I'll say beforehand that I do realize that I was probably too young for this story to truly be credible, but I ask that you consider that this memory has stayed strong all these years since - even if it is possibly a memory of a dream (which I honestly do not believe it is). I'll also mention that while I am not a religious person, I've never felt right classifying myself an atheist. With all that said, here is a childhood memory, or experience.

Surely I was at least four years old when this happened, so that would put the year at 1980. Then, I lived with my parents in Ft. Meade, Maryland - my dad was in the Army.

One night, I was upstairs in the hallway, facing my parents' bedroom. I was alone so I'm thinking I may have been sleeping earlier and had just awakened.

In their bedroom doorway, an old man appeared. He had white hair and wore tattered light brown rags and stood at a wooden podium, on which was a large open book.

I was frozen in place, but I wasn't afraid. He asked me many questions, but his mouth never moved. I answered all his questions, but my mouth never moved.

Part of me couldn't understand what he was asking - for all I knew, he could have been speaking a different language. But there was another part of me, a part unfamiliar to me, that completely understood and had an instant and complete answer for all his quesitons. I had an impression that he was asking me about my life in the future. I wish I knew what I told him.

We spoke to each other with our minds and he wrote everything I said in his big book. When we were finished, he simply vanished and reality flooded back. As soon as I felt I had "materialized", I went downstairs to tell everything to my mother.

This is another reason why I don't feel like it was a dream: when the old man was finished with me, the very next thing I remember is being in the hallway. I started from there, downstairs. I didn't wake up and get down from a bed and walk out of a bedroom. I was in the hallway the whole time.

My mother was sitting on the couch in the living room. I sat on the rug at her feet and told her everything in as much detail as I could, considering what vocabulary I had at that age with which to describe such things.

It seems I told her the full story at least twice. Then, the most maddening thing happened: I began laughing uncontrollably. I felt that this laughter would ruin my believability. I remember telling her that I didn't mean to be laughing. I couldn't stop.

It felt like something was making me laugh so my mother wouldn't believe me - like I wasn't suppose to tell and something was covering it up by making me laugh so I wouldn't be taken seriously. It was so frustrating I almost started crying on top of the laughter.

Another of my life's mysteries. Will anything be revealed to me when I die? Does anything really happen when you die?

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They don't walk, they just glide in and out of life. They never die, they just go to sleep one day. --David Bowie, Heroes "Sons of the Silent Age" (1977)