AN Abergavenny man has made an outrageous claim that he met the late lead singer of The Doors wandering aimlessly in the Mojave Desert.

Jim Morrison may have shuffled off this mortal coil over half a century ago, but semi-professional paranormal investigator Johnny Turnip alleges that he bumped into the dead rock star and had “an interesting chat.”

“I was tripping on peyote at the time, but that’s neither here nor there, because so was he,”explained Turnip.

“I know what I saw through. It was definitely Morrison. You could tell by the way he walked and talked, as well as his habit of spontaneously breaking into poetry.

“The thing that really spun me out, though, was that he looked exactly the same as he did when he was alive. He hadn’t aged a bit which makes me thinks he was either a ghost or I was experiencing some weird shift in the space and time continuum that allowed Morrison to walk from his era, and me from mine, and meet up in a no man’s land between worlds and between times, where we could chew the fat and discuss things on a cosmic level.”

Turnip told the Chronicle that after he and the boys had taken Tyke’s peyote, they walked aimlessly in silence for a bit, waiting for the drug to kick in, when he found himself alone and wandering in the desert night.

“It was all a bit strange, really,” explained Turnip. “One minute I was walking into the shadow of the setting sun with the boys and casually chatting about how each individual’s personal perspective is capable of manifesting its own unique reality that bears no semblance to objective truth, and then it hit me like a freight train!

“It was dark, I was on my own, and the peyote had started to kick in like a wild mule!”

Turnip explained that the first thing he did was to fall to his knees and scream at the sheer existential horror of it all.

“I don’t know how many of your readers have ever found themselves lost in the wilderness, but the heat and stillness of the desert does something strange to a soul,” explained Turnip.

“Not to mention the premium-grade peyote that Tyke had supplied us with.

“It felt like my mind was melting, and the full scale of the universe was exploding in my eyes. One minute, I felt the pain of the world, and the next, I felt nothing. I was terrorised by time, but I also felt as if history was my plaything. I was a god observing myself from above the clouds, and I was also the tiny speck of sand being trampled beneath my feet. “My mind felt like it was a tiny spark spat into the endless night from the bonfire to end all infernos. Everything that ever was and will be felt like it was happening all at once.

“You can’t put it into words really. It’s safe to say I had a bit of a moment back there, but as each dizzying wave of consciousness expanding peyote furiously crashed against the rapidly eroding shoreline of my mind, I knew I had to slowly rally and pull myself together or else lose myself in the black hole of psychedelics as my mortal frame succumbed to physical decay.”

Turnip added, “I had no sugar to sweeten this trip, but I did have a lot of experience with drugs and have adopted a range of coping mechanisms to deal with the more out there moments.

“So I concentrated all my mental energies on survival and my mission to find Potato Creek Johnny’s pot of fairy gold and bring magic back to the world.

“The first issue I had to address was that I was alone and lost in the desert, and the second was that somehow, somewhere along the line, I had stripped down to my boxer shorts.

“Dehydration and starvation were all real things, but death due to exposure was a far more pressing concern. It gets cold in the desert at night, and I had already begun to shiver.”

Turnip explained that as he trudged semi-naked and high through the wilderness, he came to the conclusion in his altered state that what he really needed was a spirit guide.

“I’ve dug myself out of chemical-shaped holes before by summoning a sage from the other side to lead me out of the darkness and into light,” explained Turnip.

“I recall one particularly rough night when I enlisted the help of a presence from the other realms that could have been the late actor Christopher Lee.

“He was dressed as Dracula at the time, which would have been really weird, but like I said, I was in a state, and so the visitation of a famous vampire didn’t really faze me.

“Anyhow, me and the old thespian talked through the night about a whole range of topics, including Brexit, his thoughts on the Lord Of The Rings movies, and the lost art of duelling. By the time the sun came up, I was level-headed again, and he had vanished like early morning mist.

“He may or may not have been real, but that’s not the point. He helped me out of a jam. The fact that my mind felt he had manifested himself from the infinite energy field that lies behind all things was enough to get me through the night until I could steady my vision and regain my sense of equilibrium.

“It had worked in the past, and so there, in the desolate sweep and empty sands of the Mojave Desert, I was about to try my hand again and call up an entity from the great beyond to show me the way, but as it turned out, I didn’t have to bother.”

Turnip told the Chronicle that as he squatted in the sand and prepared to draw the circle of summoning, he was suddenly aware of a figure hovering over him.

“At first, I thought it was Big Tony or Puerto Rico Paul, and I was flooded with a strong sense of relief at being found, but when I looked up, I saw it was a lithe-looking dude with long hair who looked a lot cooler than any of my old amigos.

“He had his head cocked to one side and a slight grin on his face as he said, ‘Tough trip, huh?’

“‘It doesn’t get much tougher!” I said as I got to my feet. ‘What do they call you, stranger?’ I asked

“There was a pause, as he grinned and seemed to think about it for a moment, before he said, ‘Err, Jim’.

“And that’s how I met the lead singer of The Doors.”

To be continued.....