I’m writing this fairly brief account as my own personal subscription to the often-raised discussion regarding the spiritually and physically tangible freezing "Coldness" frequently experienced by psychically-sensitive people. .

I have been reading with interest some of the discussions on the Astral Hollow list regarding "Cold" of late, and I feel inclined to mention that, in my younger years, I used to be rather unhealthily interested in the Left Hand side of the psychic realm. I dabbled around the edges of a very black and deep pool of the soul for a number of years, on and off, but fortunately for me, I never actually became totally immersed! Most of my dreams in those times were extremely vivid, and would remain very clearly etched in my memory for most of the day after I had experienced them.

I remember that I read a lot of strange, esoteric books in those days, dealing with the Black arts and suchlike dark and forbidden spiritish subjects. I suppose that to me, it was just an intriguing pastime, which I found offered me an exciting escape from the everyday mundane world around me. I wasn't a member of any sort of cult or anything like that, but I nevertheless had some expert tutors in the authors of many of the books I read in those days. I had no conscious relationship with, or interest in, God and Jesus Christ whatsoever then. I'd left all that far behind when I finally quit Sunday School at the ripe old age of 9 or 10. It was all so utterly boring!

Just for the sake of background, I should mention however, that my mother was a staunch church-going Protestant lady, and my father was a pretty average, fairly-irreverent, non-religious ex-regular soldier in the British Army, who, from time to time would attend a Sunday service at Mum's church occasionally - as I did myself - just to humour my mother. The setting for this, incidentally, was in the North West of England, where I was born, raised, and where I lived until I emigrated to Australia in my mid-twenties, back in the nineteen fifties.

My early life as a teenager continued fairly normally throughout the dark 1939-1945 period of World War Two, during which I, like millions of other Britons, survived the relentless bombing and terrors of the Nazi Blitzkrieg, and volunteered for the military in its closing years. After the War was ended, even though rationing and shortages continued, together with the clearing and rebuilding of the shattered towns and cities of our island home, I managed to land myself a job in a new Disney-style animation studio in the Thames Valley, about 20 miles outside London. It was here that I found myself suddenly living cheek-by-jowl with around 300 other artistic and technical ex-service men and women as a boarder, within the studio grounds. (It was, in fact, an old Elizabethan mansion). The work was really fascinating. I was a creative storyboard artist, and the freedom we all enjoyed there was quite amazing after the strict wartime regulations and harsh regimentation we had had to endure for 6 long years. However, I mustn’t stray too far from my topic!

Suffice to say that among these many young, suddenly liberated people there were many who, like myself, were interested in any new forms of excitement. With others, I explored the site of Sir Francis Dashwood's old Hellfire Club in and around a desecrated old church at West Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire, and I soon found myself associating with a group of young people who dabbled in weird psychic matters, such as Ouija boards, automatic-writing, astral-travel, telepathy, and OBE's (Out-of-Body-Experiences) of all kinds! We weren't interested in crystal balls, Tarot cards, or seeing into the future - we'd already survived six years of living from one day to the next. Foreseeing the future was a luxury in which we'd lost all interest.

I recall clearly how I first experimented with an OBE, and the sudden, fearful panic of realising that I'd actually managed to exit from myself and could look down upon my sleeping body from somewhere up where the ceiling of the dormitory room should have been! I could also see my three 'roomies' below me, too! We slept four men to a dormitory, under a regime of strict segregation of the sexes at that time. Separate dorms for the males and the females. The war had instilled a curious morality into most of us - as if sex itself had almost been put on the backburner for the duration!)

Anyhow, as time passed I found it easier to do my own astral-travelling in a sort of extremely vivid dreamlike-state. I'd found that getting out of my body was rather like a butterfly trying to wriggle out of its pupal-case, only twice as difficult! Maybe it was the way we’d been taught, as all that sort of thing was virtually unknown then to most people. Psychics were Spiritualists who held seances! But although I felt dream-travel and remote-viewing to be a tad less exciting than what I'd experienced in the OBE, I was always able to recall the minutest details of these travels and experiences long after awakening. I guess it's really a case of "Horses for Courses"!

I had many strange experiences which only served to whet my appetite for deeper ones. This is the great danger - the subtle way in which a curious inquirer can become sucked or lured into increasingly dangerous spiritual waters. I found myself rapidly becoming a keen student of the occult and darkly satanic matters. (In fact, there is so much to tell, that I could write an expanded version of this as one of my longer articles!) However, the animation studio suddenly folded, and I - having rather foolishly turned down an offered transfer to the Disney studios at Burbank - found myself back in my own native North again, with all that scene far behind me.

Then, in a whirlwind sequence of events, I met my dear wife, we married, and had three children, and, after working for the Shell Corporation as a technical illustrator for a number of years, I developed the same "wanderlust" that drove so many people to the USA - except mine drove us to Australia! It was terribly hard beginning all over again in a new land where they spoke a totally different dialect to my own original Northern English, but I quickly made good, and soon established myself in the advertising industry, both as a commercial artist and an ad agency art-director. Soon I had a great position as chief packaging and promotional design artist for Australia's largest frozen foods corporation.

Meanwhile however, my former interests in the psychic and the occult returned to flourish, and my house rapidly developed into a giant library of weird and wonderful books, beside all the normal books that artistic folk tend to accumulate. But adapting to my new Australian lifestyle had made me far more hedonistic than spiritual, and I liked nothing more than to come home at night and sprawl in front of the TV with a six-pack of ice-cold Aussie beer and a couple of packs of smokes. I would often lounge around watching horror or war movies until the small hours of the morning.

That is, until my late-night and totally uninvited visitor called!

That particular evening, I well recall, was a Friday night, and I was letting myself relax after a very hard week's work - with a weekend of freelance-work still ahead of me. I worked around 18 hours a day, 7days a week in those days, and I was "Going to Hell in a Handbasket" as the evangelists would say. I was bad-mouthed, cynical and short-tempered most of the time, and could never suffer fools gladly. Any religion-pedlars that landed on my front porch, received a scorcher of a send-off with my scathing curses ringing in their ears! How my wife tolerated me in those days, I'll never understand. Not that I treated her badly or anything like that. The hard-driven nature of my work had just made me a bearish, sore-headed individual to live with!

Anyhow, to return to that evening. I think I was watching a war-movie that night, with two dogs lying around my feet, a bottle of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It was around 11.30 p.m. but I was still very wide-awake, having always been a "night-person". My wife had been in bed since around 8.30 to 9 p.m. I recall that it was a very typical Queensland summer night, sweltering hot and humid, with the temperature still at around 30 degrees Celsius. The night outside was thick with mosquitoes and other crawlers and biters. Americans could liken it to living in the middle of the Florida Everglades. (But without alligators - we have crocodiles here!)

Suddenly I noticed a cold draught of some sort coming from behind me. The doors and windows were all wide open, apart from their insect-screens, so I thought it must be a change in the wind - maybe a big thunderstorm on the way, as sudden, violent hailstorms aren’t unusual in tropical Queensland in such extreme heat conditions. I tried to dismiss it, but the temperature just continued to plummet. I was clad only in a pair of shorts, so I decided to go and put on a warm shirt. It was at that point that I suddenly discovered that I was paralysed! No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't move a muscle! I could still breathe and my heart continued to thump in my chest, but I felt as though I was locked up absolutely rigid from head to foot!

Then I sensed that I was not alone in the darkened room (I always used to watch TV with the lights off). Someone was standing right behind my armchair! But I simply couldn’t turn my head to see who it was. I recall thinking it was my wife, who'd come to ask me to turn the noise of the TV battle down a little - except there was no longer any noise at all! I then wondered if the sound had simply failed on the TV set - but so had the continuous whirring, buzzing and croaking backdrop of noise of the myriad insects and frogs outside! Not only was I paralysed, but I had also been smitten stone-deaf. "Oho!" I remember thinking; "I'm having some kind of a stroke!" All was now total, freezing silence - and still that awful presence seemed to loom ever larger, even if unseen, behind me! I could virtually sense it growing stronger!

It was then that I became suddenly filled with a nameless sense of dread and imminent death. The hair literally rose on the back of my neck, and I became aware of an icy breath upon my right ear. Then a voice suddenly began to speak to me in the most frightening tones I've ever heard! But it didn't speak in English. Instead it spoke some sort of sibilant tongue I'd never heard before in my life! I recall many "shshsh's" and "zzz's" in the words that were being hissed into my very brain via my right ear. The worst thing I recall about that voice was its intensely evil intonation. Whatever it was telling me, was definitely not intended to cheer me up. The voice was appallingly threatening and I was terrified by it!

Those of you who have seen "The Exorcist" movie will remember just such a voice when the possessed and ravaged young girl who lay in that freezing bedroom, spoke in a distinctly and malevolently evil male voice. This was very much a similar sort of voice - only far worse, because what it spoke was complete gibberish to me! It wasn't Latin or Greek, or any language I ever heard before. (However I have heard same language spoken many times since – under entire different circumstances!)

The demonic entity - for such it must have been, to grip me in such a frozen thrall of sheer horror - went on for what seemed like hours - but was probably only a few minutes. It was then that I realized deep down in my rational mind, that if I didn't do something pretty soon, I would most certainly DIE! The Thing, Entity, or Demon was TELLING me to DIE! I HAD to do SOMETHING! FAST! A great burst of energy suddenly flashed into my body and my soul, and, powered by a gigantic surge of spiritual willpower, I FLUNG MYSELF headlong forward, right out of my chair and across the floor, in a sort of parachutist's roll, landing among the two dogs which had been sleeping innocently unaware throughout the whole proceedings.

Instantly the room was filled with an uproar of loud noise as my hearing returned. The frogs and crickets croaked and groaned outside and the TV blared forth its war-noises and the two dogs yelped in terror at my sudden arrival among them. But the spell was immediately broken, the terrible cold vanished instantly, and the room was suddenly back to its previous Turkish bath atmosphere and heat. Where, a moment before, I had been frozen almost solid, I now literally poured with sweat! Quickly I stood up, turned off the TV and looked all around the room. Then I put out the two dogs and after sitting a few moments trying to regain my wits and my composure, I went and had a good cold shower, then went to bed. But I have to confess that I left the bedside light well and truly ON! I must have lain there for a couple of hours re-running the whole terrifying ordeal, like an endless video-tape, over and over in my mind. Had I dozed off and dreamt it all - or had it truly been REAL? Finally I fell into a deep dreamless slumber, and didn't wake up until mid-morning the next day.

Now, here's the really strange part of the whole business! That Saturday afternoon, my daughter who lived in the next block, called around to ask me a favour. She and her husband were recently "Born-Again" converts to Christianity and frequented a large Pentecostal "church", which then had its quite humble premises in an empty warehouse in the centre of Brisbane. They both attended Bible classes there a couple of nights a week, besides attending two services on Sundays! I had often ridiculed them unmercifully about this. However, their car had broken down and her husband was trying to fix it, ready for work on the following Monday. Could I run her up to the church the next evening? Normally, my reaction to such a request, even from my own daughter, would have received an emphatic "No way in the world!" But something seemed to stir within me - a heartwarming feeling I’d never felt before - and I found myself acceding to her wishes. She reached up and kissed me on the cheek. "Thanks, Dad!" she said, elatedly. "I knew you would!"

The next evening I took her to the old warehouse, and, as she got out of the car to join the throng of other worshippers, I reached over to the back seat for a book I was reading, to while away the hour or so she'd probably be inside at the church-service. I had only just begun to read by the dim courtesy-light of the car, when she came hurrying back. She wanted me to go inside with her, as they had some high-powered ventilation-fans in there, and since the service would go for around two hours, she didn't want me to sit sweating it out in my car! For some uncanny reason, I found myself once again giving in to her, and I ended up going inside the "church" with her - among some two thousand other people! I couldn't believe the size of the crowd, nor could I believe that I was standing among them! However, I did, and soon found that it was an amazingly spirit-filled place, full of amazingly spirit-filled people.

Around midway through the service, which was spent in listening to the pastor and singing cheerful songs of praise I’d never heard before, the organ struck up a lovely, soft melody and a choir began singing, and as they did so, the pastor up on the stage began calling for people to come forward and receive Jesus Christ into their lives. Then, as the choir sang the beautiful, inspired words of the ex-slaver, John Newton’s "Amazing Grace", I found myself suddenly thrown into a huge internal turmoil. I felt horribly sick and nauseated, and recall feeling that I was about to die! I struggled to my feet and stumbled out of the tight rows of seats, heading urgently for the door.

Then, quite suddenly, a great calm fell over me, washing away all the sickness and fear just like a wonderful shower of cool, golden rain, and somehow, I found myself turning around, and marching straight up to the pastor's platform - right in front of all those two thousand people! From thereon in, everything became one marvellous whirl of total euphoria, and I - who had only two days earlier heaped scorn upon the entire concept of Christianity as being a hidey-hole for moral weaklings and lily-livered cowards - became a Born-Again Christian! And, although I no longer attend any man-made church, because of their unholy blackmailing focus on Old Testament tithing and church-centred financial extortion, I have remained one to this very day!

* * *

Now, here are the really BIG questions! Did I really encounter a minion of the Devil, or was it all merely a bad dream? Does the appalling, freezing cold that I felt, reinforce this as being a true encounter with real EVIL? Since it’s said that the Devil knows our inner thoughts and the future crossroads in our lives, just as GOD does, had Satan foreseen this upcoming chance of salvation for my soul, and attempted to thwart God's plan for my redemption by frightening and willing me to death, before that event could take place? If he had succeeded, I know I would have died an unsaved sinner that awful night, and gone to Hell!

In hindsight, I guess that I was totally unworthy of ANY redemption whatsoever - yet SOMEONE saved me from certain death that petrifying Friday night! I believe it was the Holy Spirit of God who broke that demonic grip on my own unworthy spirit, and Who subsequently inspired my daughter to bring me to the church - and to my salvation, the following night! Thus I feel compelled to ask what those people who are also implicitly convinced in matters of the Spirit, believe actually happened?

As an interesting footnote to all this. I was subsequently used in many different ways, both by the church, and, I firmly believe, by God Himself, to guide others toward the same goal, by His use of my artistic talents in preparing several big evangelical works over the course of the following years. One of these was a graphically illustrated and highly detailed interpretation of the entire Book of Revelation into drawings and words that even the humblest layman could understand. It wasn't a task that any church had assigned or requested me to do - it was simply something I felt an inner driving compulsion to do, deep within my heart of hearts.

Just as I was completing this very wearying, mammoth task, and about to start in on "tidying-up" all the drawings – somehow, by some strange sequence of seemingly "chance" encounters - I was put in touch with an Australian evangelist who runs a huge Christian Evangelical mission in Central India. (The land of a thousand gods!) He received a photocopied layout of the work and immediately contacted me for permission to print it; JUST AS IT WAS, in its still semi-rough form - in several different languages!

Since then, I’ve learned that the book was distributed by the thousands, right around the world, and how - thankfully, after all the concentrated and Spirit-driven hours of concentrated effort over many long nights, stooped over my drawing-board - it has helped many people perhaps with less acute powers of imagination and literacy, or comprehension of English, to clearly understand the coming end-time events – the seven-year rule of the Antichrist and its many terrible prophesied horrors, the Battle of Armageddon, Christ’s Return to rule the world in Person for a thousand years, the final Day of Judgement, and, above all, the urgent need for people to seek spiritual salvation and redemption before these events begin to occur!

But please DON'T, for God's Own Sake, get me wrong as to why I make this statement! I neither seek nor expect any personal plaudits or credit for this, or any of the other works I did for God, whatsoever. HE was the AUTHOR, not me! I have simply pointed out this one specific "job" as perhaps exemplifying WHY God thought I was worth saving, and how HE was finally able to USE a hopeless wretch like me for His purposes, even after my having been some forty years out in the wilderness – the bitterly COLD wilderness of total atheistic godlessness!

Oh, yes! I almost forgot to mention the language that the Entity had spoken that night in our lounge room! Many people in the Pentecostal church "speak in tongues" - what Saint Paul referred to as "the Tongues of Angels and of Men". I was often to hear that self-same language spoken in praise of God by them, during my church-going years! I even spoke it myself !

As most people must be aware, Satan was once the Archangel Lucifer, God’s Chief archangel before he was cast down to the Earth for inciting rebellion against God, along with all his rebel angel followers - who numbered one-third of all the vast angelic host - so it would seem logically sound to believe they would still speak in that same Angelic tongue - even as outcasts and demons! (Incidentally, this huge number of rebellious angels, now become demons, should not be confused with the much smaller group of Nephelim, the lustful "Watchers", or "Grigori", who came down to the Earth and committed a totally different collective crime against both God and humanity, and are now confined in chains in the stygian darkness of Tartaros, somewhere within the Earth’s crust, awaiting their fateful Day of Final Judgement!)

Now, I ask you to mark this! The ability to speak in "Tongues" is also stated in the Bible to be one of the "Seven Gifts" conferred by the Holy Spirit upon those who accept God as their Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ as their Lord! Therefore, with those closing notes, I shall now leave it up to you who read this true account to draw your own conclusions about all of the foregoing.

And let me add one final but very enlightening piece of information, before I finally end this piece. I much later discovered that my truly blessed daughter and her friends had been praying to God for my deliverance and salvation incessantly for several weeks prior to that great and successful event!

My Best Regards and may God Bless you!

Sincerely,

Gerry Forster