Interview-Alternate Perceptions Magazine, March 2015
An Interview with Wahabah hafsa al Mu’ld, Ph.D.
by: Brent Raynes
Wahabah hafsa al Mu’ld, a co-host of The Church of Mabus radio show with Jeffrey Pritchett (www.churchofmabusradio.com), is a serious researcher of UFOs, the paranormal, shamanism, cryptozoology and metaphysical subject matter, which fits in perfectly with the wide-ranging mysteries covered on this program. Known to her radio audience as simply WHAM, our interviewee is also an experiencer too.
Brent Raynes: To begin with, please give us some background about yourself.
WHAM: I've always been interested in history, religion, science and paranormal events. I also always wanted to be a teacher. So I went to college (later in life than some) and got a BA in Philosophy, a MA in Religious Studies and my PhD in Critical Theory in American Studies. Both my thesis and dissertation focused on aspects of UFO abduction reports. I've been able to correspond a bit with K. Marden about Betty Hill because I used the Hill case extensively in my dissertation. Their experience was very unique.
I've also trained as, or been initiated into Asatru neo-pagan shamanism, a Hermetic-Enochian occult lodge, a Tibetan Buddhist order, and Jewish Kabbalah. However, since 1994 I have been working mostly within the Inayati Sufi orders, which has allowed me to combine all of the above into a whole. My spiritual practice permits me to develop and maintain an openness to the paranormal stuff I research and experience. It's what makes mental, emotional and physical integration possible. Lately, I've also had the good fortune of linking up with American Indian teachers in my area and exchanging teachings and information which has broadened and deepened my perspective on the importance of completely opening up to the consciousnesses of the planet.
Brent Raynes: Very impressive background! And how about your name? It’s not a familiar or common name for these parts.
WHAM: My name is Arabic and is the name given me by my Sufi teacher. A friend of mine came up with WHAM because she refused to write the whole name out and it stuck. I do have a mundane American name, but why use that?
I consider myself both an experiencer and a researcher, not only for myself but also on behalf of several family members who also have had paranormal experiences. For a long time, like many other folks, I wanted to get to the 'bottom' of these kinds of experiences; ghosts, UFOs, all the different kinds of things my relatives and I were encountering. But now I'm more interested in how these experiences provide opportunities for creating meaning and the spiritual in people's lives. I don't really need to know about the 'source' anymore.
Brent Raynes: Please tell us something about yourself, and why and how you became interested in UFOs, the paranormal, and shamanic matters?
WHAM: At the age of 5 I had a powerful UFO experience with a neighborhood friend that changed my life. It was early summer in 1967, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and despite how young I was I remember everything vividly. It was a daytime sighting of a silver-grey disk with an unnaturally bright shiny red dome. My friend spotted it first and we both watched it for quite a long time. Kids don't really tell time well so I can't say for sure exactly how long. What I do know is that it scared me and my dreams and imaginings were changed permanently from that day to this. Nothing was the same. Religion, trust, my sense of self and the world was completely altered.
My father and a cousin also had profound UFO and ghost experiences. I was raised in a very conservative religious home, so I was given particular interpretations of these occurrences; that they were probably demonic. I had trouble with that and so I guess that's where my investigations began. I've always been curious and rational about even scary stuff.
Brent Raynes: Can you tell us what the UFO did? How far away it might have been?
WHAM: It just hovered and tilted at a three quarters angle towards us. Maybe moved a little up and down. It was not far horizontally but steeply up from us, as if it were peering down, which was pretty unnerving. As I was so young I didn't really think in terms of precise distance.
Brent Raynes: Did you have any unusual dream experiences afterwards?
WHAM: After that my nightmares started. I hadn't had any that I remember to that point. My first one involved being trapped in a room with mask like faces surrounding me, which is pretty suggestive but I didn't have many of the physical evidences that abductees typically report. I suffered from chronic nightmares until about a decade ago when my spiritual practices began to have the effect of diminishing and changing them.
Brent Raynes: Can you tell us something of what your father and your cousin experienced?
WHAM: I don't know the details of my cousin's UFO experience because he never would talk about it much. I know it involved actual entities that approached him in a cornfield in Iowa. I know he would wake up screaming in the night for many years and that as an adult he has never recovered fully from the trauma, but he won't talk about it. My father has had multiple paranormal encounters with the most vivid being an encounter with a ghost that haunted his childhood home in Jefferson, Iowa. He said he woke up to find this transparent figure messing around with his bedclothes as if looking for something. It acted like he wasn't there. He could see it pretty clearly, the plaid flannel shirt and coveralls. It moved from him to the window and then faded away as the moonlight hit it. He's always had the ability to actually see spirits.
Brent Raynes: You have mentioned about connecting with Native American teachers in your area and how it has enlightened you. Are there any specific areas of that enlightenment that you might be able to share with us that relates to things we're discussing in this interview? Or perhaps any of the other disciplines from across the globe that you've embarked in either?
WHAM: Probably the most important thing is the understanding that physical life is an opportunity to get your Soul right with the universe and that everything and everyone is fundamentally connected. That being said, there are many things we don't understand because of our generally limited focus here and so humility is essential. For me that's meant really working on getting back in touch with the planet and all the life forms on it--the whole of this biosphere as a growing and living being in its own right; that I'm both separate from and connected to at the same time. Some of 'us' are "from here" (earth) and some of us aren't, even though being a human is largely the form that certain related types of consciousness take (a clue to this can be found in the movie K-Pax, which is one of my favorite films). Overall, the Sufism that I practice and American Indian spirituality (particularly Lenape/Algonquin in my case), seem to have much the same emphasis on the purpose of physical life, the oneness of all beings in Spirit, and yet the different paths and purposes expressed in the diversity of the Divine.