on me had the look of an alien. I couldn’t see well because I was unable to move my eyes; they were fixed, as if frozen in place. I remained fully awake throughout the procedure, which seemed to be taking place in my house. Although many things about the encounter are fuzzy, one thing is very clear: It was a terrifying event and caused me to move my family to a new home.
I went to Hartford Hospital to have whatever it was removed. I was told it was a polyp. I had a suspicion so I asked if an implant (like a piece of metal) could have a polyp form around it over time. The doctor said it was possible so I asked him to check inside the growth to see if there was something inside. At that time it was already in a jar being labeled to go to pathology.
He asked me why I had reason to suspect such a thing. Looking back I believe I made a mistake when I told him the story of being awakened several nights before by knocking noises and flashing lights at the window (the dogs never slept under the window again). I explained that I woke up totally paralyzed, unable to move my eyes, and unable to hear anything—not even my heartbeat or my own breathing.
He laughed and said he was sure it wasn’t aliens. He said to give him a call in a week for the results of the biopsy.
A week later I called him and the doctor himself got on the phone as if the staff was alerted ahead of time to my call. When do you call a doctor’s office and have the doctor himself get on the phone? Never. His side of the conversation was strange from the outset.
“I just want to let you know that I am sure there is nothing to it—it’s benign I’m sure.”
I asked for clarification.
“What do you mean, I’m sure? Did pathology give you a report?”
“Well…okay, look. This is the first time this has ever happened in my office, but I sent it to pathology and they seem to have lost it.”
From his point of view that was it. The end.
I’m not a conspiracy guy, but I couldn’t keep my mind from going down that path. First, it was strange that something so extraordinary would get lost and, second, that it was the first biopsy specimen that had ever been lost in his office. I didn’t buy it.
Four years later, I returned to his office for something else and an interesting conversation ensued. He related that when he was younger he had been in the Air Force (in fact, he had just recently given up his top secret clearance). He explained to me that when he left the military, he entered medical school.
My mind started assembling all the bits and pieces. He still had his security clearances when he removed the polyp. When someone has a top secret clearance and something out of the ordinary comes to his attention that needs to be reported, it gets reported. If it is determined it needs to get buried, it gets buried.
Today I have no doubt that he reported the implant. There is, of course, no way to confirm that, so in reality it has to remain a suspicion. I do know what I experienced that night in my bedroom and the terror that accompanied it. Clearly, my dogs remembered it as well.
Figure 9-1. Astrophysicist Marc Dantonio in his home office.