Photo: Tony Ward, Copyright 2020
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Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2020
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Do You Believe in Ghosts?
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Do I believe in ghosts? I’m not sure. Since, like the original Christians, I firmly believe in reincarnation, I’m not sure ghosts fit into my cosmology. But, I’ve had experiences that certainly seem to indicate the existence of something like the traditional ghost.
My first photography studio was an old country store building that was part of the small farm we bought in the early 70s. In front, with double doors opening onto a big front porch, was one large room, which, after I took out the counters, gave me a large, unobstructed working area. The only limitation was low ceilings, only about eight feet, that made certain lighting effects impossible. There was a second floor that I didn’t use, so I thought of taking away part of the floor to get my lights higher, but wasn’t sure. of the structural integrity of the building if I did that. The upstairs was where the people who once ran the store had lived.
There was also a back room downstairs that I made into my darkroom.
A staircase in that room led to the upstairs. Having spent as much time as I have in darkrooms, I’m certainly not afraid of the dark,.but that room used to spook me because I’d be working making prints or developing film and I’d clearly hear someone coming down those stairs, or going up them. It got so bad that I took out the staitway and closed the opening to the upstairs. Did I ever see anything? No. Nothing ever touched me, either. Not that time.
Years later, my late girlfriend, Marion Franklin, whose untimely death put me in prison, used to spend a lot of time, with me and solo, just hanging out in my photo studio on Main Street in Radford, Virginia. She loved it there, and was learning to work behind the camera as well as in front as a model. I’d made plans to enroll her in a photography school to learn the nuts and bolts of the business.
Anyway, it was not unusual for us to just hang out in the studio, even when we didn’t have any active photography projects.
Several weeks after her death, I was just sitting in my studio, head down, eyes closed, feeling very depressed. Not only had she died, but the local cops and prosecutor were blaming me for her death. I was in a real funk, not knowing what my future held, or even if I had a future.
I felt a soft hand on my shoulder. When I opened my eyes and looked up, there stood Marion, dressed in her usual blouse and jeans, smiling down at me with love in her big brown eyes. To say it freaked me out would be a major understatement. She stood there a few moments looking into my eyes, never said a word, and walked away.
I was completely stunned, didn’t know what to do. I think I called out, “Don’t go!” or “Come back!” But, when I ran into the office where she had gone, it was cold and empty.
Over the next few weeks she came several times, always when I was most depressed, and then I never saw her again.
Famous physicist Sir Roger Penrose, whose books I recommend, says he has evidence that the soul survives bodily death as a “packet of information stored at the quantum level,” an idea borne out by research at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Germany. It is only recently that some real research into the nature of the soul has been done.
After my arrest for things that never happened I began seeing a therapist recommended by my doctor. I was having problems over Marion’s death and being falsely blamed for causing it. The therapist was a very kind woman whose regular sessions helped me survive the four years between my arrest and trial. When I told her of my visits from Marion, she told me that in her experience as a therapist, it was a common experience.
But what did I see and feel? I wonder to this day if I’d picked up a camera and snapped a picture, what would have been recorded. Nothing, perhaps, if it was merely a projection from my mind borne of longing. But, maybe, just maybe, it would have recorded an image of what I saw, gentle Marion returning to my studio that she loved so much. I’ll never know, and,.after several manifestations, she never reappeared. These occurrences were in the daytime.
Whitley Strieber has written of his experiences with his late wife, Anne, and even ‘coauthored’ a book with her spirit. I don’t dismiss his writings as fantasy, as so many have. I think we’ve removed the spiritual from our sciences to our detriment. We’ve tried to convince ourselves that there is no difference between living and dead matter, kicked the soul out the window. Slowly, I’m seeing that change, as a new generation of people take over the sciences. Maybe one day we will have a science of the soul and understand how the universe really works. I hope I live to see it.
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 13th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read Bob Shell’s, first essay on civil war, click here: https://tonyward.com/bob-shell-jailhouse-nicknames/
Editor’s Note: If you like Bob Shell’s blog posts, you’re sure to like his new book, COSMIC DANCE by Bob Shell (ISBN: 9781799224747, $ 12.95 book, $ 5.99 eBook) available now on Amazon.com . The book, his 26th, is a collection of essays written over the last twelve years in prison, none published anywhere before. It is subtitled, “A biologist’s reflections on space, time, reality, evolution, and the nature of consciousness,” which describes it pretty well. You can read a sample section and reviews on Amazon.com.
Bob Shell: The 60’s
Bob Dylan circa 1960’s. Photo: Charles Gatewood, Copyright 2020
Text by Bob Shell, Copyright 2020
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The 60’s
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In the summer of 1966 I moved to Washington, DC, to take a job I’d been offered at the Smithsonian Institution as a biological illustrator. I’d been making detailed paintings and pen and ink drawings of insects, birds, and animals since grade school. I was getting published regularly in wildlife magazines around the country, starting while I was still in high school.
In college at Virginia Tech I had a job making drawings of insects for scientific papers written by one of the entomologists there, and was becoming well known in the small population of professional biological illustrators, while studying biology.
I’d become sort of a pen pal with Andre Pizzini, one of the Smithsonian artists, who became my mentor, and helped me get the job there.
So that’s when and why I moved to DC. This was in the American social catharsis that was 1960s, when the civil rights movement was going full bore, the protests against the Vietnam war were accelerating, music was transitioning from Elvis to The Beatles to acid rock, and all of American society was in foment.
The despised Lyndon B. Johnson was president, followed by the even more hated Richard Nixon.
We were asking ourselves why, in idealistic America, we had a two tiered society, with blacks as second-class citizens. “White Only” signs were on restrooms, restaurants, and in other places. We were drafting our young men and shipping them off to southeast Asia to be slaughtered. Country Joe was singing the “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” — “And you can be the first ones on your block to have your boy come home in a box.”. Many of my high school friends were drafted and some did come home in boxes. All for a stupid war the US should never have gotten itself mired up in.
I got caught up in the protest fever. I joined protests, picketed the White House, was teargassed on the lawn of the Pentagon, holding and calming a hysterical friend. Saw soldiers lined up in front of that imposing building to guard it from us, unarmed kids. Saw those same soldiers. break down in tears when girls put flowers in the barrels of their rifles. They were no older than us, didn’t want to be there, caught up in an idiotic confrontation.
The Smithsonian Institution was created by a gift to the United States from James Smithson, an Englishman who never set foot in America. He left us a fortune in his will to create, “in Washington,DC, an institution for the increase and dissemination of knowledge among men.”
Unfortunately, the Smithsonian depends on Congress for funding, Smithson’s money having run out long ago. Projects I was working on often lost their funding, and I bounced from job to job, working for a while at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Maryland, just outside DC, drawing mosquitoes for the Southeast Asia Mosquito Research Project, that I learned was a CIA front when the Washington Post outed it. So I actually worked for the CIA for a while, although I was never a “spook.”
Please remember that America in the 1960s was like an alien planet compared to today. Many years of inflation hadn’t yet made the dollar practically worthless like it is today. Gasoline was less than 25 cents a gallon, an expensive car was under four thousand dollars and you could get a hamburger for fifteen cents and a bottle of Coke for a dime. I paid fifty bucks for my first serious camera, a used Nikon F with lens and a separate handheld light meter. That was a significant investment for me, since the museum projects paid me sixty bucks a week, which also happened to be the monthly rent on my big, two-bedroom apartment in central DC.
The sex, drugs, and rock and roll movement was in full flower, and I leaped in with both feet, going through a succession of live-in girlfriends, popping psychedelics, which were still legal, and going to rock concerts.
Some people I knew had bought an old movie theater, the Ambassador Theater near Georgetown, and tore out the seats, leaving a bare concrete floor. They brought in west coast bands like Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, and many more, plus local bands like The Andorene, and had an elaborate light show projected behind the bands on the old movie screen. Since I knew the people, I never paid admission, and was there just about every weekend.
For live music, there was also the Merryweather Post Pavilion just outside DC, founded by the Post cereal fortune heirs, which was an outdoor theater, with seating and overflow onto a big lawn. I listened to Ravi Shankar there, and folk groups like Peter, Paul and Mary.
I was making Beardsley-esque pen and ink drawings of nudes for the Washington Free Press, an underground newspaper of the day, doing art on commission for anyone who’d pay me, and living well, but not extravagantly. When I was between grants I’d head up to New York City and hang out with people I knew, taking in the East Village scene, going to concerts by groups like The Velvet Underground, The Grateful Dead, The Mothers of Invention, The Fugs, Pearls Before Swine, Bob Dylan and many others. I was in my twenties and enjoying life to its fullest.
In 1968, for reasons I no longer remember, I moved to Richmond, Virginia, and lived in “the fan,” the area near Virginia Commonwealth University, where my cousin, the same age as me, was living. We’d grown up more like brothers than cousins, and many who knew us in school thought we were brothers. I lived with him and his wife until I found an apartment of my own and was happy in Richmond until early summer of 1969, when the apartment I shared with four others was raided by the Richmond police. One man, who was visiting from DC had one marijuana “joint” in his pocket, and they arrested all six of us for possession! Marijuana possession was a felony back then, and we could have been given up to thirty years, but we all got three years each, suspended. That meant being on probation for five years. That was my first brush with the American “justice system.”
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About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. He is serving the 13th year of his sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Facility, Virginia. To read Bob Shell’s, first essay on civil war, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/parole-denied/
Editor’s Note: If you like Bob Shell’s blog posts, you’re sure to like his new book, COSMIC DANCE by Bob Shell (ISBN: 9781799224747, $ 12.95 book, $ 5.99 eBook) available now on Amazon.com . The book, his 26th, is a collection of essays written over the last twelve years in prison, none published anywhere before. It is subtitled, “A biologist’s reflections on space, time, reality, evolution, and the nature of consciousness,” which describes it pretty well. You can read a sample section and reviews on Amazon.com.