Chapter 4: Looking Death in the Eyes in Georgia

Chapter 4: 

Looking Death in the Eyes in Georgia

Standing in the doorway of the mom-and-pop motel, was a huge man with a tire tool, a lethal length of iron, and he was about to use it to try and take my life.

In the mid-seventies, I was a photographer for Chromalloy Photographic, a firm that employed photographers to travel the country taking high-quality portraits for commercial firms. I was, by that time, a supervisor/trainer, and attended a meeting in Galveston, Texas. But I needed to be in Sheffield, Alabama the next day. My car was in Atlanta, Georgia where I left it before flying to Galveston, so I had to fly back to Atlanta before leaving for Sheffield. 

I didn’t get to Atlanta until about 11:00 that evening, and the airport is south of Atlanta, so it was past midnight when I left north Atlanta and motored into Cobb County, Georgia. At about 1:30 in the morning, I was so sleepy, that I decided to stop at the first motel I came to and catch a couple hours of sleep. I pulled into the parking lot of a small, 50s-type mom-and-pop motel got a room, and was asleep in minutes.

Sometime after that, I think around 2:00 am to 2:30 am, there was a knock on my motel door. I got up and put my pants on, but was barefoot and shirtless. I also did not take the time to put in my contacts. This meant that I was functionally blind. Without my contacts, I could not discern the facial features of someone only two or three feet away. I asked through the still-closed door,

“What do you want?”

“The alarm on the TV went off.”

“No, it’s not going off.”

“Yeah, it is, in the office. Let me in, I gotta check it out.”

That, to my sleepy self, at 2:00 am in the morning, seemed reasonable, so I opened the door. In the doorway stood a huge man. I couldn’t make out his features, but I could see he had really long black hair, and a long, black beard. He said,

“What’s your name?”

“Richard Stone”

“That’s not what’s on the register.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, I need to see some identification.”

In other words, go get me your billfold with its cash and credit cards. I got my billfold, and when I turned around, he was holding a tire tool that he had been hiding behind his back and swung it at my head. It was just a glancing blow, but it tore a patch of skin from my scalp and knocked me back onto the bed. He stepped forward and swung the iron bar at me again and again, spewing a long string of profanities, screaming he was going to kill me.

My reaction to this was, to put it mildly, unusual. My first thought was, “This is like on television!” My second thought was, “I wonder if I’m going to die…” I wasn’t tied to the outcome either way, I was just curious. I felt no fear, no anxiety, nothing, really, just a curiosity about what was happening. Then the experience ramped up the strange factor.

I could see the bulk of my attacker, but I couldn’t see anything more than that, and a smear of movement when he tried to hit me. There was absolutely no way for me to anticipate where or when he was going to strike, and therefore try to avoid it. But something saw, and something knew, and something moved me back and forth on the bed, dodging the blows I couldn’t see. Every blow he delivered missed. At the time, in that mindless, peaceful state of mind that has come over me every time I’ve faced the possibility of death, I didn’t question what was happening; I merely witnessed it.

After a few minutes of dodging the blows of this raging attack, I saw my right hand take a pillow, raise it up, and stuff it into his face. I had no idea that was going to happen, and I was not at all involved in the doing of it. The man stopped swinging the tool at me and grabbed at the pillow. While this happened, I felt my body rise off the bed. It was such an odd experience; it felt as though someone was lifting me up; I didn’t participate at all. Then the room shifted to the left, away from the bed. Then I felt my body lift from the bed, the view of the room shifted to the doorway, and the room seemed to move backward as the door moved towards me. I moved through the doorway, across the parking lot, and onto the driveway. At that point, whatever was controlling my movements, having brought me out of the deadly circumstance, let me go. Unfortunately, since I wasn’t exercising any control over what was going on when I was released, I fell headlong onto my knees. Aside from the scalp wound, that was my only injury.

I picked myself up and ran towards the street, looking for help. No one would stop. But, hey, I wouldn’t have either. There I was in the middle of the night, barefoot, bare-chested, with blood flowing down my face, down my chest, soaking into my pants. I must have looked like everyone’s nightmare. I turned the corner and went up to the first house I came to and knocked on the door. An elderly man (probably my age now), came to the door. I told him he didn’t have to let me in, just call the police because someone was trying to kill me. He hesitated only a moment, and then let me in. He and his wife cleaned up the blood a bit, and he got me one of his old shirts, and let me rest there until the police and an ambulance arrived. Good people are out there, everywhere, and Spirit will lead you to them when you need them.

That might be the end of the story, another example of how God, Divine Mind, Universal Consciousness, whatever you wish to call it, can and has acted on my behalf in miraculous ways. But there was another revelation to come, a revelation, I believe, that was the whole point of the experience. A while after I recovered and went back to work, I was telling some coworkers about my adventure, or better, misadventure, minus the spiritual intervention parts, when one of them said,

“Man, wouldn’t you love to be locked in a cell with him and you have the tire tool?”

The question startled me. That idea had not entered my mind, but, now, considering it, it was clear to me that given that opportunity, I would have quickly refused without reservation. I realized with absolute clarity, that the man who attacked me was sick in mind, bereft of any love or joy in life. I would heal quickly, but he would live with his affliction, a greater suffering than anything I had experienced at his hand. My response was a natural move to prayer, declaring healing for him in mind, body, and spirit.

I can’t say I enjoyed the experience, or that I want to do it again, but, having gone through it, I am grateful for its gift.