He’d speak wistfully about some future day when he’d have less work on and could investigate the paranormal for real. And now that day has come.
• • •
LAUGHLIN, NEVADA, looks from the sky like a tiny Las Vegas, a cluster of crumbling themed casinos poking strangely out of an expanse of desert. We are traveling here in a private plane that Robbie has rented for the day. He’s brought along Ayda and a friend, Brandon. The flight attendant was there to meet us on the airstrip.
“Welcome to your plane,” she said to us. “I just want to tell you that Snoop Dogg uses this plane a lot. What I’m saying is,” she added in a lower voice, “you can do anything.”
We all looked at each other. We’re middle-aged now. None of us could really imagine what “anything” might mean anymore.
“Are we allowed to stand up as the plane lands?” asked Brandon.
• • •
WE LAND. A car is waiting on the tarmac to take us to the nearby Aquarius Casino Resort. We take the escalator to the second floor, walk past the stalls selling DVDs with titles like
Secret Space: What Is NASA Hiding?
and into the cavernous conference room where British speaker Ann Andrews has just begun her audiovisual presentation to an audience of five hundred.
I have to say, after all the anticipation, she seems a bit boring to me. She’s recounting various tales of alien visitations in quite a dull voice. I half switch off and glance over at Robbie. He is engrossed. He is leaning forward, taking in every word. I decide to pay more attention so I can try to understand why.
Ann Andrews’s life was quite ordinary, she says, until 1984, the year her son, Jason, was born. She flashes onto the screen a snapshot of a sweet little boy sitting in a field in Lincolnshire with a horse in the background.
“That’s Jason,” she says.
One day, when Jason was a toddler, Ann says she noticed he had a terrified look on his face. She asked what was wrong. He replied that aliens had appeared the night before at the foot of his bed and taken him to their spaceship, where they conducted tests on him. He said it was happening every night. As the weeks and months passed, Jason’s story apparently never changed. When nobody was looking, aliens would come, float him up to a spaceship, and teach him the mysteries of the universe. They would teach him that he was placed on earth to become an Indigo child—a psychic sage.
“We took him to a psychiatrist,” Ann says. “We cried so much. We had him tested. But the tests all came back negative.”
And then one day, when Jason was twelve, Ann says she made a very big decision. She decided to believe her son. Every word. She has subsequently written a series of books about Jason, including one called
Jason, My Indigo Child: Raising a Multidimensional Star Child in a Changing World
.
I lean over to Robbie.
“She believes Jason!” I whisper. “She believes it all!”
“What’s the other side of that, though?” Robbie whispers back. “It’s either believe everything the boy is saying or remain steadfast to earthly beliefs and have a black sheep in the family. ‘Oh, it’s him again.’ For her own sanity she has had to believe him.” He pauses. “But for me, right now,” he says, “everything she’s saying is true.”
Ann’s audiovisual address ends with her projecting onto the screen behind her a series of extremely blurry photographs. From time to time, she says, Jason is summoned to the spaceship again. When this happens, Ann tries to photograph the UFOs. But she has only a disposable camera, and so the pictures always come out fuzzy and inconclusive.
It’s time for the Q & A. Robbie’s friend Brandon stands up and walks to the front. Brandon is a record producer and cowrote some of the songs on Robbie’s last album,
Rudebox
.
“I just wanted to ask: Why don’t you buy a better camera?” he says. A slight gasp reverberates around the hall. People don’t usually ask
• • •
LAUGHLIN, NEVADA, looks from the sky like a tiny Las Vegas, a cluster of crumbling themed casinos poking strangely out of an expanse of desert. We are traveling here in a private plane that Robbie has rented for the day. He’s brought along Ayda and a friend, Brandon. The flight attendant was there to meet us on the airstrip.
“Welcome to your plane,” she said to us. “I just want to tell you that Snoop Dogg uses this plane a lot. What I’m saying is,” she added in a lower voice, “you can do anything.”
We all looked at each other. We’re middle-aged now. None of us could really imagine what “anything” might mean anymore.
“Are we allowed to stand up as the plane lands?” asked Brandon.
• • •
WE LAND. A car is waiting on the tarmac to take us to the nearby Aquarius Casino Resort. We take the escalator to the second floor, walk past the stalls selling DVDs with titles like
Secret Space: What Is NASA Hiding?
and into the cavernous conference room where British speaker Ann Andrews has just begun her audiovisual presentation to an audience of five hundred.
I have to say, after all the anticipation, she seems a bit boring to me. She’s recounting various tales of alien visitations in quite a dull voice. I half switch off and glance over at Robbie. He is engrossed. He is leaning forward, taking in every word. I decide to pay more attention so I can try to understand why.
Ann Andrews’s life was quite ordinary, she says, until 1984, the year her son, Jason, was born. She flashes onto the screen a snapshot of a sweet little boy sitting in a field in Lincolnshire with a horse in the background.
“That’s Jason,” she says.
One day, when Jason was a toddler, Ann says she noticed he had a terrified look on his face. She asked what was wrong. He replied that aliens had appeared the night before at the foot of his bed and taken him to their spaceship, where they conducted tests on him. He said it was happening every night. As the weeks and months passed, Jason’s story apparently never changed. When nobody was looking, aliens would come, float him up to a spaceship, and teach him the mysteries of the universe. They would teach him that he was placed on earth to become an Indigo child—a psychic sage.
“We took him to a psychiatrist,” Ann says. “We cried so much. We had him tested. But the tests all came back negative.”
And then one day, when Jason was twelve, Ann says she made a very big decision. She decided to believe her son. Every word. She has subsequently written a series of books about Jason, including one called
Jason, My Indigo Child: Raising a Multidimensional Star Child in a Changing World
.
I lean over to Robbie.
“She believes Jason!” I whisper. “She believes it all!”
“What’s the other side of that, though?” Robbie whispers back. “It’s either believe everything the boy is saying or remain steadfast to earthly beliefs and have a black sheep in the family. ‘Oh, it’s him again.’ For her own sanity she has had to believe him.” He pauses. “But for me, right now,” he says, “everything she’s saying is true.”
Ann’s audiovisual address ends with her projecting onto the screen behind her a series of extremely blurry photographs. From time to time, she says, Jason is summoned to the spaceship again. When this happens, Ann tries to photograph the UFOs. But she has only a disposable camera, and so the pictures always come out fuzzy and inconclusive.
It’s time for the Q & A. Robbie’s friend Brandon stands up and walks to the front. Brandon is a record producer and cowrote some of the songs on Robbie’s last album,
Rudebox
.
“I just wanted to ask: Why don’t you buy a better camera?” he says. A slight gasp reverberates around the hall. People don’t usually ask
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