extraordinary%20encounters

192 OINTS
In time Wo o d rew learned, via re c ove re d
“memories,” that she had been interacting with
the Ogattans since her childhood. Her fir s t
contact took place in the early 1930s when she
was three and a half years old. For the next six
years, she had many experiences with space
people. She was flown to a beautiful planet
w h e re she could “hear colors” and “see music”
because, like her fellow Ogattans, she was fre e
of the limitations of human physiology; thus,
her brain processed stimuli differe n t l y.
Though her contacts we re ove rw h e l m i n g l y
with Ogattans, on occasion she met beings
f rom other worlds. Once she had an out-ofbody
encounter with beings who looked halfhuman
and half-fish. These entities seemed
f r i e n d l y, but, on a handful of other occasions,
she dealt with extraterrestrials who we re not so
amiable. Some believed the Earth to be of no
s i g n i ficance, thus its problems we re of no concern
to major players in the larger cosmic ord e r.
Woodrew became a lecturer on the New
Age circuit, wrote a self-published book, and
published a newsletter, The Woodrew Update.
After the Ogattans warned them that they
would have to move to preserve their safety
during the coming geological upheavals,
Woodrew and her husband, Dick Smolowe,
bought a property in western North Carolina
in 1982. They moved from Westport, Connecticut,
to the survivalist compound they
named Reisha Way. In 1988, Doubleday released
Woodrew’s book Memories of Tomorrow.
A few years later, Woodrow and Smolowe
moved to Winston-Salem for health reasons.
See Also: Channeling; Dual reference
Further Reading
Heard, Alex, 1999. Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in
End-Time America. New York: W. W. Norton and
Company.
Woodrew, Greta, 1981. On a Slide of Light. Black
Mountain, NC: New Age Press.
———, 1988. Memories of Tomorrow. New York:
Dolphin/Doubleday.
OINTS
“OINTS” are “Other Intelligences” in an
acronym coined by maverick biologist and
anomalist Ivan T. Sanderson. To Sanderson
OINTS are any beings that are on Earth but
are not human. He did not confine his definition
simply to extraterrestrial visitors, who in
his view are only one among a variety of beings
present on this planet. Poltergeists—invisible,
destructive spirits—are one kind of
OINT. So are the entities who, so he theorized
in Invisible Residents (1970), dwell under
the oceans, occasionally snatching ships,
planes, and their crews in places such as the
Bermuda Triangle. (“Could there have
evolved a technological civilization . . . underwater?
I am afraid I have to say that . . . there
is no logical reason for stating that there could
not be.”) He also believed that invisible dimensions
or parallel universes surround humans.
From these other dimensions, entities
pop in and out of human reality with regularity,
manifesting as everything from fairies to
UFOs. They shift their shapes to whatever
form may be appropriate to the occasion and
the circumstance.
Curiously, however, Sanderson held a dim
view of all such visitors, not because he feared
they might be unfriendly but because “the
OINTS are . . . incredibly and abysmally stu -
pid.” He suspected that they were so advanced
that their technology now controlled them
and that they have given up mental activity,
just as technology has caused humans to reduce
much of their physical activity. “That
they are for the most part overcivilized and
quite mad,” he wrote, “is, in my opinion, an
open-ended question but quite probable. Perhaps,
we will never be able to cope with them
until we, too, all go quite mad.”
See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Sanderson, Ivan T., 1970. Invisible Residents: A Dis -
quisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and the
Possibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters of the
Earth. New York: World Publishing Company.
Old Hag
The “Old Hag” is a folk expression—popular,
for example, in Newfoundland—for the par-