I called Michael Umlauf on a Friday afternoon, requesting an interview in the form of a voice mail. He returned my call within the hour.

“Yes, I can do tomorrow,” he said. “My wife just got out of the ICU so I’m going to see her at 1:30, but I can do before.”

I remember thinking he gave a little more information than expected. I was nervous about interviewing a professional whom I had never met before, and he surprised me with his personable tone.

While still on the phone, he took the liberty of explaining a little about what he does. He likes to talk about himself, and that was good for me.

“In most countries what I do is called a Shaman,” I remember him saying. This puzzled me because I thought a Shaman was a Native American Spiritual advisor.

I asked him if there were meeting locations convenient to him, and he suggested a McDonalds on Highway 280 or a library, so we met at UAB’s Sterne Library.

I spent my evening researching him and his profession on the internet. The about page on his website features a selfie in a cemetery. I also found a page advertising his wedding officiant service.

Although I was unsure of his credibility, I could not shake the fear that he would somehow know about my internet stalking. I remember deciding I had to go into the interview completely unbiased, because I did not want him to sense any of my opinions.

            The next day, I watched him from the steps of the Sterne Library. From my internet research, I knew what he looked like. He was a large man, sort of round, with black greasy hair. I do not recall noticing him being short or tall—I think he was of average height. He had thick head of black hair that was saturated with either sweat or grease.

He drove a black sedan. While I was watching him, he stepped around to the trunk of his car and opened it. He was wearing an outfit of mostly black, except for his deep navy nylon polo. This included solid black sneakers. His reason for opening the trunk of his car seemed to be a shoe swap.

While standing on the road behind his car, which was parked at a meter on the road across from the library steps, he removed his shoes. I cringed when I saw his black socked feet standing right on the blacktop. He then leaned all the way over to put on a pair of black dress shoes. When he straightened out again, he hefted his black trousers until they found a comfortable position on his belly, then he turned to cross the street.

            “You must be Martha,” he said as he approached.

            The library opened at 9am sharp and we had both arrived a bit early, so I guided him to a table outside. Half of the table was shielded by an umbrella, and have was not. He sat on the metal chair across from mine and removed his black sunglasses while tussling his greasy hair.

            I began the interview by introducing myself as a creative writing student.

            “I figured,” he said. “You’re really introverted. You know something about artistic people? Let me tell you something about yourself.”

            At this moment, he was full of himself, or he was trying to be.

            “Your brain is about this big.” He showed me his q my face. At this moment, I was cursing myself for not pressing record before we got to the table.

            “Do you mind if I record?” I asked.

            This disturbed him.

            “Sure, I guess I will record too then.” He said it in a matter-of-fact way, tossing his head a little in the process. “Just in case one day you become famous and I can say ‘I remember that girl.’ Oh, I’m just kidding.”

            He called himself a Cherokee Indian. He was born to Cherokee parents. Because of his Cherokee bloodline, he is considered a Shaman in some parts of the country. He does not remember his parents, nor does he know why he was put up for adoption at the age of three. He spent ages 3-5 in “the system”. I asked him how this was.

            He said it was bad, but that’s all he would say. I asked if there were any stand-out memories, and he said he was too young at the time.

            He calls his adoptive parents “Mom” and “Dad”. His mom is Catholic. She used to work as a professor at UAB. His dad is somewhere between atheist and agnostic. Michael said, “He believes, but he doesn’t do the whole Christian thing, kinda thing.”

I asked him by what religion he was raised.

“Unitarian, basically. Opened. I was always Unitarian, since I was adopted. I went to Unity. I just really didn’t like the people there! I didn’t like the hugging… and I didn’t like the human contact.

“My dad said ‘you gotta hug’ and I said ‘I don’t want to hug, can I just shake people’s hands or do the bump fist thing?’ He said ‘but that’s their thing’ and I said ‘but it’s not my thing. I don’t like contact!’ I’ve always done that. Even when my dad tried to hug me I’m like ugh.”

In that moment he shriveled and shrunk away to his side, acting as if his dad was trying to hug him.

“Unitarianism believes in meditation, so I do that and that’s how I open my third eye,” he said.  

            When asked about his psychic talents, Michael boasts that he has always been psychic. He believes that all people are born with “these gifts”, but only some people use them. Part of this can be attributed to religion. Michael also says families teach their children not to use their gifts.

            His family did not believe he was psychic, growing up. Michael said, “They thought I was kinda nuts.”

            Growing up, he would propose ideas to his father about products. His father would say” Oh no, that wouldn’t work, that wouldn’t work.” Later on, the product would become the next big thing. His father would then say, “well maybe that would’ve been a good idea.”

            He says that he has seen people have a car accident before it occurs. When he tells them, he is met with resistance—sometimes even anger. Then, the incident comes to fruition.

            To Michael, seeing the dead is interesting. He has always seen the dead. When he was younger, it scared him. Deceased people would approach him, wanting to talk. He used to think, “Am I schizophrenic or something?” Now, he loves the dead.

His abilities flourished in 2010, after he was pronounced dead. He was born with a rare heart disease. He has had five heart surgeries in his lifetime. In 2010, he went to the hospital to have catheter camera inserted into his heart, for what was supposed to be a regular test. They accidentally punctured the heart, causing internal bleeding.

At this point in the story, Michael stopped.

“It’s weird, let me back up on that story. Cause like, I’m missing the really fine line details, because this is a story, so, and it’s based on a true story, ok. I want to get all of the juicy stuff.”

            I remember thinking, wait a minute—based on a true story?

            Three weeks prior to his heart test, Michael knew that he was going to die. He described it as “an unshakable feeling” that he “wasn’t going to be here]”. The feeling was so strong that Michael drafted a will. He gave his will to his father and told each of his parents that he was going to die in three weeks. Through their shock, they tried to tell Michael that he was not going to die. They tried convincing him that he was going to be fine.

            When signing the consent form for the heart test, he felt like he was signing a paper saying “this is going to be your last day on earth”. After this, he told his mom that this would be the day that he died. His mom said she did not want to hear it.

            One nurse stood out to him on that day. She was what Michael called a cute nurse. Her hair was black, with one green stripe near the front.

            “I’m really scared,” he said to the nurse.

            “Everything’s going to be okay,” she replied. Michael heard her reply, but he never saw her mouth move.

When Michael’s heart stopped, he had an out of body experience. He says that he saw ten people with their hands in his chest. One doctor said, “Oh, crap, I killed this man.”

“Those were his exact words,” Michael was sure to say.

            This conversation about Michael’s death was juxtaposed by the cheery sound of birds singing in a tree nearby.

            He was still out of his body when he turned around and saw the cute nurse, on the other side.

            “Now, explain that,” he said to me with a goofy grin and a pointed index finger. I could not explain it, partly because I was not sure of what he meant by “the other side”.

            “I didn’t see no white light, okay. I guess white light is based on your preference or beliefs or something.”

            He woke up on a strange bed, and the nurse took him to the other side. He asked her where they were, and she said they were on the other side. When he asked if this meant heaven, she said “something like that.” A door opened. Michael began walking on a huge road, made out of gold.

            “The walls were made of rubies and emeralds, or something like that but you can’t find them on earth,” he said. “It was that beautiful. When I was getting close to the gate, I saw my aunt who died of cancer when I was little little little little.”

            I asked him what the people he saw were wearing, and he said they were just wearing regular clothes. There was no white uniform, like people see on television. His aunt was special to him. Because he was adopted, he did not always feel like he was a real part of the family. His aunt and his grandmother both treated him like a real part of the family.

            “It meant the world to me. When those two died… it did something to me,” he said.

            Behind the gate, he saw an enormous tree with birds flying through the branches, singing all the while. He called it “a big tree of life.” There was a river that was so clean and pure that he could look straight through and see the bottom.

            “There wasn’t a section, like you see on TV, that says Catholics here, Baptists here, Pentecostals here,” he said, pointing to different areas of the air above my head. “None of that exists in Heaven. In Heaven, they got these little groups of people. They’re children. They’re called—I believe they’re called workers, or something, if I remember. And then they got these watchers that watch over the children, and so I don’t know what their purpose is but that’s what I remember they said. Then, all of a sudden, I went to hell.”

            “When I went to hell…” he paused. “There were these caves. Very dark, very cave like. Very… not earthly. There’s layers to hell. Well, Christians call it hell, but it’s basically the underworld. It’s not down in the ground, okay,” he chuckled. “It’s not up in the sky. It’s basically in a different dimension.”

            I started to notice his tone growing in confidence whenever he was explaining things like this, rather than telling stories and talking about himself.

            “Each cave was controlled by a demon, which was a rogue angel. The rogue angels have fallen with Lucifer and Lucifer is real, the devil doesn’t exist, and satan doesn’t exist, just so you know that.”

            “When I was in hell, I saw more things than I needed to see. I saw children in hell, I saw priests in hell, I saw cops in hell, I saw regular people just like you and me in the pits of fire. I was in these caves, where I was being tortured. My skin was being ripped off, I was being beaten, I was being stabbed.”

            I asked him if he could feel the pain as he would here on Earth.

            “Oh yea, it was painful,” he said. “But I didn’t remember the pain when I came back. It was weird, but it was very painful. I was screaming, but not like everybody else. They were screaming for God to take them out of hell and so on and so on.

            “It was like a torturing burning sensation of burnt human skin, of the voice, if that makes sense.”

            “After this experience, I transitioned into purgatory.”

            “Do you know how long it took?” I asked.

            “In any spiritual realm, there’s no time. So you really can’t say is it a week, is it two… So I really can’t tell you how long but it sure as hell felt like an eternity to me.

            “So when I went to purgatory… I feel like purgatory is a holding spot for you before you get sent to your final judgement with God, or the creator, or whoever you want to believe in. Because, when I was in purgatory, and, why are you getting the chills?”

            In this moment, I was yanked out of his story and into reality to notice I’d been twitching.

            “Oh, I twitch. I’m a twitcher,” I said.

            “You’re getting nervous. Interesting.” He said.

            “Sometimes, I believe purgatory is a way for you to be a ghost, in reality, when you become trapped. Cause there’s an amount of time that you’re supposed to come back to your body before you become a wandering spirit or a lost soul.

            “So, when I was in purgatory it looked like this world, but I really couldn’t tell. You really didn’t have the sense of knowing which part of the dimension you were in. I could see my mom and dad, like talking to me, I could hear them, but I really, foresay, couldn’t speak back if that makes sense.”

            “Could you see them?” I asked.

            “I’d be in and out. I’d be transitioning into this dimension and then out into purgatory, and then in and then out and I was trying to talk to them but I really couldn’t talk to them. If that makes sense.”

            “Were they still in the hospital?” I asked.

            “They were still in the hospital. They never left. For that whole entire time, they never left. And then, all of a sudden, when I went back to Heaven—I’m like, when I look back now I’m like, ‘okay that’s weird, why am I going all through these transitions.

“But when I went back to heaven, I saw these weird humongous beasts, which are angels according to Christians. I just think they are aliens, but the Christians believe they are angels. But, I just think they are aliens with some magnifikent magical powers. But there were these two that were guarding the doors of this, like–”

“What did they look like?”

“Weird. They had this shield. This crimson face shield, or something. I really can’t explain, but they had this armor, basically, because they’re warriors. I really can’t give details because they kinda told me to shut up. All I can do is just tell you that much information.

“There were two, definitely, like in front of this door. These doors are like, bigger than this building. When I went there, I went inside, and all of the sudden I started seeing this humongous table. Like, looking up I was almost breaking my neck, kinda thing. And I see these twelve people. I guess they were the disciples or something—I’m not sure. Anyways, I was talking to, I guess the disciples, but then I heard God’s voice.”

“What did it sound like,” I said. He continued talking over my question.

“I didn’t see God, I didn’t see Jesus, but I heard God’s voice. And then God said, ‘Why should I bring you back on Earth? Why should I give you another chance?’ Well, I said ‘You know what I need to do, but man keep on stopping me because they think I’m crazy or something.

“Then, all of a sudden, God was talking to me and I don’t really remember the whole conversation. Because when coming back on earth, I guess he just erases it or something like that, or something just really weird.

“But there’s some things that he showed me before I came back. And it was so fast like a movie clip. Things that were happening with Obama, and all these things happening with World War 3, that’s about to come. Things like, people don’t realize that they’re trying to build the third temple right now. And when that happens, that’s when the antichrist will rise. And that’s going to take place.

“God showed me about Obama being president, about some form of martial law that we are currently already in, that people don’t realize. That’s why people see weird things that are going on it’s a global martial law, but they keep it down low.”

Here, his voice took on the rhythm of someone giving a technology presentation. I questioned him a bit here, because Obama was already present in 2010. It is possible that he meant God showed him Obama performing presidential duties, however.

“So when he was showing me all of these things, with police officers marching down the streets with black suits and protests and all that stuff– all that came true. Does that make sense to you?”

I nodded.

“It was like a movie clip and so, so my folks thought I was crazy! When I was explaining what I saw when I died, and so they literally say you gotta go see a psychiatrist.”

“Have they always been like that? Ever since you were little, they didn’t believe you?” I asked.

“Yea, they didn’t believe, they thought I was coocoo. But then, since I’ve had my business I think I’ve put my family at a shut up mode, kinda thing, cause I was showin’ them the reviews. And ever since then, they’re kinda like, maybe he wasn’t so oonie kinda thing.

“I think my dad’s trying to open up, but not really. But I told my dad ‘don’t give him the dog biscuits before Christmas or else he will die’. Instead, it changed his fate when I told him that. The dog got ran over three weeks after Christmas and got killed. So yea.”

“So did he believe that then,” I asked.

“Well, obviously he did cause he didn’t call me back, and it’s been months. Cause I told him he would fall off the roof of the house, and he did. I told him he would have a bad motorcycle accident, and he did. And that’s it.”

“What about your mom,” I asked.

“She just stays behind the scenes, always ts-ts-ts-ts” he says, using his right hand to mimic a talking puppet. “Mouthing her mouth off to other people about me, or something, I don’t care. It is what it is.

“So, yeah. After all the experiences, I realized that my being is not normal, okay. I realized I don’t belong in church even though I am ordained. But my beliefs are a little bit different, if that makes sense with you.

“Because, church teaches you things that are watered-down religious beliefs, and that are more controlled by the government. You should be free. You shouldn’t be bind. Matthew 18:18 says whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; whatever you loose in earth shall be loosed in heaven. That means that religious binds you based on how you act, and religious means to be bind… or bound.”

He seemed less confident in this explanation. He said that religion is binding, so therefore those who practice religion are not free. His second wife, who he’s been with for two years, also practices what he referred to as his pagan or wiccan religion.

“It’s not that I converted her to my religion. She just kind of realized that’s how she could be free.”

            He then summed up his religious beliefs for me.

            “I believe magic is real. I do magic. I cast spells and so on, and it does manifest. Some things manifest a little quicker than love. I tell people love can mess things up.”

            He believes that anyone who practices spiritualism can open up the third eye, but that some will take longer than others.

            “They can’t sit still. They’ll twitch, or their mind will go elsewhere. So I came up with a strategy—to listen to some chakra music or meditation music with some headphones, and put the headphones in there, in your ears, and to blindfold you. That way, it’s completely pitch black and you won’t see your phone screen or your computer screen.”

            He says the pitches of the meditation songs help people reach the meditative state. He also believes there are states more advanced than the third eye. I asked what they were.

            “Well, the fifth eye.”

            “What about the fourth eye?” I asked.

            “The fourth, you just have to get and just be careful. I just skipped to the fifth eye and that’s not very cool.”

            I asked him to elaborate.

            “The fifth eye is almost like you’re trippin’ on acid. I don’t know how I skipped the fourth eye but I definitely jumped from third to fifth, because I saw things more vivid. On the fifth eye, I ran into some demons, or something, and one of them tried to touch the crap out of me, or something. One tried to do something else then I saw something else, then I saw the universe. Like, I could actually project it on the fifth eye, kind of, it’s kinda weird. There are some weird planets. Just letting you know that.”

He seemed to harbor a lot of resentment against churches, so I asked him why he was an ordained pastor. Apparently, certain states require spiritual advisors, or psychics, to be ordained. He was ordained in 2003. He has a degree in divinity and is currently working in an honorary degree in demonology. When I asked why I couldn’t find any information about this degree online, he said “it’s a top secret kind of thing.”

            We concluded the interview and stood.

            “I’m going to get something to eat after this.” He managed to say this twice before we reached his car.

            As we walked to the car, he said, “You know, I am also an actor.”

He then told me about a TV series he will be doing with a guy on YouTube after the holidays. I noticed throughout the interview, but especially on the walk to his car, just how hard he was trying to impress.

 As we talked by his car, a man walked by. He was drenched in sweat and wearing gym attire. I noticed Michael staring at him as he passed us by. When the conversation ceased and it was time for Michael to get in his car, he said “I’m going to hit the gym.”

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