There are coincidences and then there are what seem like more than that.
There was Walter Tevis. He wrote a book called The Man Who Fell to Earth about a fellow from Mars who crash-landed on earth. The “Man from Mars” invented a number of things that made him an industrialist billionaire overnight in a wide range of industries, and he used the money to build a spaceship to fly back to Mars.
That book was made into a movie, starring the outre rock star David Bowie.
Bowie then created an opera around a character named “Ziggy Stardust” and released an album called “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.”
That recording played on Elon Musk’s personal all-electric Tesla Roadster as it was launched into space on the first Falcon Heavy rocket (built by Musk’s SpaceX) in 2018.
Elon Musk has joked several times about being an alien.
The rocket’s mission: an elliptical orbit around the sun that stretched as far out as the orbit of Mars.
There was a Harvard scholar, Dr. John E. Mack.
Mack was writing a book about a woman supposedly sending messages back from the grave (Elisabeth and Mark Before and After Death: The Power of a Field of Love). He sent the proposal off to his literary agent with a note: “There is a bit of urgency about this.” In a few days he would be leaving for London to deliver a lecture on his idol, T. E. Lawrence, killed at 46 in a motorcycle accident in England in 1935.
Just before the trip, Dr. Mack also was talking with a man who spoke about a fear of death. Dr. Mack, a psychiatrist, reassured him. “You never know when it will be your time,” he said. “We could all go at any time. I could walk out on the street and get hit by a car.”
Mack then took his overseas jaunt.
On the clear, mild Monday night of September 27, 2004, returning to the home where he was staying, Dr. Mack “climbed wearily out of the Underground station at Totteridge and Whetstone,” noted Vanity Fair. “His talk had gone well, and many in the audience had brought copies of his Lawrence biography, which they asked him to sign. He had also spoken about the death of his father, Edward Mack, who, 31 years before, almost to the day, had been driving home with the groceries to their summer home in Thetford, Vermont, when his car collided with a truck.
“In London, Mack was staying with a family friend, Veronica Keen, a widow who told him she had been receiving messages from her deceased husband—more evidence, Mack thought, of survival of consciousness. She had said to call her from the station and she would pick him up, but Mack decided to walk. He crossed a divider and stepped into the busy street. His American instinct was to look to the left.”
A Peugeot came careening by, the driver hitting the brakes, but too late: Mack’s body flew into the air, shattering the Peugeot’s windshield before traveling over the roof and landing heavily on the ground.
Mack never regained consciousness.
From a crumpled paper with an address on it found in his pocket, the police learned his destination and his identity. Pray for him.
There may be no such thing as coincidence and perhaps also is the greater lesson of staying far away from anything occult.
[resources: “Special Reports“]