Ready for Another Possible Paranormal Mystery? ;)

The above photo is Paul David Savanuck - an army journalist in Vietnam, who put his camera down to help a wounded soldier and was killed by enemy gunfire in April 1969. 

Not not an exact match for the story below (wrong month, no mustache, etc.) but it gives you frame of reference, as Vietnam was the first war in which photojournalists from the actual press were allowed to accompany men to the front lines and report from there/send back pictures and footage - and military journalists did the same, and their pictures/stories better match (and when they didn't, we the people took issue ;)

Anyway, so it's freaking cold outside today, because we got a cold/snow blast despite an otherwise mild winter, and I find myself going down the rabbit hole on YouTube, this morning, like you do. 

You know what I mean -  see one thing, see another on the side bar out of morbid curiosity or needing a good laugh, click on it, etc.

Let me just say that as anyone reading, or who knows me in RL, already knows - though I'm open to the paranormal because of a couple of my own unexplained experiences, I'm also very logical - so the first thing I do is look for logical explanations - and 99% of the time, there is one.  

In fact, for a very long time, having both strong instinct/emotion and strong sense of logic was problematic for me - I kept trying to choose one or other other.

Then I finally realized there's a reason we have both, and there's a reason we need both - and I began to accept both emotion and logic and integrate them :)

Also, there's that pesky third law of thermodynamics/law of conservation states  that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only transfer - thus, people's energy can't just disappear, it has to go somewhere - where does it go, right?  

This isn't a theory, it's a law of science - meaning every test of energy, every time, produces the same result (at least on this planet and for the reasons we think it does, though there's much we don't yet understand.)
However, there are theories about our energy "goes" - some say it's dispersed, some say it stays, some say it moves to other planes, some say heaven/hell.  

I say there is no law on where our energy goes, when we die, only theories - and perhaps the answer to the "where does our energy go" isn't the same answer, every time?

Now, let me just tell you that everything I watched today, at least, was clearly total bullshit lol.

Well, 99% of the stuff you find on YouTube these days is total BS, and that's not my point lol. 

My point is, somehow I got to a video on Reddit threads about the paranormal.  Again, mostly bullshit, good for a laugh (especially when people come on clearly not being serious and just saying something random for a laugh).

However, there were some comment about past lives, which I'm not a big believer in, but I'm open tp, because I can't rule it out, because if the law of conservation/third law of thermodynamics is correct, energy can't be created or destroyed and can only be transferred, then who's to say it isn't "recycled" into a new life?  

(I actually don't find that contrary to my Christian beliefs, actually, who's to say God doesn't 'recycle' too? lol)

Anyway, I personally have never had anything "past lifey" happen to me or anyone I know personally.  Well, except deja vu, which we all get, but that's a neurosensory  glitch, not a "glitch in the matrix" lol. 

Except it did remind me that for a few nights in the late 90s, I had the same weird, recurring dream. In fact, it's the most vivid dream I've ever had.  

Now, let me just preempt this by saying, I have never been a fan of Vietnam movies -  I can't watch them, though I can stomach just about everything else, even other war movies - to this day I've never seen Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocolypse Now, etc. all the way through.

And yet I had this recurring dream that was one of the most vivid I've ever had in my life.

So, in the dream, I'm a male soldier in Vietnam, except I don't fight, I'm a journalist.  I can still see my typewriter at my desk in a sort of half tent/half makeshift bunker, my CO, etc.  

I see myself (as I later looked in a mirror to see my injuries) - tall, thin, dark hair, sort of Lennon-ish glasses - and I know my name is "John." 

(For a long time after the dream, I remembered my last name, too, but have since forgotten it.  I even looked the name up on the internet once but found nothing.)

So I'm talking to my CO and we're laughing, cutting up about something to ease tension, and all of the sudden, we hear a loud whistling sound and boom - I was flying through the air.

When I come to, I hear people speaking in Vietnamese.  I look to my left and right, my fellow soldiers everywhere - dead.  I see them poking around the bodies, kicking them, etc., to ensure they're dead, bayonetting and shooting anyone that groaned or was breathing. 


They hadn't reached where I was yet, so out of instinct, and with no weapon, I cover myself in the blood of those next to me and lay very still.  

When they reached me, they poke around, kick me, but I hold my breath, determined not to breath or make a sound, pretending I was dead - and they left.

I remember, it was a sort of grey, misty day, lying in a field, must like in the photo below ...

Just sort of lying there, listening, drifting in and out of consciousness (in the dream) and when I next woke, I'm on some sort of cart with a Vietnamese person pulling it, dressed like a farmer - and I'm lying on a pile full of bodies.  

I can hear the wheels creak, see the back of the clearly non-soldier head, straw hat on from the sun, the surrounding landscape - flat, hills in the distance, palm trees - just thinking, thinking, thinking. 

Once we get to a denser patch of trees, I make a break for it - and I just ran.  Judging by where the sun was, I just ran and ran the direction where I knew the med camp to be.  Finding it, I just collapse on the nurses.  Drift out of consciousness again (in the dream).

When I wake up, the doctor is there, a nurse, and a buddy of mine, telling me I was missing the right side of my scalp, which was now infected.  I hadn't noticed or felt it - adrenaline, I guess - until then, horrible headache (strangely enough, exactly where I get my migraines now).  I guess that's why the Viet Cong didn't shoot or bayonet me, they thought I was already dead?

I ask for a mirror, but they tell me I won't be able to see anything, my head wrapped in gauze, but I probably have one hell of a headache.  I can see myself in the mirror - dark hair, pale skin, tall, thin, John Lennon-ish glasses (not exactly, but similar style).

I look to the left, out the breaks in the tent flaps and can see it's afternoon, people talking, and ask to be left alone to rest, I don't feel well - then drift out of consciousness, into absolute darkness, and then light - and I knew I was dead in the dream - and that's when I woke up.

Now, I was born in December 1968 - the height of the Vietnam War. 

Though not a huge fan of war movies anyway, to this day, I've never fully been able to bring myself to watch Vietnam war movies in particular, so it's not likely I was influenced by them.

I've read history books and articles, of course, but nothing akin to the dream - in fact, the above photo of the journalist, I found just today.

And later online (late 90s), when researching the full name (which I now can't recall) and any events happening the month I was born, I chatted with someone in a chat room who was a Vietnam vet.  Of course, I didn't tell him about my dream, but just told him I was doing a bit of research. I told him that I knew in WWI and even II, both sides gave time to collect the bodies, but as guerrilla warfare increased, even in WWII, it made you fair game.  

So what was done to collect bodies in heavy guerrilla warfare like Vietnam?

I'll never forget, he said, "They paid local villagers to pick them up for them."

Yikes - the cart, the farmer.  

I asked where did they take them?

He said, "Sometimes they took them back to the US Med camps, other times they took the bodies the Viet Cong out of fear or distrust of Americans - sometimes they just took the upfront half of the money or cigarettes or food, what have you, and and ran -  dumped the bodies off or burned them -  that's one of the many reasons why there were so many MIA."

Yikes x2 - something in me wasn't sure whether or not to trust the cart driver. 

Weird, right? 

Born during the height of Vietnam, can't watch Vietnam movies to this day, and 30 years later, I have this recurring dream, the most vivid dream of my life, for several nights in a row (which finally went away).  

Hmmm ...

So just coincidence, my active imagination, unremembered influence on my psyche causing dreams,  or something more?  :)