Owen Often Beside Himself

By R.J.R. Rockwood

This book describes the experiences of Owen, a psychically gifted young man who from early childhood was out of his body as often as he was in it. In elementary school, at recess, he performed mind reading and other demonstrations for his classmates. The children loved them, but the teachers and principal were aghast, especially when he performed a fake levitation.

After he earned his PhD, as an assistant professor, he served as the subject for masters level research in telepathy. In Key West, he used his psychic powers to locate a kidnapped child. At his next assistant professorship, he used his psychic powers too frequently, delighting the students but incurring the wrath of the administration.

Summoned to the deans office and informed that his contract would not be renewed for the next year, Owen projected himself like a helium balloon out the deans open window and into the afterlife, leaving his dead physical body slumped in a chair.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524554705

R.J.R. Rockwood

Dr. Robert John Remington Rockwood has a B.A. in English and German and an M.A. In English and Russian from the University of Miami; a Ph.D. in English and Linguistics from the University of Florida; and he has done advanced study in historical linguistics at the University of North Carolina. For the year 1973-1974 he was a Fellow of the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University. Dr. Rockwood has served on the full-time faculty at Florida Southern College, Florida Keys Community College, Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Florida. From 1978 through 2001 he worked as an industrial technical writer, editor, and web designer at such companies as Lockheed Martin, Unisys, NCR, and Talus. Starting in 2002 he taught online courses for the University of Phoenix. The Body Dies but the Spirit Lives, 2nd Edition, Revised and Expanded (2020) is his twelfth book published by Xlibris. The others are: • Leopardo da Gotcha (2002) • The Passing of Merlin Zauber (2005) • The Last Ant (2007) • Dillon's Rocking Bear Invisibility Chair (2013) • I Don't Talk to Earthlings (2016) • Owen Often Beside Himself (2016) • The Primrose Path (2016) • The Spirit of Alchemy (2017) • The Eternal Life Ministry of Teenage Michael Maier (2018) • The Rhetoric of Inner Space: Student Writing Based on Dreams (2019) • The Body Dies but the Spirit Lives On (2019) Dr. Rockwood lives in Roswell, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta. His e-mail address is [e-mail].

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Copyright © 2016 by R. J. R. Rockwood.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016917936

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5245-5472-9

                Softcover        978-1-5245-5471-2

                eBook             978-1-5245-5470-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 10/27/2016

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CONTENTS

Cover Art

Chapter 1: Starting Out

Chapter 2: Psychic Tricks and Anglerfish Hullabaloo

Chapter 3: From Magic to Music

Chapter 4: In College Talking to Devon

Chapter 5: Devon Wondering Who He Is

Chapter 6: Graduate School and Student Teaching

Chapter 7: Doctoral Study

Chapter 8: Assistant Professorship plus Telepathy Research

Chapter 9: Key West

Chapter 10: Applying to the CIA

Chapter 11: Owen in Trouble Again

Epilogue

COVER ART

C over art is by R. J. R. Rockwood. The front and back covers are acrylic on canvas. The front cover depicts Owen walking to school in the morning, his out-of-body self, as usual, floating above his physical body. The back cover shows Owen casting a scary telepathic illusion on a boy new to his fifth grade class, who refused to participate in Owen’s recess telepathy demonstrat ions.

CHAPTER 1

Starting Out

O wen had an extremely loose relationship with his physical body. He didn’t like talking about this, but he drifted out of himself constantly. It started even before he was born. His mother was alone in a hospital room when she went into labor. She reached behind her for the call button, but it had slipped off the bed.

That was when he slipped out of her and floated against the ceiling. He could see a thin, glistening, thread-like cord extending from her to him. Looking down, he watched the entire birth process. Finally, a nurse entered the room, and immediately summoned several white-coated individuals who appeared within seconds. Owen returned to himself just as his mother and he were placed on a wheeled stretcher and furiously rolled down the hall and into an operating room.

As an infant, Own was as often outside himself rather than inside. He never wondered why more people didn’t notice, since during his time earlier as a spirit he found that he could present himself as a ghost to an embodied person usually without detection. Occasionally an embodied person, especially a child, did notice, but only if the person were ‘metachromatic,’ that is, endowed with superior eyesight that included ability to see in ultraviolet light.

One of the earliest experiences that Owen remembered from his earliest childhood was when he managed to climb up to his grandmother’s kitchen counter and crawl across it. Then, just before he hit the floor he sprang out of his body, avoiding the pain that his crawler body expressed with loud screaming, summoning his grandmother into the kitchen to rescue him and soothe the hurt.

When he was four, he observed his mother slip out of her body and float against the ceiling. This happened when she opened the telegram from the War Department announcing that his father had been killed in action in North Africa fighting the Second World War.

As his mother stood in the middle of the living room staring at the telegram, Owen noticed that what he regarded as her real self, the white glow, or aura, that usually surrounded