The following excerpt is from the Preface to LIKE A MAN IN A RAINCOAT:

I am writing this from the end of a rope! You’ve got to understand that.

And while this would seem to be several stories about different people, it is all one story, one person done like a door, again and again. It is a story triggered by an event several years ago in which I appeared to be abducted by some other-world intelligence, ‘alien visitors’ if you will, though they no longer seem alien to me, nor are they visitors—some have been here as long as we have been here, perhaps longer.

But this is not a story about alien contact. It is about human consciousness and transformation. The event of my abduction however, real or imagined, not only put its mark on my future but reshaped my past as well, causing me to remember and rethink things that have been happening to me all my life, even into early childhood; things I have managed to overlook, ignore, or deny for so long that they have simply been forgotten. This is an attempt to revisit and perhaps re-frame some of those earlier experiences.

This is a book of confessions, true stories about real events involving real people. It is also a book of dreams, visions, out-of-body encounters and other-world visitations —experiences that have both informed and baffled me throughout my life. Truth is, I cannot remember a time when I was not under the influence of some alien force, call them angels, demons, spirits, extraterrestrials, all ‘alien’ in consciousness and way outside the human range. There were even times when I felt like I’d been abandoned to earth, my spirit imprisoned in the body of an earth boy. My own grandmother was an alien.

But I don’t believe these things are unique to me. I just happen to remember them, whereas most people do not. Fortunately, I have met enough people whose experiences are similar in kind, if not in detail, that I’ve been able to compare notes and information. And that has led me to believe that the world most people believe to be singular and absolute, is but one in a cluster of parallel worlds arranged like the layers of an onion. And though we’ve been programmed to perceive only one world, we still have the capability of entering into those other realms which are every bit as real, unique, absolute and engaging as the one in which we live our daily lives. Indeed, they are indistinguishable from our daily lives. (When these things started happening to me, I was just a boy growing up in cliched circumstances —a kid doing kid stuff in small town America.)

There are many ways to describe the events which follow, from alien abduction, to the channeling of other dimensions, to the expression of multiple selves through a single entity, a single soul. Indeed, the soul itself may be more diverse than previously imagined. I don’t know. What I do know is that the human psyche is infinitely more complex than our rational mind would have us believe; and the stories depicted here embody a number of diverse goings on in my soul’s heart and mind.

Nor does it matter how you think of these small histories and their collective story; consider them to be the rantings of a personality in crisis and disarray, or as the celebration of a variegated soul, it’s your call—like a man in a raincoat, I am simply exposing myself in hopes of a little something in exchange. But be assured, every word is written in the faith that I can trust my deepest instincts. I was made to tell this story. It is etched into my body as well as my brain. Indeed, my body, my relationship with others, my entire personal life has undergone drastic changes in order to accommodate this telling. And it has cost me dearly in the loss of friends and family. I have spent most of my adult life wrestling with angels for the right words to describe what takes place here.

Though I have no grasp of the math, the theory behind quantum physics has fired my imagination and propelled me along for over thirty years. It is within the quantum that I find explanations for passing through walls and bending the limits of space and time. Throw in super-string theories and multiple dimensions and time-warp tunnels, and you have all you need to grow a fantastic but perfectly plausible universe. Indeed, if quantum shows us anything it is that everything is made of light; nothing is solid. And inside everything are gateways to an inverse cosmos.

Add to that, a growing belief circulated around the globe of a race of ‘star people,’ come here to assist planet Earth in her transition into a new age of consciousness—indeed, they may have been here for eons just waiting for this moment in cosmic history. (In truth, they have probably been here through several such moments, playing midwife to the birth of a new human.)

And that brings us to Prune. I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least warn you about Prune. This is, after all, as much his story as it is mine.

Perhaps the most genuine and unlikely character you will meet on these pages, is Prune. He is neither a composite nor an invention. In fact, Prune has been with me since childhood, embodying my earliest memories. Something of a quasi-mystic guide or harbinger of change, Prune claims to have come here from deep in interstellar space, on a mission. (He is also a thief and a liar, but that’s a whole other can of noodles.) The amazing thing, most uncanny, is Prune’s ability to turn into anything at any time, whether he wants to or not, just by thinking of it—very tricky, and wrought with hazards.

And he seems to have been on planet Earth forever; so long, in fact, he can’t always remember why he came here in the first place. Under the human influence for so many lifetimes, he has developed a brain cloud, causing his consciousness to blink on and off like a neon sign with an electrical short. Fortunately, as a harbinger he is not required to do much more than show up looking as good as someone several thousand years old could possibly look.

Now whether or not you buy into any of this, is not my concern. But it helps me—it may not help you at all—but it helps me to better understand Prune’s intrusion into my life. I might be wrong. We might all be wrong. The truth might be so outlandish as to be beyond our ability to even imagine it. One thing I do know, is that Prune continues to be the most real and alive thing I have ever known on any plane of existence. The night he disappeared, I was sure I was going to die. Did, in fact. It was the longest night of my life, the most terrible and perplexing and sweet.

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