What really happened?
Santa’s Disclosure Project
The troubling story of an acquaintance’s father.
The Cottonwood Mall was our go-to hangout during high school. We were real-life mallrats and we loved it. We would pick up the latest issues of ‘Gen13’ and ‘Divine Right’ at the Night Flight Comic store, hit the arcade for a couple hours, and duck behind the old Carmike 10 Theater to drink a beer or two.
I can’t tell you when exactly we first saw him; but I can tell you it was in a car driving south on Highland Drive (the “S” shaped street that cuts this image in half) after a hefty day at the mall.
‘The Night Before Christmas’ couldn’t have described him better. He stood there waving at us from the side of the road with a cherry-red nose, a long white beard, jolly old smile, and gentle blue eyes. He was just waving at oncoming traffic, happy as can be, sharing his inner joy with everybody that passed.
From that day forth, he was there nearly every time we drove down that road; so of course, we named him “The Santa Man”.
Some time later, after a few years of college and a couple years on an LDS mission, I had fallen into a fairly steep downward spiral of self-destruction. I would often find myself at some random home of a 3rd or 4th order friend waiting for our pisa to show up. And no, I don’t mean pizza. A ‘pisa’ is a South American drug dealer. I’m told the word means ‘countryman’ in several latin languages; so I really couldn’t tell you how it came to be used this way.
During one of these withdrawal-ridden adventures, my friend and I found ourselves at a home just off Highland Drive; right down the road from The Cottonwood Mall.
The second we walked in, I immediately felt like I was intruding. The kid we went to meet was a 3rd order friend living with his mother and his two high-school-aged sisters. His mother immediately invited us up to talk. My anxiety shot straight through the roof; but, after the first few minutes of talking with her, having realized that she really did just want to meet us, the anxiety quickly subsided.
The woman was amazing. She was kind, thoughtful, and she understood addiction much better than most people. She wasn’t happy about her son’s choices; but she had worked it out in her own mind that she would much rather he use safely under her roof where she could quickly respond to an emergency than have to deal with that phone call.
It wasn’t long before she began talking about her husband who had fallen into a psychosis in his early 60s. She sadly recalled that he would often walk out to the side of the road and wave at the passing cars. She said it made him happy.
“No way!”, I thought to myself, “Their father is The Santa Man?!”.
I couldn’t help it. I had to say something. I suddenly found myself blurting out, “Oh, what? I used to see him all the time. We love that guy! I haven’t seen him for a while though.” But, before I could try to smooth over what I had just insinuated, they quickly confirmed my slipped suspicion. The father had only recently passed away.
“What was his profession?”, I had asked.
The woman told me that he was under several non-disclosure agreements; so she didn’t know exactly what he did. All she knew for certain was that the contractor was a government agency and that he had a PhD in physics.
Oh man … PHYSICS! I love physics! Secret government physics is even better!
“So … he never told you guys anything about what he was working on? Not even, like, a tiny little morsel?”, I said. I felt kinda bad for prying, but I couldn’t contain myself; I mean, come on — top secret science is the coolest!
Suddenly the atmosphere completely shifted, nobody was saying anything. The mother eyed her daughters, and they eyed her back as if to say, “don’t say it mom.” But she did. She said all of it.
So, I’m going to stop the story for just a second. From here on out, there are only two roads to follow if we are to believe what the mother told my friend and I. Granted, it could all be a lie. However, given how recent the father’s death had been and the fact that the rest of the family confirmed the story; I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Either the father’s early psychotic issues had induced delusions and some level of paranoia; or the disclosure to his family triggered, chemically or otherwise, an intentional induction of psychosis by an external hand. That being said, I’ll now cover the points that had me scratching my chin pretty vigorously.
Here is the mother’s story. I’ll tell it to the best of my recollection. Nothing here is inflated or purposefully altered. With that, let us all remember how fallible memory can be.
She told me that he was a brilliant man; sharp as a tac. He was a great father who was kind, patient, and loving. She told me that his mental faculties never showed any signs of diminishing. His family accepted that he simply could not talk about his work life and that was that.
She said he had just started a new project when he came home visibly troubled. I can’t remember exactly how long she said this went on, but it wasn’t long. Two or three months, give or take. Finally, he decided he needed to talk to her. He had recently been given access to something that had upset him. He told her that technology exists that is centuries ahead of what the public is aware of. Technology that could literally save our world, end hunger, solve energy issues, etc. She claims that he told her that he was working with machines that could extract ungodly amounts of energy from field perturbations — essentially, she claims that he had access to fully functioning zero-point energy devices.
Unfortunately, that’s the only specific technology I can remember from the conversation. I think the reason I don’t remember anything else specifically, is because zero-point energy was at least feasible to me. Some of the other things she has talked about was so far beyond anything I could reasonably map it to in my mind that it just didn’t stick. I do remember having a really hard time restraining myself mentally from intellectually shutting down and labelling it all as b.s.
The one redeeming idea that sent chills up my spine (I’m not using an expression here. I’m talking about literal chills moving vertically from my coccyx to the base of my skull) was that it only took a couple of weeks after he disclosed this information to his family to go from being a brilliant physicist, in full command of his cognitive faculties, who was engaged in classified contracts, to a mentally vacant man who spent all day waving at the passing cars.
Now, I’m not trying to convince anybody of anything with this story. Personally, I still don’t know what I think about any of this. What I would like however, is for people to be a little more open minded and a little less closed off. I’m a “needs proof” sort of guy. I need to be able to validate something if I’m going to believe it. What I don’t do is slide all the way down the scale to utter disbelief if, for some reason, I can’t validate something. I simply hold it in this little mental room I call ‘Possibility Limbo’. Personally, I think it makes for a much more enjoyable life experience.
In closing: if, by whatever miracle, The Santa Man’s family reads this; please, by all means correct me if I screwed anything up. I would be happy to make the corrections. Of course, I’d have to validate your identity first. :)
