“When we hear the word ‘universe,’ we think that means everything: every star, every galaxy, everything that exists. But in physics, we’ve come upon the possibility that what we’ve long thought to be everything may actually only be a small part of something that is much, much bigger.”
—BRIAN GREENE
Do I, Marc Dantonio, believe there are spirits? Not necessarily. That’s my answer and now I will try to explain why. I have had relevant experiences right here in my current house. I have seen and heard things that had no “rationally explainable” reason to be seen or heard. There is a back story to this that I need to share with you before I proceed. In simple terms, some years ago I had something go wrong with my brain. There was a growth in my brain from birth and it moved into the wrong spot. It is called a colloid cyst, which is a fluid-filled sac in the brain which, from time to time, can vary in size (more fluid, less fluid). When in the “wrong” spot, or of the wrong size, it can produce pressure, which, in turn, can cause brain function problems. As I suggested, mine migrated to a very, very bad spot. The doctor predicted I had less than eight weeks to live unless it was removed immediately. I was to go back the following day and he would go through the entire procedure with me—a very delicate and time-consuming operation as it turned out. I had the surgery. It was pronounced successful. Hmmm?
Even as a child, I have never been afraid of, or even worried much about what comes after life. I have always felt like I am manipulating a puppet from within this body. I never felt like this body was me. The “me” was some entity that controlled the body—like a master puppeteer. When, after the surgery, I started to have strange experiences; I characterized them as stemming from my body and not from “me.” They were happening, but they were somehow detached. Let me explain further.
At first I started to hear voices. I wasn’t hearing anything directed toward me—no commands, no demands, no reactions to things I said. It was more like I was overhearing other people’s conversations. Regardless of their detached nature, they were getting in my way. They were a distraction for me. I was having trouble focusing and the quality of my work was suffering. I went through a period of two or three months when I couldn’t really concentrate at all. I had to constantly listen to music to drown out the voices. They would distract me to the point where I would be in my office working on something and I would hear people all the way upstairs talking among themselves. Over time they became louder and louder. At home at night I would catch myself thinking, “Why are the kids still up? It’s 11:30 at night.” So, I would go upstairs and it would be dark. Everything was turned off. The kids were asleep.
It is important to understand that the voices are not in my head. They originate in the space about me. I can pinpoint the direction of their source with my ears.
About a year ago, I started to catch fleeting images of little things out of the corners of my eyes. At first I wrote it off to being tired. I talked to the eye doctor, but my symptoms were all wrong. I didn’t see the expected lights or little flashes or distorted lines. I saw flashes of people and animals—vague, though discernable images. There would appear to be someone walking by, but upon close inspection no one would be there. So, naturally, I thought I was just fatigued. Everyone sees things outside their vision when they are exhausted. Then I started seeing things in my direct vision—straight ahead of me. And they were persistent. I would move my head to the left and to the right and the images persisted in three dimensions.
One morning, I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom and I turned around. There was a woman standing there—a total stranger, dressed oddly. It scared the heck out of me. I looked at her. I couldn’t see flesh—it wasn’t that. It was semi-transparent. The movie The Abyss presents the closest example I can give. It resembled the “face” on the water creature. Imagine that without the sheen. That’s what these look like. There is no refraction through them. I can’t discern the three-dimensional quality that well because it’s all bound up in the translucency. Even so, based on the cut of the image—the shoulders and the general form—it looked like a women. She wasn’t looking at me. It appeared that she was looking through me at something else—experiencing some other image, as if I were not there, that my substance was fully inconsequential.
More than fascinating me or startling me, that experience frightened me. Certainly something fully unexplainable was going on and the unexplainable was never comfortable—good.
So, I consulted a neurologist and told him that I had begun seeing and hearing things. I went into great detail. My experiences puzzled the doctor who had removed the cyst. He said the part of the brain effected by that operation might impact my memory somewhat, but not other brain functions. He ordered an MRI but was unable to find anything out of the ordinary. A follow-up CAT scan was also clear.
Although I had tried sincerely to search for a definitive answer, I was unable to find a doctor who was willing to offer as much as a “likely” opinion. In fact, none of them had a clue and most admitted to that.
Because the medical profession had no answers for me I would look elsewhere. The next step in my search came about in the following way.
I was in my workshop working on a prop for a movie, having a ball. It was 3 o’clock in the afternoon and I was in high gear. All of a sudden I saw a dog-like something walk into the room. It remained low to the floor and expressed no apparent interest in me or in the specifics of the surroundings. It was semitransparent, looking to be a Pekinese by the way it moved and its general ball-like shape. It completed a tight a circle—the way dogs will do—and then laid down. I stopped working and studied it, leaning my head to the left and to the right. Whatever it was clearly existed in three-dimensional space.
My first reaction was to reference some personally present medical condition. Perhaps my brain was playing back voices or people or images like latent images. I had heard that sometimes happens as a result of trauma to the brain after surgery. It was, however, sixteen years after the surgery. It came to me that if I was seeing only mental images, I shouldn’t be seeing them in three dimensions. It should be like two dimensional snapshots, because my brain can only play back what it had seen. It couldn’t play back the other side of the dog, which had not been in view, for example. When I moved around it, I could see the other side. I walked closer to the dog to check and make sure my observation had been correct. It was. Three dimensions! I rubbed my eyes trying to make certain it was a persistent rather than a transient vision. It was the most persistent of those sorts of experiences that I had ever encountered.
Although I can’t explain how the idea came to me, it turned out to be a stroke of genius. I stepped into the dog’s space with one foot. I can only explain the experience that followed in this way: When you try to push two north poles from two magnets together it not only takes great force, but typically together they will slide past each other instead of confronting each other head to head—pole surface to pole surface. Molecularly, they are constructed to resist touching each other. That repulsive force you feel is an invariable characteristic of magnets—an unyielding phenomenon of nature.
I felt that same tremendous repulsive force in the back of my heel when I stepped forward to where this thing was. It was some kind of pressure trying to push my foot further forward. It occurred at the exact moment the “dog” stood up and moved away—apparently reacting to me stepping on it or into it or whatever had taken place. My leg became limp and flew out from under me and I fell. When I fell, I grabbed onto the table trying to prop myself up. In the process I wrenched my back.
That condition persisted for months, but hurt back and all, I was absolutely elated. I had just interacted with something totally amazing. I can’t make any judgment as to what it was. I do know one thing. It communicated. Rudimentary, but it was communication. I stepped on it—or at least too close to it for its comfort—and it reacted. I looked up in time to see just the last part of it fade away as it ran—vanishing in the center of the room.
I called several astrophysicist colleagues and asked about the current thinking regarding parallel universe theories. The big bang theory is still a theory only because it can’t be proved beyond doubt, even though there is a preponderance of evidence, which suggests there was a massive primordial super atom explosion. That state of the multi-universe theory got mixed reviews. One of them—a minority skeptic, if clearly a learned member of his field—said, “I don’t know if I buy into that crap. There’s no indisputable evidence to support it.” So I left it at that for the time being.
Just under a year later, there was a related article in Science. The article reported that scientists, in general, do believe in the big bang, and further that it most likely spawned multiple universes, not just one. Are those universes spread out side by side? Do they all occupy the same “space” but in different qualities of essence? Could it be possible that some “seepage” between them can occur?