Chapter 22
MRS. RUTH HAGY BROD
- JANUARY, 1972 -
The next morning was not an ASPR working day. So I went to visit Ruth
Hagy Brod and told her of the situation. I had a certain amount of savvy
regarding all of this, of course -- and Cleve Backster had certainly hinted
at it earlier.
But I needed to talk it out with someone whom I knew did know how things
like that worked.
And now it is my great pleasure to introduce Ruth (and her husband, Al
Brod,) so that they do take their wonderful place among all the other people
who were so kind and supportive during my early years in the "field"
-- and without whom I would have been scrambled into soggy fish cakes long
ago.
Even in her matronly years, Ruth was an exceedingly beautiful woman, with
jet black hair parted severely in the middle and drawn tightly into a large
bun in the back -- in a Spanish style kind of way.
She was also extremely elegant and stylish and liked to wear vast amounts
of bold and very good quality jewelry, none of which was too much or out
of place with her affable nature.
Al had a seat on the stock exchange, and dealt with money people, while
his dark, piercing eyes could get his points across all by themselves.
In her earlier years as Ruth Hagy, she had been a quite famous journalist
during the 1940s up through the 1960s.
The walls of their small apartment on Park Avenue were papered with dozens
and dozens of framed photographs of her with just about every famous person
who had existed -- presidents, cultural and religious leaders, and various
important culturati.
She and Al were thick inside things in Washington, and were often invited
to presidential dinner parties and balls. And it was through Ruth that
I was eventually to be introduced to various Washington types of all kinds
-- mostly under the veil of secrecy, though, for no one wanted openly to
be seen talking with a "psychic."
Ruth listened to my tale of woe regarding the two guys, and then smiled.
"Don't worry too much. They have been tracking you. This is a good
sign."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"THEY keep track of all notable psychics. They have for years. They've
had dark programs for a long time. Everyone knows that. They're probably
just interested in your progress at the ASPR. They ALREADY know everything
else about you."
I mulled this over. "You mean some kind of surveillance? In psychic
stuff? But who ARE they?"
Ruth smiled calmly. "Well, one never knows for sure."
Ruth then took me to lunch at the Press Club just near her apartment.
Once there, I had collected my senses enough to ask: "But surely THEY
can do their stuff without anyone knowing about it, can't they?"
"Oh, yes. So they WANT you to know you are under scrutiny. That's
how they work. They want to find out how you will behave."
After I had worked my way through this bit trying to decide if it was true
or not, I decided it represented a challenge of some kind. I was angry,
and embarrassed, but this mysterious event did constitute a perhaps positive
scandal -- if interpreted the way Ruth had done.
The problem was that with only a few exceptions, those who inhabited the
field of parapsychology would not interpret it in this light.
The upshot of this was that I determined to begin the FORMAL OOB experiments
at the ASPR -- and let hang out whatever was to flutter from them.
Perhaps this was because of the martinis though, THREE of them Ruth and
I had each imbibed BEFORE lunch was served. (In those years I could still
drink martinis.)
Ruth spent the rest of the luncheon bowling me over by narrating a litany
of who's who in Washington and which psychics they consulted -- in their
closets, of course.
She mentioned that someone should write a tell-all book about "The
Psychic Connections in Washington, D.C." She herself could not write
it -- because she and Al would be stricken from all invitational lists down
there.
As it turned out, Ruth, who knew every journalist of any standing, couldn't
resist talking up this situation. And Zelda and Buell Centrals went haywire
with the news that "Ingo is being monitored by the CIA" -- which
I doubted, and still do.
But the same news was busily being "leaked" in whispers from
the ASPR itself. The only bad thing about this is that I, at least, was
quite certain that parapsychologists would shortly become alarmed -- as
some of them did.
I wasn't stupid, even if I had naive pockets here and there. I fully understood
that in a short time I would be News -- IF the formal OOB experiments succeeded.
If they did not, I knew I would be mud and fodder for skeptics and TIME
magazine's infamous "Fraud Box" -- which in the past had featured
the eminent J. B. Rhine, and even stooped so low as to feature his wife,
Louisa. I hated that "Fraud Box" without reserve or limitations.
I think it was this "Fraud Box" hatred which compelled into existence
a factor which was to serve me very well ahead.
I developed a kind of DETERMINATION for which English has no precise word.
Perhaps that kind of determination soldiers must arouse in the face of
going into deadly battle -- the "well, here we go for better or worse."
Somewhat in this way, I now fancied myself not only as a lean, mean fighting
machine, but as a warrior on behalf of the subtle perception potentials
of our species.
So I told Zelda, mostly to pump myself up a little, "Well, I now have
to make myself into a Warrior, not just into a test-subject."
And indeed, barely two years later, the somewhat startled media were to
publish articles about such imaginary psychic warrior creatures.
No one ever found out who THEY were, those two cretins who dared so openly
to challenge my nerves at the ASPR.
Yet, far, far worse lay ahead.
And at this point, we were but six months distant from the first infrared
photos. To me, it already seemed like a lifetime.