Beyond Reality

Anna, a student of J.J.’s, has learned how to enter another etheric plane – by crossing through her bedroom mirror into an alternate world where her romantic fantasies about J.J. are real. This other world turns dangerous when Anna is unable to find her way back. Laura hypnotizes J.J., allowing him to join Anna on the etheric plane and guide her back to reality.

Joe Revere is being terrified by horrible, violent nightmares. Laura and J.J. discover that Revere’s got a double, an exact twin who is a cop on the graveyard shift. The cop’s intense, deeply repressed fears have created the “double” – whose “nightmares” are the cop’s real life. Laura and J.J. persuade Revere to confront the double – and his innermost fears – head- on to resolve this.

Anthony is a psychic healer whose "gift" is fading; he’s been taking on the illnesses of those he cures. Laura and J.J. recommend that Anthony rest and “recharge”, but Anthony is desperate to cure his dying father, Bill. During the healing, instead of allowing his illness to transfer to Anthony, Bill takes Anthony’s illnesses into himself, ensuring his own death – but also cleansing his son of disease and restoring his gift.

Jenny, a teenage runaway, has had a vision of her long-lost mother, Barbara, in which Barbara told Jenny she was returning. Obeying Barbara’s instructions to "follow her instincts", Jenny travels thousands of miles to a city she’s never seen – and miraculously finds her estranged father, Gil. Laura and J.J. suspect Barbara’s mysterious disappearance ten years ago may have been a UFO abduction, but Gil refuses to believe it. And then Barbara does appear…to say goodbye to Jenny – and to take Gil with her.

Miriam, a librarian, is being haunted by a ghost. Laura and J.J. discover the apparition is Frederic – Miriam’s husband – who left her years ago. Miriam is shocked to discover Frederic is not dead, but is a filthy, drunken bum who has been using astral projection – out of body travel – to watch the woman he still loves but hasn’t dared approach. Ashamed at Miriam’s having seen him as he is, Frederic flees. To find him, Miriam induces her own out of body experience – a dangerous move. But Miriam’s demonstration of caring convinces Frederic of her friendship and forgiveness…and gives him motivation to put his life back in order.

Laura and J.J. discover that Dave, a thirty-year-old man, believes he is the reincarnation of Otto Leider, a WWII concentration camp commandant – and is carrying out a perverted mission of killing camp survivors. Using hypnotic regression, Laura and J.J. show Dave his past life: Dave "sees" Leider being accosted by a prisoner who claims to be his mother; when the woman offers proof, Leider shoots her. The knowledge that his hero Leider was actually a coward who murdered his Jewish mother is more than Dave can bear – his mind snaps, leaving him catatonic.

Tom Becker, a paraplegic, finds that his paralyzed limbs are moving…which is medically impossible. Tom’s wife, Maggie, suspects it may be unconscious telekinesis, direct mind control. But Laura and J.J. find it’s actually Tom’s assistant Kathy, killed in the subway accident which paralyzed Tom, who’s taking control of Tom’s motions, pulling him against his will to the site of the accident. As a train approaches, Tom’s sure Kathy’s brought him here for revenge…but Kathy’s ghost tells Tom she loves him and wants him to join her. Tom must decline – he loves Maggie and is happy with his life despite being paralyzed – and Kathy disappears, moving Tom clear of the track just as the train thunders past.

Sharon’s having terrifying visions of her dead ex-husband Paul trapped in a cave of ice. Laura and J.J. discover that Paul’s body was cryogenically frozen after death. Sharon can’t convince Paul’s then-current wife Natalie that Paul’s consciousness is somehow alive and in pain. Laura and J.J. use biofeedback techniques to make Natalie receptive to telepathic images, and Natalie sees Paul – asking Natalie to let him die. Natalie terminates the contract and has Paul’s body buried, allowing Paul to pass on.

Michael, a troubled boy of twelve, is seeing the ghost of his father, Frank, who died in an auto accident on a bridge. Michael misses Frank desperately and wants to join him. When Michael is critically injured, Laura and J.J. urge his mother to overcome her fears, go to the bridge and speak to Frank’s ghost. The mother tells Frank that it’s not yet Michael’s time; Frank, knowing she’s right, “speaks” to the near-death Michael and persuades him to fight for his life.

Eric, a young lawyer, is having bouts of extreme pain with no known cause. Laura and J.J. find that Eric’s girlfriend Angie secretly gave a lock of Eric’s hair to Dominique, a co-worker who offered to prepare a Voodoo love potion. But Dominique, jilted in the past by Eric, is using her black magic to torture Eric – and Angie as well. To save Angie and himself, Eric has to confront Dominique and turn her own magic against her.

Cody, sixteen, is having frightening prophetic visions of his mother Diana being killed by her new husband John. While Laura and J.J. are investigating, Diana narrowly escapes serious injury from an accident that Cory accurately foresaw. Laura and J.J. discover that Cory himself is telekinetically causing the accidents without realizing it. To stop the accidents and Diana, Laura and J.J. must get Cory to face his own demons – to confront his unconscious hostility toward Diana for marrying John and “betraying” his father.

Mitchell, a geologist, has been taken over by the personality of Fountain Gibbs, a slave from 1858. Mitchell’s been institutionalized; when Laura and J.J. come to interview him to determine if this might be a case of channeling or reincarnation, Fountain/Mitchell takes Laura hostage and escapes. But Mitchell’s personality isn’t gone – rather, Fountain must constantly suppress it in order to stay in control of Mitchell’s body. Though Fountain is certain that if he returns to 1858 he’ll die, Laura convinces Fountain that being a slavemaster (by suppressing Mitchell) is as bad as being a slave. Fountain returns to 1858 – but manages to reach a free state and survive.

Cindy, a doctoral student of Laura and J.J.’s, is doing an experiment which attempts to link human minds with animal minds through hypnosis. It succeeds with Rex, who mind-links with a wolf in the wild, seeing what it sees and feeling what it feels as it kills a rabbit. Rex discovers he enjoys this vicarious killing and begins controlling the wolf’s actions to attack larger prey – including Cindy when she threatens to stop the experiment. J.J., playing on Rex’s hypnotic suggestibility, manages to loosen Rex’s control over the wolf – which turns against its telepathic “master” and kills him.

When ten-year-old Tina starts having frightening, recurring visions of a woman apparently being murdered, her mother Kris seeks Laura and J.J.’s help, certain her daughter is seeing a future event that can perhaps be prevented. But Tina’s father Bill is adamant that these “visions” are just bad dreams. His motives are called into question, though, when Tina sees him hiding a bracelet that the woman in her vision was wearing. When Laura and J.J. try to analyze Tina’s visions, Bill turns violent and takes her away from Laura and J.J. Soon Tina is lost in her visions, at first trying to dig up what might be a body buried in the basement, then almost falling off the roof in a re-creation of them woman’s death. Laura and J.J. tell her frantic parents the only way to save Tina is for Kris to psychically walk her through the vision – because these images are coming not from Tina, but from her mother.

After raping his coworker Sheila, Ryan finds that, by returning to the scene of the crime and meditating, he can psychically force Sheila to repeatedly relive the attack. Unable to return to work for fear of Ryan and with no one to believe her, Sheila comes to Laura, her former teacher. They find there’s little that can be done in the real world – when J.J. questions him, Ryan claims Sheila is a mental case. Realizing the only way to stop the attacks is for Sheila to fight back on the psychic plane, Laura teaches her self-defense and confronting Ryan she kills him.

High-achiever Jennifer lets slip to Laura that her grades have been dropping lately due to the time she’s spending in a role-playing game she’s involved in with some other students. When Jennifer and a second student are reported missing, Laura questions the other players, who react with suspicion. A clue leads Laura and J.J. to a university basement at midnight, where masked students sit playing the Game. The room-filing incense proves to be a drug; soon Laura and J.J. find themselves transported into “Darkworld” – a hellish, medieval realm where the students are wild, masked creatures. Laura and J.J. are forced to be players in the Game, ruled over by the Sorcerer.

J.J. falls for Emma Moreland, a visiting British professor using Laura and J.J.’s database of the paranormal to study siren myths through the ages. But Laura turns up some disturbing oddities about Emma’s research: she’s focusing on Tanit, and ancient demon who killed men with a kiss of fire – and on modern killings that seem to mirror this exact method of death. Fearing Emma may be chasing a real-life monster, J.J. confronts her, only to learn that Emma’s certain she’s possessed by this demon, which transforms her when she’s asleep.

After experiencing astral projection during a beating from a sadistic prison guard, death row convict Stan Ortega invites Laura and J.J. to study the phenomenon. J. J., back when he was a psychotherapist, examined Ortega during his trial and testified Ortega was sane…though J.J. also came to believe in Ortega’s innocence. Now Ortega hopes they can help him control these projections, so he can leave his body before begin electrocuted. Initial hypnosis sessions suggest to Laura and J.J. that Ortega is astral projecting, but their complaints to the warden about the beatings only serve to bring on another attack upon Ortega from the guard Hatch. Dispirited, Ortega confides to Laura and J.J. that Hatch committed the murder for which Ortega is now to be executed.

After Susan Tong sees her headstrong young brother Jimmy stick his hand in a flame without getting burned, she contacts Laura, who used to baby-sit the two of them and was a Godsend when their parents died. Jimmy has recently joined a street gang…and become obsessed with Chinese mysticism. When Laura tries to talk to Jimmy he erupts in anger then shows her his power – slashing himself with a knife and them healing the wound. Later when Jimmy is confronted by a rival gang member, he defeats the man by summoning up an ancient Chinese warrior. But the warrior-spirit runs amok, killing the gang member. Laura and J.J. piece it together – the same Chinese symbol burned into the forehead of the victim appeared on Jimmy’s hand when he slashed himself. Laura reveals to Jimmy that the symbol is that of Nie Zheng, an ancient assassin who Jimmy is apparently channeling. Jimmy admits he called upon the spirits of his ancestors to give him strength, but had no idea it would end in murder.

While walking by a showing of paintings by Dan Barker – all blurry details of a single monstrous creature – Elizabeth Wade is horrified to see the pictures moving, a clawed hand reaching out of the canvas. She goes berserk and destroys one of the paintings, then runs off into the night. Later, Laura and J.J. find her huddled in their office. Elizabeth is a former patient of J.J.’s, a schizophrenic who once believed she was the sole human in the world ruled by a monster named Pit. Medication and J.J.’s guidance helped her out of madness, but now she claims that Dan is painting Pit by somehow looking into her mind! J.J. discovers the paintings do bear an uncanny resemblance to Elizabeth’s former hallucinations and her ability to guess the details of works Dan has shown no one further suggest there’s a psychic line between them. Elizabeth pleads with Dan to destroy the paintings – if he continues, she feels sure he too will go mad.