Astral projection and conjuring up demons

I believed in Lost Continents, too. Much preferred Lemuria or Mu to Atlantis. A better class of people lived there. Reptilian by all accounts. This book I pored over, marshalling the 'facts' pondering as to what might lie beneath the Mersey.
Another classic of its kind. Von Daniken's Chariot of the Gods was thin milk after such heady stuff as this!

I’d fasted for two days, drinking only water. I was ready. My parents had gone out, my mother reluctantly, suspecting bulimia or perhaps anorexic tendencies but reassured when I told her these two syndromes wouldn’t be invented until the 1980’s. Even so, she knew something was up.

When the front door clicked shut, I lay on a blue cotton eiderdown in the back bedroom and closed my eyes. No naked ladies crossed my mind. I had a different task in hand: my very first try at ‘astral projection’

I’d read all the books…so much rubbish in so short a time, especially the pen and ink diagrams of comatose men, their spirits floating above them attached by an ‘astral cord’. I’d spurned the Charles Atlas adverts with their promise of a perfect body and gone for something even more silly. I’d bought the promises that one day I’d be able to direct my spirit to any corner of the world, along with the warning that, initially, I might only manage the ceiling, or perhaps the top of the wardrobe in the far corner of the room.

I remembered just in time another warning. Malign forces were out there waiting to break the astral cord and possess a consequent vacant body. I opened my eyes and scanned each corner of the room. “Should body or spirit be in danger the astral cord will drag your spiritual self back faster than you can imagine. Your whole body will tremble and shake as the two merge once more as one." Or something like that. The words reassured me and I closed my eyes once more.

I don’t know how long I remained there in some kind of psychic doze but all of a sudden the telephone rang and I bounced on the bed shaking and vibrating from head to toe. Had I projected say an inch or two before the malign forces of British Telecom dragged me back, or had I been mildly startled?

My psychic adventures continued: The Ouija board, which really did create a very bad atmosphere in the house. Never done that one since, at least not in any house I actually live in. And once, accompanying Keith Davies visiting his girl friend in Ilkly, North Yorkshire, I came across my first ‘witch’. Well, he said he was. He said many things.

We were talking over a few pints close to a blazing fire. A Yorkshire pub on a winter’s night. The Yorkshire moors then, and maybe still, were a popular place for covens. He told us of how they had tried to conjure up Ashtoreth. We listened, spell-bound as one would, listening to a witch. He describe in minute detail the ceremony and several of the incantations and of how a mist began to appear in the centre of the ring.

“What happened then?” I asked, my drink forgotten, so powerful was the spell.
He looked at me and paused. “We all buggered off,” he said, “Shit scared.”