My paternal grandfather passed away five years ago, taking his secrets with him.

He had had a near-death experience many, many years ago in a logging accident as far as I can deduce from scraps of conversation I overheard as a kid. The experience changed him somehow, and no one would really speak of it. All I remember being told was that he couldn't be lied to, and that, "He knows things." I was also told never to mention it.

One day, when I was around ten years old, my grandfather and I were on his porch and he told me to picture objects in my mind and he would tell me what I was thinking of. I closed my eyes to form my thought. He immediately told me to open my eyes because it wouldn't work with my eyes closed. So I looked into his eyes and thought of simple items on a plain, white background.

Whenever he could, he would demonstrate what I pictured rather than tell me. For example, and this is the one I remember best, I pictured a key. He looked into my eyes for a second or two, then pulled his keys out of his pocket and held them up to me.

I laughed as a child laughs at a magician. I was baffled. And it was like magic to me. I was too young at the time to understand that what he was doing many would say is impossible.

I wanted to ask him about that time on the porch before he died, but I couldn't find a way to be alone with him in his room. I felt it would've been inappropriate to ask for time alone with him. So I held back. I had wanted to ask him about it years before, but I had already been told not to speak of it and I didn't know how to bring it up anyway.

For whatever reason, he decided to demonstrate a little of his "power" to me that day. It could have been simply to amuse a grandchild, or...something else. Well, I haven't forgotten it and it has opened my mind to possibilities.

Maybe that's why he did it.

It worked, Granddaddy.

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I am the eye in the sky, looking at you - I can read your mind. -- The Alan Parsons Project, "Eye in the Sky" (1981)