This happened a little over a year ago. I had never heard the term "retrieval" used as it is here at that time. My first exposure to the term was just a few days ago when I began reading Moen's book. Nontheless I was familar in general with the idea of a psychpomp and what they were supposed to do.

I had a dream that had a very ominous feel to it around May of 2015. I do not recall the details but I got a single image. That of a kind of oily bag haning on a clothesline. Not a bag dripping with oil, but made of a kind of felty material that had some oil in the material. Its structure was maintained by a kind of internal wire frame that looked curiously like a clotheshanger bent in a bag shape. I had the idea that the oily bag represented human skin and that it was a horrific affair indeed to have a human being placed in a kind of bag that could burn so easily. At the time this made not much sense to me, so I just noted the dream down and mentally filed it away for future reference. I might add, that in my dream, the bag was empty.

A few weeks later a report showed up at CNN about a teeneager who was burned to death by a lynch mob in Río Bravo, Gauatemala. Although I had seen things like this before, this incicdent disturbed me a lot more than usual. There were several other incidents similar to this one, but they did not affect me in the way that this one event did. I figured that this is what my dream was referring to. It made sense in retrospect, at least to me. It felt as though the bag was a human body that brined a little too readily. I could not tell if this was a precognitive dream about a future event, or a dream about an event that had already occurred (there was a delay between the occurrence of the event and the reporting of it).

Some days later, I felt myself having a series of conversations in my head with the young lady who was killed, or so it felt to me. I was fully conscious at the time, not out of body, under hypnosis, or relaxing with the itent to do a "retrieval." I just had a series of conversations with her it felt like, on the border of my conscious and unconscious mind. I could tell this was occuring as I was walking, and although I got the general tenor of the conversation, I could not tell what words (if any) were used. I hasten to say Guatemala is a Spanish-speaking country and I speak not a word of that language. OK, maybe one or two words, but that is about it. Certainly not enough to engage in a "normal" conversation with a native speaker. At any rate, we seemed to be pretty friendly. I did speak some words aloud but whether what I spoke aloud and what was conveyed to this person was an exact translation or an intent I do not know. At any rate, this continued for a few days after I felt that this was over and she was ready to move on. After than she smiled and left and no further communication took place, save for one incident.

After this, the incident did not seem to bother me AS much. A few weeks went by and I thought of the girl again, and this time I intentionally tried to make contact. Sometime later  . . . days or hours . . . I cannot remember at the moment . . . she appeared to me mentally again, smiled and said she was OK and that I should not think about her again but to return to the activities of my own life.

That was it.

I am not sure if this is typical of a retrieval story or if this was genuine, but it felt "different" when I was holding these mental conversations than when I was engaged in normal imaginations. Has anyone else here had an experience like this? And are  . . . for lack of a better phrase, spontaneous retrievals a common occurence?

Many thanks,
Hama Dryad

Thank you for your reply. I have had several similar encounters, but this one did make an impression on me as I was more or less fully conscious while this was going on and was thus in a position to observe it as it occurred. I am going to try following Bruce's suggestions to do things a bit more intentionally from now on. I did read your post on November 2012. Thank you for sharing it with us. Anyway, I a glad as I was not the only one who didn't "set out" to do this as it were, at least not consciously.

Anyway, many thanks for your kind reply.