The Entity in The Red Barn
Seventeen years old, while in the full envelope of several hits of LSD, Jason, myself and Tony headed out on a night of driving and good times. While this night would be largely an amazing time of youthful freedoms in northern California, it would end with an unexpected interaction.
The evening began with a single tab of acid for each of us, but would progress to three or four hits for each of us. After the first hit began to take effect we loaded into Tony’s 199x Eclipse sportscar and were off and running for the night. Additional acid tabs would be taken as the emotional desire dictated, all was well, the lines in the road were more like guiding lights guarding us from incident than any law of man, we were driving at quite a pace through backroads of the tri-county (Livermore, Pleasanton, Dublin) of the eastern bay area in California.
What occurred in the passing hours was of little importance beyond the simple fact that we were all young men enjoying the physical and mental landscape of ‘everything’. Brief memories of bridges, street lights and all with laughter for what would be hours, thank God we had a full tank of gas.
We had all come from our own version of an immoral past, and in that night, or that moment were seeking simply to laugh without fear, and we were having that well granted by whatever rules the universe. Beyond specifics we would all remember giggling to the point our sides hurt at the simple things in life and put before us on the country backroads.
Such an amazing moment when we stopped in the eastern hills, then a rural cow grazing area, above the lights of Livermore, Ca. We as a group watched the yellow and white lights of the city, with a few greens and reds, all unifying like liquid streams into the sky and touching the stars. Our breath was taken and our love for each other as renegade explorers was unquestionable in those minutes.
The hills in that place were a wind farm, innumerous modern windmills, rotating steadily under their weight in the breeze combing the dry hills of weeds and wildflowers. You could hear their blades as they swooped low with each pass, like a pulse set to a metronome. It was in that state we watched the lights melt into the sky, we felt unity and peace.
What a moment, the fake leather of the car, the cold barbed wire of the cow fences, the damp asphalt of the country road, the soft sway of wild grass. Then silence and utter stillness.
In a single instant the breeze stopped, the windmills stopped dead in rotation and an entity without any formal form of communication let us know to get the fuck out or face a consequence. Windmills do not stop in any short fashion with the stop of wind, wind does not normally stop that quickly but can, and nothing has even spoken previously to us without language or specifics.
In that split second Jason and myself knew, time to go, and something far more powerful was giving us the chance to leave without incident. Before I could yell Jason did so, ‘we have to go now!’, i was mid sentence with him with the same proclamation. It was not the windmills stopping, it was not the breeze stopping, it was no one thing in an order, it was all things at once, like a laser beam had made the situation untenable. We both continued to yell ‘lets go, we have to go now!’, Tony who was never a spiritually minded person laughed and said ‘why?’, we shoved him into his drivers seat and got the hell away, him asking why for a few miles..
–Selah–
It would be some time before I reflected on the story told to me by my older brother John when I was around 14 years old. That of when he and his friend Chad and others were out in the same hills of eastern Livermore, and they were exploring the the old mine shaft caves where men had dug deep into the heart of earth for gains.
As my memory serves to the story he recounted, they reached shafts of dangerous depths in the darkness, inches from falling in. At some point in that exploring of young men an energy communicated to them to get out and do not come back. As with me and Jason in the above example, there was no language or even a form of communication beyond ‘we know this now as a group mind, let us react’. ..in that incident they left immediately without harm beyond fear and respect.
–Selah–
It would be in my thirties that I had a dream that left me still and afraid. I am not one given to fear, nor do I see myself approaching such a mindset.
The dream begins with looking out westward from the crest of the eastern hills, there below and close to follow is a small shanty homestead, at the forefront a red barn with an upper hay level open and darkness behind. There in the darkness, no specifics, but the ominous presence of something of darkness beyond the strength of a group of men. Fear and misgivings to say the very least.
The dream then shifts to my vision beyond the barn, to the shacky house beyond where enslaved women and dirty children dwell. In that moment, a woman escapes and runs (east towards the rising hill line through a short valley between), just as an old truck enters the property through an old gate. The truck halts and three silver backed monkey men jump out to chase the escaping female, and clearly it was a father and two of his sons chasing her. A tribe of monkey men chasing down an escaped prisoner, a birthing female, a dirty 4 year old male human stands at my feet on the porch of the shack home, he is happy without issue with his oil stained face.
In that moment I run for the gate where normal peoples cars are passing by on a modern road, I do not see conclusion, but know I have escaped them.
The thing in the barns second floor, something in that darkness was immeasurably beyond the violence of the silver haired backs of the 3 human chimps jumping from the old green truck. Nothing was seen beyond a dull darkness that destroyed light, but there was a singular mind there without a doubt.
-Selah-
Before any of this, when I was a child without the jet packs and laser weapons of any drug, I won the only prize I have ever one. A painting at a local start up art shop, I did not consider it, nor did I value it. When they handed it to me they accurately asked me “We can give it to someone else if you want?”. I was disappointed my sister had won a bicycle, and my other siblings had won things I had not in their own ways. I am so sorry to that man and woman that delivered the painting and to the artist who would remain nameless to me, except I still have the painting, and it is labelled on the back as: Robert N. Scott and the painting is called “Summer Hills”. This writing is the first time I have read that text or known it was on the back of this work. Thank you Robert and to those two people who handed this to me.
-Selah-
Something did or does dwell in that general region (upper old Mines Rd. Not sure if to date that road is still there or if the area has since been developed from the dry hills it once was), in my opinion a demonic entity. This is not the only first hand encounter with ethereal entities, I will discuss more in additional recounting of stories from my past and present.
A lot of LSD that summer, shit every 3 days.
-Selah-
Here is the painting by Robert N. Scott:
