When I was six years old, I spent a summer afternoon on the back patio with a small plastic water gun. The sun had been heating the cement for hours, and the surface was so hot that water evaporated almost the moment it touched it. I became curious—would a drop of water leave any kind of mark after it vanished?
I chose a smooth, uniform patch of cement and fired two small squirts onto it. Then I crouched down and watched closely, determined not to lose track of where they had fallen.
Within seconds, the silver shimmer of sunlight on the droplets disappeared. The water had evaporated. But the marks were still there.
I got down on my hands and knees to look more closely. Where the droplets had been, the cement now held two tiny, hardened shapes—one rounded, the other long and slightly bent to the left—exactly matching the way the water had fallen. They weren’t wet. They weren’t stains. They were solid. I tried scratching them off with my fingernail, but they didn’t budge.
Puzzled, I let two more drops fall an inch away so I could watch the transformation happen up close. Those evaporated instantly, leaving nothing behind. I dripped more water directly onto the original marks. The new droplets ran down the sides and vanished, but the hardened shapes remained unchanged.
Those two little “concrete droplets” stayed there for years—untouched, unmoved, exactly as they had been on that hot afternoon—until my family moved away three and a half years later.
For most of my life, I never questioned what I had seen. I assumed the water had somehow turned into cement. But two years ago, with a better understanding of the enormous forces that bind atoms together, I began to doubt that any physical or spiritual power would rearrange sextillions of atoms just to transform water into concrete. The energy required would be astronomical.
And then, as often happens in my life, an answer arrived from an unexpected place.
Five days after that doubt surfaced, I happened upon a documentary about the Scole Experiment—an investigation where scientists witnessed objects materialize, dematerialize, and transform in their hands. The researchers initially suspected fraud, but the phenomena persisted under conditions designed to rule out trickery.
According to the spirits involved in those experiments, nothing was being “transmuted” at all. No atoms were being changed from one type to another. Instead, substances were being moved—shifted through time and space from locations where they would never be missed, and placed precisely where they needed to appear.
That explanation fit my childhood experience far better than atomic rearrangement ever could. The water hadn’t become cement. Something had simply replaced it.
And the world, once again, made a little more sense.When I was six years old, I spent a summer afternoon on the back patio with a small plastic water gun. The sun had been heating the cement for hours, and the surface was so hot that water evaporated almost the moment it touched it. I became curious—would a drop of water leave any kind of mark after it vanished?
I chose a smooth, uniform patch of cement and fired two small squirts onto it. Then I crouched down and watched closely, determined not to lose track of where they had fallen.
Within seconds, the silver shimmer of sunlight on the droplets disappeared. The water had evaporated. But the marks were still there.
I got down on my hands and knees to look more closely. Where the droplets had been, the cement now held two tiny, hardened shapes—one rounded, the other long and slightly bent to the left—exactly matching the way the water had fallen. They weren’t wet. They weren’t stains. They were solid. I tried scratching them off with my fingernail, but they didn’t budge.
Puzzled, I let two more drops fall an inch away so I could watch the transformation happen up close. Those evaporated instantly, leaving nothing behind. I dripped more water directly onto the original marks. The new droplets ran down the sides and vanished, but the hardened shapes remained unchanged.
Those two little “concrete droplets” stayed there for years—untouched, unmoved, exactly as they had been on that hot afternoon—until my family moved away three and a half years later.
For most of my life, I never questioned what I had seen. I assumed the water had somehow turned into cement. But two years ago, with a better understanding of the enormous forces that bind atoms together, I began to doubt that any physical or spiritual power would rearrange sextillions of atoms just to transform water into concrete. The energy required would be astronomical.
And then, as often happens in my life, an answer arrived from an unexpected place.
Five days after that doubt surfaced, I happened upon a documentary about the Scole Experiment—an investigation where scientists witnessed objects materialize, dematerialize, and transform in their hands. The researchers initially suspected fraud, but the phenomena persisted under conditions designed to rule out trickery.
According to the spirits involved in those experiments, nothing was being “transmuted” at all. No atoms were being changed from one type to another. Instead, substances were being moved—shifted through time and space from locations where they would never be missed, and placed precisely where they needed to appear.
That explanation fit my childhood experience far better than atomic rearrangement ever could. The water hadn’t become cement. Something had simply replaced it.
Finally, I had an explanation that made sense.
The water hadn’t transformed into cement at all. It had evaporated right in front of me, and at the same moment, something else had slipped into its place—cement moved through time and space from somewhere it would never be missed, settling perfectly into the shape the water had left behind.
I’ve always felt that someone in the spiritual realm arranged that moment for me, a kind of early demonstration so I would grow up knowing such things were possible. And it mattered that I was only six. At that age, I wasn’t yet entangled with anyone else’s beliefs about what could or couldn’t happen. I had no concepts of molecules, physics, or the “laws” that adults use to fence in the world. My experience didn’t have to obey rules I didn’t yet know existed.
But the moment I began trying to study what had happened—trying to analyze it, categorize it, explain it—the entanglements began. And with them, the ability to repeat the event quietly slipped away.
Years later, I learned I wasn’t alone.
At a weekly gathering with friends—none of whom had ever heard my story—a woman suddenly shared an experience from her own childhood. She had been six years old, just as I had been, and was pretending to make concrete out of mud and water. To her astonishment, it actually turned into real concrete. Not “like” concrete. Not “hard mud.” Real concrete. She was so convinced she had discovered a new method that she imagined people everywhere would soon be using it.
But like me, she was never able to repeat it.
When I told her my story afterward, I saw doubt flicker in her eyes. I understood why. Two people claiming the same strange experience can sound like imitation rather than truth. But I was grateful she spoke first. Her story reassured me that what I had lived wasn’t imagination or misremembering. Someone else had walked the same path.
The patio where my water turned into concrete is gone now. The house was torn down—completely cleared—to make room for the Mormon temple that stands on Willow Lane in Dallas, Texas. When the temple first opened, we toured it. Through a glass window in one hallway, I could see down into the baptismal room. The baptistery was enormous, the size of a swimming pool, painted entirely in a deep, luminous blue. Four life-sized rams stood at the center, each facing one of the cardinal directions.
They reminded me instantly of the four Native American gods I once saw standing around the fire at a sweat lodge, each facing outward in the same pattern. Two traditions, two cultures, two sets of symbols—yet the same geometry. The same orientation. The same ancient echo.
Baptism, in the Mormon tradition, is a sacred opening—a moment when a person invites the Holy Spirit into their being, allowing themselves to be guided toward greater wisdom and goodness. And that pool sits on or near the exact spot where I once watched water become concrete.
I’ve often wondered whether the future use of that land played a role in what happened to me decades earlier. Whether the spiritual charge of the place—its destiny as a site of ceremony and transformation—sent a kind of ripple backward through time, giving a small child the boost needed to witness something extraordinary.
It wouldn’t be the first time a sacred place revealed itself before its purpose was known.