ESP: Real or B.S.?

By Jim Culp

 

May 5th, 2015

 

In all my years of research into politics. religions, and culture, I have run across stories of people who have claimed some sort of ESP (extra-sensory perception) at some point in their lives. I want to share one such experience with you, dear reader, that happened to me quite some time ago.

In early 1992, I had returned from the Persian Gulf War (the year before) and because of dire circumstances in my marriage, I was given sole custody of my 2 year old daughter Jessica. I lived in a little town in northeast Kansas called Junction City. It's just southeast of Kansas's largest reservoir, Milford Lake, and about a hour due west of Topeka.

I was a 25 year old Sergeant in the US Army in those days. I was doing my best to serve my country in peacetime, because war and the Army's inattention to family situations had really taken it's course for me.

On a typical day, I would get up at 0400 (4 a.m.), get dressed in my physical fitness uniform, get Jessi out of bed, dress her, and take her to a day care provider at 0500, and get to the base by 0530.

To digress somewhat, I owned a 1989 Ford Tempo Sedan, a car that wasn't hip or square, just somewhere in the middle and served my purposes.

Jessica's car seat was always right behind me, because I could hand her something over my head, or grab her little foot and play with her as we drove through sometimes sub zero temperatures. When I got home one evening, I prepared Jessica's meal, cracked open a beer, and watched the news as she munched away and made noises that made her laugh.

As I sat and watched Peter Jennings tell us about the day's news, the thought came to me to go out and move Jessica's car seat to the middle. I don't have a clue why, it just did, and I did.

The next morning it was the usual 26 degrees.

I bundled Jessica up like a Bedouin baby headed across the Sahara, and strapped her in, and we were on our way.

At about 05:10, I started across the intersection at W. 14th Street and N. Jackson Street. Out of nowhere a full size Chevy Blazer doing 52 miles per hour collided broadside with my driver side, and caved the rear door and the rest of the rear of the car in eight inches, and the rear roof downwards about twelve inches. All of the glass on the car (except the windshield) imploded to the inside of the car.

I looked back and Jessica was sitting there with the biggest WTF? look on her face that I'd ever seen; it even topped the looks I got from my 18 year old troops just a year before when  bullets zipped past their heads one night in Southern Iraq.

No one was injured. If Jessica had been in the same place she was the day before, she would have been crushed.

Did I have ESP that evening? I don't know. But I am certainly glad that I moved the car seat.