I was fifteen years old when we met, about to turn sixteen, and he was about to turn nineteen. We were at a group for LGBT+ youth. I had recently had a weird experience with a friend of mine who claimed to be psychic, and I overheard a different person mention in conversation that they were psychic, and I whipped my head around to see who had said it, and he caught my eye and smiled a bit. I started dating a mutual friend of his, and we got to know each other a bit while hanging out at her place, when our group of friends would get together for movie nights.

One night, we were hanging out, watching shows and chatting and smoking, when him and his boyfriend mentioned that they could both see spirits and things moving around in the room. None of the rest of us could see anything, and the boyfriend took out his camera and started taking pictures, and when we would look on the screen, we could see strange orbs floating around, and what looked like the shapes of faces on the wall, in shadows. Then they said that they could see someone standing in front of the television, and took a picture in that direction, and when we looked at the screen we could see him: a man who looked like a mix between Colonel Sanders and Santa Claus, but he had a scowl on his face that made the appearance frightening, rather than comical. That, combined with the spooky circumstances, was enough to seriously freak me out, even though I didn't believe in ghosts or spirits. We spoke a bit about supernatural forces, and he mentioned that he had had a few near death experiences, and that he believed that coming close to death could cause a person to be more likely to experience these phenomena.

I began to develop a fixation on him. I was deeply ashamed and embarrassed by this, and did my best to deny it, but I would find excuses to talk to him, and would ask my girlfriend to invite him over, and try to find ways to see him. When I would go to the youth group, I would scan the room for him, and feel pins and needles on my skin and a fluttering in my stomach when I would see his face, a feeling that I now associate with anxiety.

One day, we were at a party at my then girlfriend's place, and I was sitting on the couch, smoking a cigarette, when he came up and sat down on a chair, right in front of me, with his legs spread so that his feet were on either side of me on the couch, and stared right at me, not blinking. I was so taken aback that I started to giggle. "Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked, to no reply. He just kept looking with that glaring expression, like he was trying to stare through me. I think that he was trying to read my mind. The same sort of thing happened another time, when he was over on the morning after another party, and he was perched on the side of the bed, staring at me with an intense expression, unblinking. "What's with the face? Stop staring at me like that!" I exclaimed, but again he just kept on looking. Later, he told me that he could "read" most people easily, but that I was "like a brick wall".

I ended up breaking up with the girl I had been seeing, and stopped seeing him around at the group so often, until one time he showed up with his female friend, a tall and formidable girl with long and brightly coloured hair. They hung out with me, when I was outside under the "smoking tree", and the girl seemed to be enchanted by me.

"See? What did I tell you about her?" He muttered to his friend, when he thought I was out of earshot. They started inviting me around to their place for parties, and I looked forward to seeing him there, but the first night was a disaster. I had made up my mind that I was going to go ahead and make a move, since I thought that he was attracted to me, and at the end of the night, stoned and drunk, I made my way down to his room and stood in there, making awkward conversation.

"I have to tell you something.", he said. "--------". I couldn't hear what he was saying. It was bizarre, but it felt like my head was full of static, and all I could hear was a dull roaring, like the sound of a big truck rushing by on the highway.

"What was that?" I asked.

"You heard me.", he replied. It was clear that he wanted me to go, so I left. There wasn't any logical reason for me to believe that he was the slightest bit attracted to me.

He would talk to me on MSN messenger once in a while, but never anything flirty or suggestive, just friendly.

I spoke about the situation to my friends in highschool (I was in grade ten, at the time, living with a roommate, while going through a rough patch with my family), and one day, one of my female friends got drunk and then took it upon herself to tell him that I had a crush on him. When I found out, I was horrified, and knew right away that it had been a mistake. He uninvited me from the party that was happening that night, and told me that he was gay, (as if I didn't know that already), and that there would never be anything between us. I tried to act like it wasn't true, and protested that she had just been drunk, and hadn't known what she was talking about, but he said that even if she was drunk, it was still true, and that he had suspected as much. Then he stopped replying to my instant messages, and didn't reply to the email that I sent, trying to explain it all. I was devastated, and horribly ashamed. I thought that I was a terrible person. I watched as pictures were uploaded to social media, of the St. Patrick's Day party that I had been uninvited from, and felt so awful, I thought I was going to die. I started stealing alcohol from my parents' liquor cabinet to numb the pain.

I managed to be invited out a few times again, after that, but things were never the same. He would ignore me, make excuses to leave early, and acted uncomfortable when I was around. One night, I ended up getting sick after drinking too much beer, after I had taken a bunch of caffeine pills, and after he left the party, I suddenly got wildly ill, and started vomiting uncontrollably, which caused the bathroom to be covered in puke. At one point, in my drunken haze, I imagined that i could see the shower curtain moving by itself, to huddle around my shoulders, like a blanket, comforting me. The next day, I was so sick that I could barely move, and left without cleaning up the mess. They were furious, and told me that I would never be invited back, and both of them started ignoring me most of the time after that.

I started spending too much time by myself, using hard drugs like ecstacy once in a while, which lead to some psychosis, where I thought that I could hear angels talking to me when I would lay in bed at night. I started thinking I could hear his voice, and would spend hours just sitting in the dark, talking to myself. I became convinced that he was communicating with me telepathically, and one day I thought I heard him invite me to come over. I got ready, and managed to get a ride out there to visit them, and knocked on the door. I knocked again, and waited, and then tried turning the door handle. It was locked. Suddenly, I heard steps approaching, and she opened it. I asked what was up, and she said she was just hanging out, watching movies. She shouted

"O is here! Stop hiding over there on the couch, and come over and say hello.". and he appeared, even more pale than usual and with a foot in a cast, said a few words, and then,

"See ya!", and shut the door in my face. On the way home, my father was sympathetic.

"So you weren't invited?" He asked, and then paused. "That was brave of you, you know. When I was a kid, there were people who I wanted to be friends with, and I never would have had the guts to do what you did there.". I just sat there, replying with monosyllables, in shock. I tried to talk to the voice in my head, trying to figure out what was going on. Who had been talking to me, if not him? Was I crazy? The voices became violent and threatening, and told me to hurt myself. I believed that I was hearing the voice of the devil, and would see intrusive images, like a church burning to the ground, or whatever I didn't want to think of. My parents were worried. I would cry often, and acted depressed. The doctor started me on antidepressant drugs.

I was invited out again, later that summer. He said that I should come out and hang out with them at a pub (they didn't ID, there), and when I showed up, he acted very friendly, and gave me beer and talked to me, like nothing was wrong. He took my hand and led me to the dance floor, and we danced, and then went outside and hung out and smoked with a group of friends of theirs. Then all of a sudden, he was making out with a guy, and then making out with another guy, then he turned to me and motioned for me to come over to him, and kissed me, slipping his tongue in my mouth. He tasted like beer. I met his tongue with mine, and he moaned very quietly, and pulled back suddenly, and it was like it never happened.

We hung out in his room all together, later that same night. He started to make out with the other guy that was there, and then told me to get out of the room. I went out and joined his friend in the other room. I listened to them through the wall, talking about me. The other guy asked, "What's the deal with O?", and he replied, "Well this is just my theory, so don't quote me on this, but..." and I couldn't hear what was said after that.

I started working at a pizza place that summer, and while the first job didn't go well, my second job I did much better at, and then found work at a larger chain restaurant. That fall, I started grade 11, and when I went back to school and started seeing people again, the voices in my head faded away. I don't know if it was a result of the last traces of the ecstasy leaving my system, or from being around other people, but I felt much better. I began to seriously question my gender identity and sexual orientation, and by that November, came out to my family and friends as transgender.

He didn't accept it, and told me that he believed that this was just a scheme to try to get him to go out with me. I tried to reason with him, and explain that it was correlation, not causation, that I had liked him because I was always a guy on the inside, and not the other way around. I was desperate to remain friends with him, and the more he was passive-aggressive and rude, the more I longed for his approval. I kept in touch over the next few years, messaging him now and then, saying that I still wanted to be friends. He mostly ignored me, or replied with only a few words.

One time, shortly after I began my transition to male, he invited me out to hang out with them. We got some liquor and hung out in an alley and got loaded. Then the night came to an end, and they went back to her house. I followed them back, and curled up next to the bed where they were passed out drunk, like I was a dog. The next morning, he was lying there, and I took the opportunity to ask him. "There have been some times where I've thought that I could hear voices in my head. Sometimes the voice sounded like your voice. Was that you?"

He replied cryptically. "I can't answer that, because it could be incriminating for me."

Incriminating how? I was under 18 at the time. Does that mean that he was worried that some of the things he could have said to me might have been sexually inappropriate, or just an invasion of privacy? If there is no such thing as telepathy, does this mean that he's psychotic, if he believed that it might be true? Maybe he was having drug induced psychosis. Maybe he was always crazy.

Was any of it real? The supernatural aspect is the part that I find very irritating, since I don't really believe in these things. Some parts were just too strange though, like the "ghost" in front of the TV. One time, I heard his voice in my head, saying, "I'm going to send you a message" and then when I got home, there was a message. Another time, I spoke to the voice in my head, "Which one of my poems (from my blog) do you like the best? Comment on the one you like most. Then there was a comment, on just one of them. That was the only comment that he had ever made on my blog. There is even some evidence that something like telepathy may be possible, which is the weirdest part.

"A recently declassified US Army report on the biological effects of non-lethal weapons reveals outlandish plans for "ray gun" devices, which would cause artificial fevers or beam voices into people's heads.

The report titled "Bioeffects Of Selected Nonlethal Weapons" was released under the US Freedom of Information Act and is available on this website (pdf). The DoD has confirmed to New Scientist that it released the documents, which detail five different "maturing non-lethal technologies" using microwaves, lasers and sound."

--- https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13513-us-army-toyed-with-telepathic-ray-gun/

Was any of it real? I don't know. What do you think?

I am not hearing his voice in my head. It's just my imagination. That's all that it's ever been. This whole thing is just transference from my feelings of rejection and lack of approval from my mother, and a result of the trauma that I experienced when I was abused as a child, and those feelings of loss and confusion and sadness came back to haunt me, and caused me to act strangely. He said he was psychic, and that made me imagine that I could hear his voice in my head. There is no evidence that any of it was real.

TELEPATHY

"Scientists Prove That Telepathic Communication Is Within Reach"

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-prove-that-telepathic-communication-is-within-reach-180952868/

The tiny grain of doubt is all that it takes to drive a person crazy. Will I ever know? I have to tell my psychiatrist. It's gotten too intense. Besides, I'm still hearing the "voices", (although it is less like actual voices, and more like just a very faint buzzing, sort of like a radio that's out of tune, and sometimes the odd word here or there, occasionally a string of words, but mostly gibberish), after all these years. I haven't been doing drugs, and I still hear the voices. Either I'm psychotic, or telepathy is real, and I'm pretty sure that telepathy isn't real. I'll just try the antipsychotics, and if the voices go away, then I'll know that it was never real.

But is it really so impossible? I've been doing some research on the subject of psychic attack and while I am naturally skeptical, it seems like people have been having a lot of oddly specific experiences that are a lot like my own experience, and while it is far out, it doesn't really seem a lot more strange than some things that have been proven, like when people hear music in their heads due to them picking up radio signals with their metal fillings.

Is there any way to prove that telepathy exists, or doesn't? How can I know for sure that I'm not just crazy? Should I tell my psychiatrist? Or will she overreact? From an article I read the other day, it seems like up to 13% of adults admit to hearing voices at least occasionally, and that these are often accompanied by strange sensations like pressure in the solar plexus area, tingling in the limbs, and other things that are sometimes considered to be signs of psychic phenomena. --- "Hearing Voices? Don't Assume That Means Schizophrenia" (The Conversation) --- https://**.**/hearing-voices-dont-assume-that-means-schizophrenia-38616

I've tried talking to a couple of friends about this, now, and even though they both believe in ghosts and spirits and supernatural things like that, they acted very concerned, like they think I'm nuts. Maybe I am, but I just have this weird feeling that something else is going on here.

Any input would be appreciated. If you have what you consider to be convincing evidence or proof that your experiences were real, I would be very grateful if you could share that.