I was one of those kids with an imaginary friend. His name was Ralph. I also named my first doll when I was two years old myself, exclaiming when I saw her, "Tina!" Names are hard to remember in out of body state, I've read, and then experienced the name as a buzzing noise when in out of body in a dream as an adult. I remember Ralph getting mad at me for scolding him the way my mother did me -- playing house with him. My clearest memory of him was crying and screaming to Mom that Ralph was hungry. She,alarmed, asked where he was and maybe we could send him some food (we had plenty, being farmers) and he put a picture in in front of my eyes "PHILIPPINES" and I sounded it out or Ralph told me, for her. I was three or four and didn't know my alphabet. Dad asked at work if anyone knew anything about the Philippine Islands and one man there had been at Baatan. Then Ralph died one day and the next I was talking about him again and Mom said, "I thought he died." I said, now he's a baby. I think the first time I met him was when I woke up all alone in the house when I was 1-2 years old, I could just walk. My parents had left me home and gone to a family reunion dinner because I was sick, as usual. I was terrified looking out the window and trying to open the door and then there were whirling balls of light with furry tails that brushed around my face and made me laugh. One morning I told Mom that the kids had been playing getting married at school and a little boy had knocked me down and smashed my face into the grass, then he said, "you're all right." Rhonda was playing "preacher" to do the ceremonies and I had a cigar band for a ring. Then the boy and I sat on a mound of grass and I said, "what do we do next, we need a house and kids."

When I was about the same age we drove up the hill (we lived in the little house along the road)to Gram H's house in my parents new red '50 Ford. There was an Indian couple with several kids coming out the door and walking down the sidewalk and I yelled in amazement. Dad made me wait in the car and then came back and picked me up by the arm and started whaling away. The Indian man picked up his son by the arm and hit him at the same time. They were laughing. I thought that was the end of my ability to see people that weren't there, but later in LA I was waiting in the lobby of a Defense contractor highrise to be picked up for a computer class (escort badge) and another woman from the class and her student coworker, Ernie, sat down across from me. They talked to each other and I joined in when they mentioned the Lady In White, voted the most popular homeless person in the South Bay. I had spoken to her several times in Lawndale and knew her. Then the escort came and I asked the other woman and Ernie if they were coming too and they said, "later." As I passed the guard desk, she asked, "who were you talking to?" and I looked back and they were gone. Later the woman arrived at the class and sat down behind me (I had to sit in front because of my bad eyesight), and I asked her where Ernie was. He wasn't with her. She said, "you can see him, what does he look like?" He was a young American Indian in western style clothes. Later Ernie came to visit me at my office and the guard phoned for me to pick him up at the guard shack. I taught him the computer program we were using and he didn't say anything, just nodded his head, but I heard one of the men in the office say loudly, "who is she talking to?"

The last time I saw the Lady was driving, turning the corner to our apt, she was walking away, towards downtown and she had a surgical cap on her head, so I thought she'd been sick. My companion didn't seem to be able to see her and asked what she was wearing. She had a red, Russian looking face.

A coworker at a daycare in Iowa told me that she had three imaginary ducks when she was a kid and she drove her mother to distraction waiting for all three ducks to get inside before she could shut doors.

Right before I started Kindergarten, my parents bought their first acreage and moved from Gram's little house. The new house had very tall weeds because the old man that lived there had died. He had horse-drawn machinery and had built the house in pioneer days of very hard wood you couldn't drive a nail into. I had my own room and Dad changed my bed that he built -- unnailed and turned the hooks that held the springs up over -- and the mattress was high up in the air so that wolves that I was afraid of couldn't get up there. I could hardly get up there myself and sometimes the covers slipped when I jumped and I'd fall off. I remember two times waking up out of body in the barn. The first time there were Indians fighting with tomahawks and they seemed to be able to see me -- one hit me on the head or chest. The second time there was a wolf (it had big bloody teeth, but it chuckled and said I should be more afraid of the kids in Kindergarten than it) but I tried to climb the ladder to the second floor to get away from it, but it passed me and stepped on my shoulder going past. It had a hairy foot and weight on my shoulder. Mom asked the owner's daughter if there were Indians there and she said her Dad said a group used to camp by the creek, but she didn't remember any battle. Another time I dreamed about a house that wasn't there at the foot of the neighbor's steep, mossy hill. It was a very small old house and had a table and bottle of catsup that had been left behind when they moved out.