The audible, nonphysical bell was a phenomenon that appeared in my apartment in Tienen, Belgium, just after the sudden death of my boyfriend, Willy Vanluyten. It stayed over two years. It sounded somewhat like the watch sound that signals the hour, though there was no such watch in the apartment. It was part of an initiation. More on this and other subtle experiences inside Keep This Quiet! III: Initiations (2014) and the revised, expanded, retitled brand-new edition of volume IV, Ancient Secrets Revealed (2017). I was fascinated with all mysteries, this one included. Where did they come from? How could I use them creatively?
A glimpse from the about-to-be published revised fourth memoir, Ancient Secrets Revealed, takes us to Tienen, Belgium, in 1991. Willy had just died:
Thrown off balance—but excited—by the energy beginning to permeate the apartment Willy and I had shared, I felt the need to reach out to an old friend, though I had close female friends in a weekly “Inner Landscaping” course in self-development in Brussels and in a mystical Tai Chi course in Leuven. But I wanted someone with a longer view of me, who wouldn’t laugh outright at the fact that since Willy’s death I had a nonphysical bell sounding in my apartment in response to thoughts. Who could I call? Someone who took “weirdness” in stride? Hunter [Thompson].
Not that I told him right away about the bell or even about Willy, but I broached the topic of psychic experiences and he listened. At least, he didn’t dismiss them outright, but said he preferred the word “intuition.”
After numerous long calls January–April 1991, we found a window of opportunity to meet. It latched onto feelings never lost. We
both felt the old tie that had never broken stirred up. However, think about the unknown territory we had to cross now. Hunter did not know me as a mystic. He had only a clue or two about what was going on in my apartment—about which the reader will get more input coming right up. I did not know the extent of his increased drug use. It didn’t matter. We knew something more basic, which held on despite these important things that should have driven us apart. Would it, when we met?
