"Nuts and Bolts" A paranormal experience

Nuts and Bolts. A paranormal experience.



The following is a rendition of an experience I had when I was young. My narrative is spoken generally, but the experiences are as near true remembrances as I can manage.

What I encountered has been, by others, labeled an “apport”. While “teleportation”, according to these definitions refers to a “person” transferring from one physical position to another without physical movement in between, through another dimension, an “apport is the transference of “a physical object” from one physical postion to another with out physical movement but rather through some other dimension.

Day One

It was 1968 when my brother, several friends, and I were all renting a two-bedroom townhouse. The two bedrooms were up-stairs, which necessitated two guys in one room and three in the other. We were all 18 to 20 years old.

To avoid the three to a bedroom crush, I opted to take my twin-sized mattress down stairs and stick it in the down stairs closet, which was situated beneath the staircase. This left me enough room for a small dresser and stereo along with the bedding in my own private closet.

Late one afternoon, I was home alone and in my closet, listening to Jean Sibelius on my earphones and I had just finished listening to the third movement of his 2nd Symphony when my friend Mike came in the back door. Mike and I had been best friends through three years of high school and we had remained hooked at the hip on into college.

When I came out of the closet, we discussed the third movement for a bit (both of us being musicians) and then looked around for something else to do. We were out of herb, so what ever we did, we would have to be sober. Our wallets were empty so that meant that there was no money for beer either. So we might as well stay home.

I made the suggestion of playing with the Ouija board. A few weeks before, we had been at a party and one of the girls there was heavy into it and it had provided a somewhat more than boring evening. So we pulled out the second hand board that someone had left with us and began to use it.

At the time, our weak understanding of the nature of the occult was simple. Every person has a soul. Every person has a guardian who watches over that person. While using the board one might communicate with ones own guardian or someone else’s guardian. This was as I mentioned, a simple understanding.

We sat on the floor with the board between us on our knees. At first there was no movement of the indicator on the board. Slowly the indicator began to move around the board when suddenly it abruptly stopped, then, jumped from beneath our hands and shot across the room.

We gaped at each other in astonishment and retrieved the indicator. We sat down again and for the next ten minutes or so, it moved around the board, spelling out your general gibberish and moldy answers. We thought we were speaking first with the guardian of the girl we had met a few weeks earlier, and then it changed and we were told that we were in communication with my guardian. Both, her guardian and mine kept telling us that we would soon be visited by Nuts and Bolts. When pressed as to the identity of Nuts and Bolts, all it would say was Nuts and Bolts is coming, Nuts and Bolts is coming.

After a short time, we were in the middle of a long-winded reply, when the indicator again came to an abrupt stop. It then began to circle the board, first slowly, then with more speed and forcefulness. It was so energetic that I could feel energy coursing through my hand and up into my arm. It circled the board faster and faster and faster, then again abruptly came to a stop.

Mike asked the board, who was visiting now. It replied Nuts and Bolts.
I asked, Nuts and Bolts? It replied, Nuts and Bolts, then it began circling the board again. We asked it to stop and it did.

It was Mike who came up with a possible identity on Nuts and Bolts. He suggested that if each of us has a soul and each of us has a guardian, maybe Nuts and Bolts could be the guardian of things, which are inanimate, things, which do not have souls. He offered this question to the board and we were answered in the affirmative. Like I said, our understanding was simple. But if this were the case, then we figured we had a big power on the line.

At this point, we decided to ask for some form of proof. If Nuts and Bolts were as powerful as it suggested, it might be able to manifest in some physical manner rather than just through the indicator. When asked, it said it would.

So we asked if it would move something for us.
It said it would
We asked “what will you move for us?”.
It said “thumb”.
“Thumb?”
It said, “thumb”.
We waited. After a few more minutes of waiting I asked it where we should wait. It said “in your room”. I asked, “in my closet?” It said “yes”

We got up from the floor and I climbed into the closet and Mike went to the kitchen for some water. As I was scrunching down into the closet to make room for Mike, something scrapped against my side. As I had been in there for over an hour a short while before listening to Sibelius, I was a bit nonplussed at the discomfort of some strange item sticking me in my bed. I reached down to pull it out and found myself holding a cardboard thumb tack board filled with thumb tacks.

I quickly got out of the closet and showed Mike the thumbtack board. He was not impressed. We went back to the board and said that that had been a cute little presentation. It replied “Thank.” We then asked “thank?”. It replied “S!”
We took this to mean that we had cut if off before it could properly spell out thumbtacks.

Well this was not enough for Mike, not enough proof. So we asked it again if it would move something for us and it again said yes. We asked what and it said that we should choose.

We both then looked at a cigarette lighter we had sitting on the end table near us. It was an antique lighter in the shape of a bulldog, sitting on its haunches. It wore a suit and top hat and had a cigar sticking out of its mouth. The head had been made to flip back and expose the lighter but the hinge had broken and the head sat loosely on the body.

We asked the board if it would move the dog’s head, thinking that maybe it could swivel the head to the right or the left. Nuts and Bolts said it would, but that it would take time and patience from the two of us. We asked when would it move something and it said it would happen before anyone else came home.

After some time, it told us to go up stairs and look around and mentioned several times the word “cone”. We had upstairs, a big, orange road cone used to mark off areas of road construction which we had modified into a large hooka. So we went upstairs and looked around for something obvious that we would know as proof of Nuts and Bolts but found nothing. We came back down stairs. Mike went into the bathroom to take a leak, and I went back to the Quija board and glanced at the bulldog. The head of the bulldog was gone.

I staggered over to the bathroom and told Mike, upon which he immediately came out and we went back to the board. We asked it where we could find the dogs head and it told us it was in my room. We went over to my closet, opened the door and found the dogs head sitting on my pillow.

We put the dogs head back on the dogs body and sat down when the door opened and my brother walked it. It had happened before anyone else had come home.

We told my brother the story and he was interested so we sat down with the board again and it told us again to go up stairs, mentioning the word cone again. My brother went up the stairs followed by Mike with me brining up the rear, checking out the bulldog and its head as I left. We looked around again looking for something obvious, looked under the road cone hooka and found nothing. As we were getting ready to go back down the stairs again, I lifted the road cone one last time and found nothing. As I set it back down, my brother screamed and fell to the floor in limp shock.

He said, Terry, I swear, just before you put it back down, it wasn’t there and then it was. I lifted the cone again and there was the dogs head sitting on the rug beneath it.

For the next two weeks, we fiddled with the board but nothing like the dramatic events of the first night happened again until two weeks later. During this time, Mike’s girl friend had moved in with us so I had relinquished the closet room to let them have it for some privacy and I had moved upstairs to share a room with my brother.

Two Weeks Later
Day Two.

I worked the grave shift and had gone to bed at nine in the morning. Around noon, Mike and his girl friend came up to ask me if they could borrow some money. I was asleep so they went to my wallet, took out a five-dollar bill. As they did this I woke up and asked what they were doing in my wallet. They showed me the five-dollar bill and said that the ouija board had told them that I had some money to lend them. The thing was though, I was broke, and had been for two days. Enough time to have checked out my wallet a half dozen times looking for any money, which might have gotten tucked up in a corner or under a flap or something. I had had an empty wallet, yet at the ouija boards insistence,
they had come up and found the money in my wallet.

At this time we did some speculating as to the moral implications of money being transferred to us through some supernatural means. Was this stealing or something?
We didn’t know and let it go. Of course we hoped that it could come up with something bigger, and lots of it, but when questioned about this the reply was tha this money was just a prop to be used to demonstrate the possibilities around us.

To make a long story short, the next hour, with just the three of us in the house, was filled with phenomenon. The five-dollar bill, as well as the dog’s head began making other than physical movement from one place to another around the house. Always beyond our sight. We would put the dogs head under an inverted cup, be asked to go to the other room and look under the cone, only to find that the dogs head had transported from the cup in one room to under the cone in another. Sometimes, the dog’s head and the five-dollar bill would just exchange places. Most of the rest of that hour is a blur.

I was as cautious as I could be about watching my best friend Mike and his girl friend to make sure that things were not being moved around by them. I deliberately was the last to see the head or the money go under the cup or the cone and the first to check to see if there was any movement.

The most remarkable event of that afternoon was at one point, I put the fiver dollar bill under the cup and put the cup down. I then waited a few seconds and lifted it up again only to find that the five dollar bill was gone. Putting the cup back down and immediately lifting it back up, I found the money returned to its place under the inverted cup.

Day Three

Finally, though we used the board a lot over the next week or so, again nothing dramatic occurred other than weird movement by the indicator. Jumping out from beneath our fingers and tipping up on the back end and scooting around like it was doing a wheely.

So. Three weeks later I had mostly lost interest in the board. I had seen what I wanted to see. Proof for myself of other worldly phenomenon. By this time, other people had been coming and going hoping for some kind of miracles to happen but none did.

So, that afternoon we had finally gotten some herb, and I had gotten tired and laid down on the couch and dozed off. As I lay there, I thought that I felt a presence come through the wall and sit on the far end of the couch. I thought this might be Nuts and Bolts. I asked the two people using the board over in the kitchen if there was a new presence in the room. They asked the board if there was and it said yes. I asked who is it and they told me the reply was Nuts and Bolts. I asked where Nuts and Bolts was and the answer from the board was, sitting on the end of the couch.

Conclusion

I can recall these incidences pretty clearly as they left little for interpretation. Either I believed they were happening or I didn’t. I might have taken the whole experience as a drug induced hallucination. I ruled this out as I was never under the influence of any drug except for the final evening.

I might have written the experience off as being manipulated by my best friend and or my brother. Through the years, both have denied any personal manipulations of the dogs head or the money. I supposed that after a time at least one or the other would have fessed up as to pulling my leg, but neither ever has.

What I have settled on is that I was presented with a number of very rare paranormal manifestations. Though the manifestations remain pretty clear to my memory, the other things which were spoken of through this ouija board have faded over the years as they were always open to interpretation in any event.

What we called Nuts and Bolts offered us quite a bit of urging towards personal development and exploration. We were told that what we were experiencing was possible, but that in order for it to happen, certain energies and contingencies were needed in order for the manifestations to happen. We were told that the paranormal experiences would only go on for a short time and that their meaning would be up to us to decide for ourselves.

This is the first time I have written all of this down. Most likely, for most who take the time to read through my ramblings, it will amount to nothing more than that. Ramblings of a decaying mind on a strange little website.

I offer this tale not as proof, for proof of anything is in the mind of the beholder. It is not even proof for me, for exactly what it might be proof of remains even now, open for my own personal musings. I offer it here, as I suppose it may be interesting to someone else .

I think that one persons proof is not anothers. Mine is not yours as I can assure you, yours is not mine. I think that we all have inklings in one manner or another of something beyond our ordinary, easily accepted existence. This is one of mine.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


Thanks for that TerryMcGuire, I really enjoyed reading your story and you are a very good writer. Anecdotal stories like yours are the ones that I like the best when it comes to the paranormal. I don't think that they require any sort of proof.

I'm trying to imagine a group of young people in 1968 that would actually take the time out to be concerned that they might be stealing the 5 dollars. It seems right to me somehow that your ouija contact would be introduced to you all as "Nuts & Bolts", and that a group of kids such as yourselves would be picked out for a short term demonstration like that.

Couldn't tell you why, though.

Thanks again,

reply to post by Bybyots


Others of the group moved on into other normal types of life. I took off after some kind of grail. The question of why we were privy to this kind of experience has been with me since. For quite a while I thought it might have been in preparation for some future event or revelation. None such have come about.

When coupled with several UFO sightings in the years preceding this event I speculated that I was on the cusp of some grand waking up for mankind and that this kind of thing would continue but it has not.

Now I live with the simple assumption that there was a personal need for at least one of us and that once that threshhold had been crossed the need for "proof" no longer existed.

The general message at the time as I recall was "Yes, here is this awesome power and reality beyond normal human experience which if experienced AS normal, would completely change our human situation, but that this normal human situation was what it is really all about after all.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


Great post & story. And very well told...S&F!

I've read a number of different accounts of a similar vein, but this one is really interesting for a number of reasons.

Not sure what to think, but there's something about this...

Have you had any more recent experiences with "Nuts & Bolts"? Have you tried or are you trying to let that sleeping dog lie?

Curious...and thanks again for sharing that.

reply to post by Riffrafter


Thanks for the note Rafter.
There was an intensity, for me at least, during that time which I think was unsustainable. I was pumped up. So pumped up that soon after those Nuts and Bolts experiences I chased off after more of that intensity by joining a Messiah cult (the Moonies) which incorporated several of the principles I believed to have been imparted to me by Nuts and Bolts. So driven by that intensity that it took me four years to extricate myself from the web of falseness which was woven by that group.

I've come to understand that psychic experiences like that can work like medical drug addiction. Sometimes we need Demerol or any other drug. Once those drugs serve their purpose, it is best to get on again with out them. They get us through our medical crisis but then it 's time to get back to life as usual. Continuing to take them burns out your system when you no longer need them.

I know that back then, I was in the throws of an existential twist, a place of deep questioning into the nature of being and non-being. The two headed coin of to be or not to be. The Nut's and Bolts experience went along way to helping me off that existential ledge.

One thing that that I came away with from that experience is that existence is a balanced affair and that the balance between physical reality and "beyond physical reality" is a fragile,uh, barrier, which needs to be maintained for the integrity of this physical experience.

So,no. I no longer seek to live life at a "high boil". Rather I try to maintain a "slow simmer" based on my experiences of those times. I have more than enough existential implications left over from Nuts and Bolts along with several UFO sightings back then to last me the rest of my life.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


Hi Terry,
Nice story, well told.
I have to admit though, that I chuckled when I read...

When I came out of the closet, we discussed the third movement for a bit

Just my dirty mind I think!

regards
GTD

PS - please be careful with the "herbal" references, they are frowned upon n these parts!

reply to post by Gordi The Drummer


Thanks Drummer.

(When I came out of the closet,) Yeah, me too, but I just let it ride.
And yes, thanks for the caution on herbal. But as it was in reference to 45 years ago I opted for cautionary rather than censorial language.

I have always assumed that any energies coming through after such low-level contact were going to be of a lower vibration, or of a lower or negative quality. Maybe my understanding is not correct, but I still believe this to be the case at the moment. I don't understand all these types of things to the fullest extent possible, but I believe that of all the experiences with these boards, whenever something was contacted, the vast majority of the time it was negative.

It makes sense as well considering what negative entities want, and that they are looking for an "in" into our world in a sense. Whether "their" world is actually our world, another dimension of our world, or whatever, I do not know. Maybe there are multiple temporal dimensions, just as there are multiple spatial dimensions. Sort of like the RS2 theory that is being worked on by a handful of scientists at the moment, which was pioneered as the Reciprocal Theory by Dewey Larson way back when. Considering we can observe 3 spatial dimensions, it stands to reason that there could also be 3 temporal dimensions, since we are extrapolating based on what we can already see.

reply to post by JiggyPotamus


Yes, I too had heard the stories about negativity and lower entities lining up to come over and infest ouija board users.

I don't know why the board works, just that it can. Whether it is trolled by low vibe souls or by angels, or manipulated by our own deeply hidden subconsciousness(though I lean towards ruling that one out), I don't know.
I think there is a strong possibility that the Church pushed those warnings to maintain themselves as the only safe way to interact with the "other side".

During the Nuts and Bolts experience, other entities at times would come across the board claiming to be Nuts and Bolts.
The thing was that Nuts and Bolts had a specific signature, the way it swirled around the board, crossing over certain letters while jerking into others, It was always the same.

At one point, we were given the letters FLQ and told that it was a key that mischievous entities could not perform. That if when asked to spell FLQ and it was unable or unwilling, then the words coming through were in no way to be trusted.

As far as just exactly what, or who Nuts and Bolts was, or is, no longer matters much to me. What is important to me is knowing that there is something deeper to our existence than is obvious to our naked eyes.

Thanks for the reply Jiggy

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


excellent, i loved that, i love ouija board stories, especially when you get one thats intelligent. i have never been able to get a board to work and am fascinated by them, i had a friend who's used one for around 40 years, he used to get the odd threat, but nothing other than that, he always respected them and thats what he got back.

reply to post by TerryMcGuire


Very good story. I have to wonder if you've had any experiences with strangeness since... When I was young my sister and I found a Ouija board at my grandmother's house and I don't remember if we played with it or not. Well, I know we played with it, but not if we knew what it was and how to use it at all. Anyway, nothing happened then. But for years afterward I had many experiences of poltergeist type hauntings and things moving around by themselves and footsteps and things I can't even remember now. Reading this thread has made me ask for the first time if the board might have had something to do with the later phenomena. Anyway, I agree with Jiggy that the thing always seems to bring forth negative or lower dimension stuff.

reply to post by slippeddisc


Thank you disc.
After Nuts and Bolts, I used the board sporadically and then only for amusement.
I understood that what I was allowed to witness as very rare and that to keep using the board to find that kind of phenomenon again would most likely be futile. I mean, what could it do for an encore, materialize some dancing girls with a bottle of port?

There is an old adage that goes "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" which basically means if you get something great from someone, don't go back to them and ask for more. My father taught me that and I guess I applied it to my experience on the board.

reply to post by wtbengineer


Hi engineer.
Since that experience, like you, I have had numerous "experiences" but not nearly as dramatic. I had several haunted house experiences prior to Nuts and Bolts and several UFO sightings which if you are interested I have posted here on ats, you can look them up in my post history if you like.

Since then for the most part nothing that bears elaboration. It's like I received what I needed when I needed it and it has carried me along since then. For years afterwards I searched to understand why this happened and how this happened and why it happened to me. But for now, I find comfort enough just knowing THAT it happened.

this is a very well written document; i appreciate a thorough experience report!

I have personally never dabbled with a ouija board, but I've heard some experiences with similar aspects from friends. Nothing so intense or constant though, I'm not sure i'd react so level-headedly to the whole thing haha though i can see your correlation to my thread. Perhaps in contacting your multiple "guardians" or higher consciousness' you alerted an external observer of sorts who kinda of watches over an area of the system? like a maintenance/fixer spirit, a mechanic if you will - ie, nuts and bolts?

interesting read, thanks for posting!

Great story, and very well written. S&F for you!

I can validate that things like this happen. I have shared this experience in many threads, but since you are rather new to ATS you may not have read it. So... here it is again, just for you. Now you will know there are others who share weird experiences.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I had a ring setting that was made from Kentucky coal that my husband gave me (ex-husband now). He said it was one of a kind. About a year after we were divorced I lost the setting in the ring at a local club.

Three months later my cousin and I went to a drive-in theater (this was in the mid 1970's). During intermission I went to the bathroom located inside the concession building .
As I stood and looked up, there was something black dangling in mid-air in front of my face. I thought at first it was a spider hanging on a web, but then it fell to the concrete floor and made a noise, so I knew whatever it was, it was a solid object.

As I knelt over getting a closer look, I realized this was the setting from my ring that I had lost three months prior in a totally different place!
It was like it just materialized in front of my eyes, stayed there until I saw it, and fell at my feet.

I picked it up and put it in my pocket.

When I went back to the car my cousin asked me if I was okay because she said I was pale as a ghost.
I told her what happened, and she was speechless!

When I got home I placed the setting in my ring, put the ring away in my jewelry case, and I have never taken it out again since that day! Still don't know what to make out of this!

I've received money from spirits too, but mine wasn't as generous as yours. It threw a penny and hit me in the back of the head with it. I was alone washing my hands at the bathroom sink. That just left me standing there speechless for a bit!

Hi

I really enjoyed reading that. You make it really easy to visualise your experiences, thanks for writing so clearly.
I remember trying out a Ouija board years ago with some mates, and we panicked when it moved! So full credit to you for staying with it!
I like thinking of your roadwork cone bong, it made me laugh. Brought me right back to my own student days.

I love reading great stories and that was a great story. Hope you've got lots more

a reply to: TerryMcGuire

Quite remarkable. I shall be reading this one again

a reply to: PeterSellers

Thank you Peter. As I clicked in here I decided to read that tale again and found that my memory still stands with that rendition. See you around the boards

a reply to: PeterSellers

Thanks for bumping this thread Peter, I had forgotten it.

To TerryMcGuire:

Good to see you here Terry, I had not only forgotten this thread, but I had almost no memory of the story when I reread it just now. Strange, I normally would remember a story like that.