Things occur in life that are difficult to explain. Yet we make every effort to do so.

 

Sometimes we discover the answer, as you will see in . . .

 

 

The Flight Of The Dancing Minds

 

     The weather was quite chilly for the beginning of September. A brisk wind blew through the trees surrounding a rather attractive town square, decorated with ornate sculptures and beautiful marble benches. As I stood at the podium to address the large group of townspeople gathered before me, I pulled my jacket collar up around my neck for protection from the cold. I’d been invited to come to the town of Ross Glen to assess the somewhat odd happenings of the past few months.

     I adjusted the podium microphone and began to speak to those assembled. “Good afternoon. My name is Dr. Ryan Church. I have a Ph.D. in Paranormal Psychology and have spent more than twenty years traveling the country to investigate the strange occurrences reported to me. None, however, appear to be more unexplainable than what has occurred here in Ross Glen.”

     “Dr. Church, how much have you been told about our situation?” a woman, who appeared to be a reporter, inquired.

     “Please hold your questions until I’ve finished my briefing. Now, let me continue. I received an invitation from Ross Glen Memorial Hospital’s Chief of Medicine, Dr. Ian Whatley, to come to your town to help you make sense out of what has been happening in your community. I’ve read the very comprehensive report he sent me. In it, he provided a detailed description of the atypical behavior of some of your children.”

     “Dr. Church, from the report you received, what are your thoughts about what is taking place here? The town is concerned. We need answers. And we need them now!” the reporter yelled.

     “Be patient, I’ve just arrived. Give me time to check the content of the report against what I’m here to observe.”

     “But, Dr. Church, you must have some idea of what you’ll find.”

     “Won’t you let me complete what I have to say without interrupting?” Finally, silence. “After reviewing the report, I agree what has occurred appears to fall out of the range considered normal or expected behavior for children, ages six through eleven. However, before jumping to conclusions, I will need to spend some time speaking with your children and their teachers, who have noted the extraordinary behaviors exhibited. I ask for your support in giving me the chance to do a thorough study of the situation. Thank you.”

     My chilled body warmed by the positive reaction I received from the townspeople. They gave me an enthusiastic round of applause. I felt energized.

     But then the tirade from the reporter continued. “Dr. Church, the town needs answers. When will you know something?”

     Without responding, I left the podium. As I made my way through the crowd, I saw Dr. Whatley. I walked toward him. He grasped my hand and smiled.

     “Dr. Church, I am very appreciative of your taking the time to join us to help make sense of what has happened in our small town. Let’s go to my office, so we can talk in private.”

     Dr. Whatley escorted me in the direction of the hospital, which fronted the north end of the town square. We entered the building and took the elevator to the third floor, exited, and walked toward his office. Entering, we approached his secretary.

     “Good afternoon, Dr. Whatley,” Sheree Grimes said, with a broad smile on her face. “And you must be Dr. Church. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

     “Why, thank you,” I replied.

     “Sheree, please hold my calls,” Whatley instructed. He then ushered me into his office and closed the door.

     He moved to the plush chair behind his desk and sat down. I took the liberty of sitting on the couch that overlooked the town square and the beautiful grassy knoll beyond it.

     As my eyes moved across the square, I surveyed a large house sitting atop the knoll. Something about it piqued my interest. However, I decided to wait before inquiring about it. Instead, I turned toward Dr. Whatley and said, “Dr. Whatley, the report you sent me was thorough, but left a lot of questions unanswered.”

     “I know. That’s why I’m glad you agreed to come here. By the way, please call me Ian. And may I call you, Ryan?”

     “Yes, please do so.”

     With the pleasantries concluded, Ian began to detail the situation, as he perceived it. “As you are aware from my report, Ryan, eighteen children, all of average intelligence, three each in grades one through six, have become proficient in a particular subject area. Some show skills in mathematics, while others excel in science, history, or literature at levels well beyond what they are studying in their classrooms.” 

     I interrupted his discourse. “Ian, do you have any idea why this is occurring?”

     “No, I don’t,” he replied. “After interviewing the children’s parents, it became clear that, although supportive of their children, they didn’t have the ability to provide the level of direction necessary for the youngsters to show subject area growth far beyond that expected at their grade level.”

     “Are there other factors, such as tutors or teacher support that might account for what’s happening?”

     “None of the children had tutors. And the teachers didn’t give them special attention.

     “They did undergo testing on a regular basis during the last three months since the discovery of their extraordinary new abilities. At the end of this period, each child’s test scores indicated growth at least three years beyond current grade level in a particular subject area, showing positive changes of one grade level per month.”

     “Extraordinary,” I blurted. “Did anything strange or different occur in the lives of these children when this growth in intellectual behavior was first identified?”

     Ian leaned back in his chair and reflected on the question. “We really didn’t look at what you are asking. However, now that you bring it up, one event did occur in the lives of each of the eighteen children right before they began to show signs of intellectual growth.”

     “Okay, what event?”

     “Well, all of the eighteen children visited Hillhouse. It didn’t seem important at the time, since other children in past years had the same experience and no such exceptional behavior came to light after the visit.”    

     “Hillhouse? What exactly is Hillhouse?” 

     “It’s the large house you were staring at beyond the town square on the grassy knoll.”

     “So, what’s so important about it?”

     “Let me explain. About twenty years ago, the United States government developed an elite brain trust. This group of individuals included eighteen of the greatest minds in the areas of science, mathematics, history, and literature. These men and women were brought together from all over the country and housed in a special location in Washington, D.C. This facility, secured and protected, prevented outsiders from getting to these great minds and interfering with their work.”

     “Very interesting. But what does this have to do with what’s come to light about the children here in Ross Glen? And how does it relate to Hillhouse?”

      “I’ll get to how it relates to Hillhouse in a minute. As to its relationship to the children, I’m not sure. That’s why we never thought about it before this discussion. Let me continue.

     “The mission of this elite intellectual body was to serve as the then sitting president’s very private executive cabinet. And their role would continue for all future presidents, no matter what party was in office.”

     “And this was embraced by both parties?” I asked.

     “Apparently so,” Ian replied.

     “Wow!”

     “These men and women received everything they needed to protect and enhance both body and mind. Nobody beyond the President’s closest confidants knew of their existence.”

     “No one, Ian?” I gasped.

     “No one, and that, in itself, became a major problem. Those in the know didn’t provide appropriate oversight, especially during the transition period after an election of a new president.

     “These extraordinary minds had to be kept bright and alert. Aging became their enemy. Each of the eighteen was at least fifty-years-old, with the eldest being fifty-six. So they all aged, physically and mentally, at much the same rate. To protect their greatness, they received a special drug that had been shown to heighten awareness, maintain alertness, and improve intelligence. However, the urgency to protect these great minds led to the administration of the drug without the luxury of testing it over the long haul. Therefore, nobody could have anticipated the long-term effects it would have on these eighteen individuals.

     “As time went on, the drug began to take control of the bodies of these elite men and women. Since they weren’t being watched closely, nobody noticed the changes taking place, and when they did, it was too late to do anything about it. These exceptional people became unable to move, hear, see, or speak. They became prisoners in their own bodies who couldn’t communicate with each other or the world beyond. However, they were alive. 

     “Now it really gets interesting. Tests performed on these great people indicated beyond a doubt their level of intelligence had not diminished. However, it could no longer be accessed. So, four years ago, those in power made the decision to move them somewhere where they would be safe and secure—a place where they could be studied to see if their brilliance could be tapped into again.

     “A thorough investigation into possible sites led to the selection of the then vacant Hillhouse. They chose our town as the most desirable location because it is a small, rural, peaceful community located less then one hundred miles from D.C. Also, our townsfolk don’t ask many questions.”

     “Well, then what happened?”

     “Nothing happened. Those great minds remain there in Hillhouse in a state of nothingness. They do think, as shown by the tests, but no one can decipher their thoughts. Their minds appear to have a rhythm with no meaning. Their caregivers call what has occurred, ‘The Flight of the Dancing Minds.’”

     I leaned back on the couch and contemplated what I’d heard. My mind wandered. I became lost in deep thought trying to piece together each part of this complex puzzle. Then I jerked into an upright position and shouted, “Bring me the children.”

     “But why?” questioned Ian.

      “There has to be some connection between the growth in intellectual capacity amongst the kids and the state of the minds, and maybe bodies, of the Hillhouse geniuses.”

     “But, how do you know that?”

     “I don’t. It’s just a theory. But it’s the best lead we have at this time, and we must pursue it.”

     “Okay, Ryan. I’ll support you in any way I can. Tell me what you need and what you want done.”

     With Ian’s assistance, early the following week, I scheduled a complete and thorough examination of intellectual capacity for each of the eighteen children. In addition, I had extensive discussions with their teachers. But few answers emerged from these sessions. In thinking about how to proceed, I remembered what Ian had said about the rhythm identified in the minds of the Hillhouse residents. Might such a rhythm also be present in the minds of the young children?   

     Later in the week I phoned Ian. “Ian, you know the rhythm found in the minds of the Hillhouse residents?”

     “Yes, of course,” he responded.

     “We need to answer the question of whether or not there is a link between the children and the residents of Hillhouse. Therefore, we must find out if such a rhythm also presents itself in the minds of the young children. In order to assess this, each child should be brought to Hillhouse and hooked up to the elaborate equipment used to identify the brain patterns, the rhythms, of the residents. Can you make this happen?”

     “Consider it done.”

     The next week, I met all eighteen children on the grounds of Hillhouse. Escorted by one parent, each child entered a quite secret and guard-protected lab to be hooked up to the complex technology needed to assess brain rhythms. I then charted the rhythm of each youngster and compared them to those of the resident geniuses.

     What I found amazed me. The “Flight of the Dancing Minds” phenomenon appeared in each youngster and each child’s rhythm corresponded to the rhythm found in one of the resident geniuses of Hillhouse. In some way I couldn’t explain, a transfer of information had occurred between a particular resident and a selected child.

     Needing answers as to why this happened, I reran the tests on the children and discovered that some interesting changes had begun to take place. The rhythms in the minds of the children had started to shift. “The Flight of the Dancing Minds” showed signs of reversing direction. But as the information gained by the children, during the past three months, had begun to leave their minds, something else strange also was happening.

     I struggled to interpret this, but couldn’t come up with a scientific explanation for what I’d observed.  Along with the mental rhythms, there seemed to be a secondary set of rhythms unlocked. These rhythms or signals were physical in nature. It appeared the strength of the children’s young bodies had been transmitted somewhere along with the mental rhythms.

     Furthermore, although this physical anomaly, in the form of energy, left the youngsters’ bodies, their own physical capacity didn’t diminish. I concluded that the children produced an excess of energy that they sent out. But where did it go? I reflected.

     I went back to each child’s mental capacity chart and observed with great curiosity that, although the higher-level information, indeed, had left the children, the enhanced baseline intelligence of the youngsters had not been lowered. In fact, their intelligence seemed to stabilize at the higher level and their ability for future intellectual growth had increased.

     As I gazed in disbelief at the new test results, I wondered if the children had become an informational “safe house” and maybe a means to communicate this information, which the residents of Hillhouse could not do for themselves.

     I called Ian and explained my findings in detail. He was incredulous. “What do we do now,” he asked. “More testing?”

     “I’m not sure. I think it now becomes a waiting game. We have to see how the changes in the children progress and if concurrent changes happen in the residents of Hillhouse. I’ll keep you posted.”

     I hung up and began to put all the information I’d gathered into perspective. I was certain a connection between the children and the resident geniuses of Hillhouse existed. The ringing of the phone interrupted my thoughts. “Hello. What? Are you sure?”

     I hit the phone “OFF” button and raced out of the office at Ross Glen. I proceeded down the hall and out of the building. I ran across the town square and up the grassy knoll and burst through the large, double-door front entrance of Hillhouse.

     There to my amazement, in the spacious living room area beyond the lobby, the eighteen brilliant minds sat in a circle conversing, as if this had been a regular event in their lives. Full of animation—their bodies and minds awakened—they seemed engrossed in the discussion taking place. As the doors closed behind me, one of the geniuses turned toward me and, with a twinkle in his eye, whispered, “You have uncovered the mystery. Thank you. And thank the children.”

     I didn’t know what to say, and it didn’t matter. But a connection had been made between the children and these exceptional individuals, and “prison doors opened” to again allow, “dancing minds to fly.”

 

 

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