More about that shoe on the ledge

Continued from “The shoe on the ledge”:

Just as a social worker was supposed to do, Kimberly Clark Sharp had established a relationship of trust with Maria.  And, now, Maria wanted her to look for the shoe.  Dutifully, then, Sharp set off, more to make Maria feel better than out of any real expectation of finding it.  Even if the shoe was out on a ledge several stories above the ground, she thought to herself, how was she supposed to find it, let alone to retrieve it?

Still, she set about the task in systematic fashion.  She went into each of the rooms on the east side of the north wing, third floor.  Apologizing to the occupants, she looked out the windows.  Nothing.  Nor anything on the north side, either.  She was four rooms into the building’s west side when, with her face pressed up against a window pane, squinting down to a ledge below, she saw it.  Exactly as Maria had described it.  Far away to the west were the Olympic Mountains, looming above Elliott Bay, and a lone high-rise building at a distance of about half a mile.

Once again, she began to test far-fetched explanations for Maria’s knowledge of the shoe on the high ledge.  This time, however, she concluded that Maria’s own explanation—that, while medical specialists had been frantically thumping and jolting her, she had been wandering freely about and outside the hospital—was the only explanation that really made sense.  Moreover, as she later questioned Maria again and reflected upon what she herself had seen, she realized that Maria’s description of the shoe best fit the idea that Maria’s vantage point had been roughly at the same level as the shoe and the ledge themselves.  The shoe would have been invisible from the ground, and Maria’s description of it was clearly not based on looking down on it from a window.

Now, this story can be criticized.  Sharp herself admits that she lost touch with Maria (who was, after all, a migrant worker).  She doesn’t remember Maria’s last name.  And she’s lost the famous shoe.

Had I known that Maria’s story would eventually become the best-known among contemporary accounts of out-of-body experiences, I would have kept better tabs on the shoe—and Maria, too, for that matter. . . .  Who knew it would one day be so important to have her validate her out-of-body experience?[1]

[1] $Sharp, After the Light, 15, 218.  Some additional minor details to the story, culled from a 1994 interview with Sharp by philosopher Gary Habermas, can be found at $Habermas and Moreland, Beyond Death, 212-213.

Posted from Canmore, Alberta, Canada