Are these things real, or are they figments of local legend?

In our travels, my wife Doris and I have seen a few strange and unexplained appearances that make it difficult for us to dismiss the stories.

A few years ago, while driving late at night on a lonely desert road that for us was a shortcut from Albuquerque to our home in Springerville, Arizona, we witnessed a large, winged creature fly across the road in front of our car. It appeared for but a fleeting moment in our headlights as it rose from the side of the road and crossed directly over our moving vehicle. The image still remains sketched in our memories like a nightmare that won't go away. It looked somewhat like a man, but it was clearly not human. It had wings. It was moving very fast.

Only months ago, while again traveling late in the night in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a strange cat-like creature dashed across the road in front of us. It also was moving extremely fast. It flashed by so quickly that I thought I imagined seeing it. I didn't think even a cat could move as fast as this creature was traveling. It was not until my wife spoke of it that I realized that she saw it too. This animal was large. Residents say they have seen large cats in the Northern Michigan forests, even though the animals are not native to the area.

I have always been interested in the unexplained creatures that people insist they see, but that no one can prove exist. After personally encountering such sightings, my interest has naturally steeped.

While visiting the Second Mesa on the Hopi Reservation in Northeastern Arizona, our friend, a Hopi two-horned priest named Ted, took us to a deep water hole on the side of a cliff. It was odd enough to find a water hole so high in the rocks in the desert. But the story Ted told us about that place sent chills up our spine. He said when he was a boy he and several friends swam in the pool to prove their bravery. He said everyone on the reservation knew that a monster lived in that water, deep under the ground. While they were swimming, the creature rose to the surface and snatched one of the youths. The child was never seen again. I have no reason to believe Ted was making up a story like that.

I would hate to count the number of scientific research teams that attempted to find and prove the existence of the Loch Ness monster. Modern sonar has proved that there is no large creature living in that foreboding Scottish loch. Yet to this day, people continue to insist that they see this thing rising to the surface and swimming around.

Not long ago Maj. Edward Dames, America's best known remote viewer, talked about some kind of super holographic type device when he appeared on the Art Bell night radio talk show.

The subject came up when Dames was asked if he ever remote viewed the cattle mutilation problem in the Southwest. Hundreds, if not thousands of American livestock have been found dead, the animal's bodies surgically cut, the blood sucked dry.

Dames said he believes the cattle are being destroyed by a type of three-dimensional hologram that appears in the air, picks the animals up, cuts them apart, and then drops them back into the pasture. He said he could not explain this device, give any information about its origins, or why anyone would want to do it.

Our son, Aaron C. Donahue, a remote viewer who trained under Major Dames, once looked at the big foot/chupacabra phenomenon and found that they also are solid things that appear, then disappear in mysterious ways. It was Aaron's conclusion that they, too, may be some kind of holographic image with substance.

The way he explained it, they are projected images, but they are not harmless. If you accidentally get in the way you might get hurt. Or even eaten by a monster that rises up out of a deep pool in the desert Southwest.

If Donahue and Dames are right, then the mystery is not so much what these things are, but where they are coming from, who or what is sending them, and why the created images are being projected into our space.

Things like this tend to support a theory that has been rumbling around in my brain for a long time now. Suppose we are all living in an artificial world, created by super beings that watch us through some kind of universal window. Also suppose that these beings have the power to create or destroy this environment at the push of a button.

My daughter and son-in-law last year gave me a computer game that I really enjoy. In this game, the player has the power to create cities of any size, build roads, locate industrial parks, houses, businesses, lay sewer and electric lines, build skyscrapers, plant trees, produce lakes and streams and create a miniature world. As you work the game, you watch the city come to life from a point overhead.

The game gives you a feeling of playing God.

At the click of a button, the player can move in for close-up looks anywhere in his city. What is surprising is that there are people walking around on the streets, and driving cars, trucks, and buses. If you watch closely, you can see crowds gather, fights develop, parades, and many other public events. It is as if the town you create becomes a living thing.

At the push of a button, the player can create storms, tornadoes, structure fires or a variety of other disasters that send the people running and bring fire trucks and police to the scene. You can send a swarm of locusts to destroy crops. To retaliate, the people in the town respond with a fleet of crop dusting aircraft to kill the locusts.

Development of an industrial site too close to a nice residential neighborhood will turn the nice homes into slums.

The click of a mouse can completely erase the peace and tranquility of life in the town in front of your eyes.

The fact that such a game exists causes me to wonder if its creator wasn't reproducing a game version of a larger amusement we mistakenly think is reality. Are we pawns in an even more sophisticated game? Are the holographic images of monsters, UFOs, cattle mutilations and other unexplained phenomenon being thrown in by the players just to see how we react? Or perhaps we are being sent a message. Taking it all one step farther; could this entire world as we know it be a giant holographic image? Is this why things get somewhat surreal at times for those of us who work with right brain functioning?

There are moments, especially after meditation when I am in a deeper mental state, that this world looks plastic. The highway signs, the fast food places, the architecture, and even the faces of the people around me, look like they came right out of that computer game.