The Secret School in Avalon, Pennsylvania
By Janet Kira Lessin
Contributor: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
The Sealed Room in the Captain’s House
For years I flew. Most nights my soul rose out of the front bedroom at 800 Orchard Avenue and lifted over the rooftops of Avalon, the small borough along the Ohio River Boulevard where I spent my childhood. I moved with ease through doors, windows, walls, and ceilings.
One destination pulled at me above all the rest: a tall house at the corner of the boulevard and Prospect, the building that stands today at 735 Ohio River Boulevard and is called Captain’s Quarters. A riverboat captain built it around 1865, and its top level holds a crow’s nest room that overlooks the Ohio.
I rose to that height night after night, and the top floors held me out. Whatever lived in that crow’s nest kept its threshold sealed against a child who slipped through every other barrier in her world.
I pictured ghosts behind those windows, the original builder, the families who had lived there across a hundred years. The truth stayed hidden from me. I would learn only later who waited behind those sealed doors.
Cherilyn Across the Alley
My soul circled that sealed height and ached to enter, and the wanting ran deep enough that I spoke it aloud to the one person who might understand. Cherilyn was my best friend, a year older than me, and she lived straight across the alley behind our homes.
Her house rose larger than mine, two floors and a full attic above a first-floor apartment, and her family kept the upper floor, her parents and her grandfather and her two older brothers. Her kitchen window sat on the second floor and looked down over my backyard, and my mother’s kitchen door faced up toward it, so the two kitchens watched each other across the alley.
Our mothers knew each other across that gap. From the time we could walk, the two of us crossed between the doors on our own, and our mothers watched from the back while we looked both ways and stepped across, because the borough kept small girls safe enough for the journey. At four or five years old I told Cherilyn what I longed for. I wanted inside that building.
The Girl Who Knocked
Cherilyn came last of six children, born to a mother of my own grandmother’s generation, cherished and sure of her welcome in every house on the hill. That certainty made her bold.
She was as magical to me as the small teachers themselves, and I adored her and followed her every whim. A timid child might have felt the pull toward the sealed building and stayed outside circling the windows the way I did. Cherilyn felt it and knocked.
Cookies and Milk at the Captain’s House
Cherilyn took my hand. She walked me down the road to the tall house at the lower corner and knocked on the kitchen door. The kitchen faced the rear, the way our own kitchens did, and the back door served as the true entrance for everyone on our side of the hill, because the boulevard out front had grown to four lanes with heavy trucks.
An old man and an old woman opened the door and welcomed us in for cookies and milk. My whole body buzzed with excitement and nerves at once. My manners kept my questions quiet. I hoped for a tour and held my tongue, and the two of us sat in that kitchen, two small girls and a kind old couple, while the sealed floors waited above us.
The Hill Before the Houses
I stand in that back yard again when I remote view, and I lay the older world over the one I knew. The streets fall away. The neighborhood dissolves into farms and woods, and the valley opens clean to the river below. My home at 800 Orchard began as the original farmhouse, raised in 1848 on the highest point of the hill, and its acres once ran down toward the water.
A barn likely stood where the captain’s tall house rose later. From my yard on the summit, before anyone sold the lots and filled them with homes, a person could see straight to 735 and straight down to the Ohio, and the view was gorgeous. The railway was only then reaching along the river.
The Land Remembers Its Shapes
I imagine the two riverboat captains knew each other. One built high on the hill, one built lower toward the water, close enough to wave across open land. They may have stood as neighbors. They may even have been brothers.
The pattern repeated a century later in my own family, for when my mother’s sister married, she moved into a house only four doors away, and June (my mother) and Shirley (her older sister) lived out their lives about the same span apart as the two captains, though in opposite directions.
The land remembers its shapes. Two houses on one hill, two sisters four doors apart, two girls across an alley, the same measure of closeness laid down again and again.
Two Schools, One Friend
The same partnership followed us into our daylight lives. In the spring, when I, Janet, was four, I was teleported up to the mothership and shown 24 timelines, in which I had to choose “the right one.”
I, Janet, confused the extraterrestrials I met in space with the God talk my parents and siblings shared with me when they returned from church. So I begged my mother to enroll me in the church kindergarten; the rule was that I was too young. You had to be at least five years old.
But I wanted to talk to God again. My mind could not distinguish between the two. I asked my ET friends what to do, and they told me that if my mother asked the pastor again, he would admit me this time.
Besides, my best friend, Cherilyn, went there, and I wanted to walk beside her in that school the way I walked beside her everywhere else. I pressed my mother to ask the church board anyway, and just like the ETs said, the board set aside its own rule and let me in. A man of God found the request beyond his power to refuse.
That first day of school, our mothers walked us to the door. But after that, our neighborhood was so safe, we were allowed to go there on our own.
Every day after, the two of us walked to school and home again on our own, a long way across many streets, past the school guard, among hundreds of children of every age streaming between the grade school and the high school that stood side by side.
Door After Door Opened
Those years belonged to a different world. Mothers stayed home. Most owned no cars and never learned to drive, so children walked, and the borough held them while they did so.
Over the years, we walked into the choir together and sang like angels, and I carried a natural gift for harmony. Between the ages of five and twelve, we roamed the neighborhood and knocked on doors to sing carols, and the neighbors welcomed us back whenever we learned new songs.
Our reward ran to milk and graham crackers, sometimes water on a hot summer afternoon, sometimes nothing at all, and we stayed happy either way. We loved the bond with all those people old enough to be our grandparents. Door after door opened to two small girls who came singing.
The Hidden School We Both Carried
I understand now why Cherilyn could lead me to the captain’s house with such ease. She lived in the same double world I lived in. While we attended regular school during the days and Sunday school on Sundays, at night we attended the Secret School.
While we attended regular school during the school year and Sunday school on Sundays, at night we attended the Secret School.
Neither of us carried the upper school in our waking minds, yet our souls carried it whole, and one soul recognized the other.
Cherilyn crossed the alley to fetch me, Janet, the younger girl who kept circling the windows from the outside, and she did it on a pull she could no more name than I could name mine.
The Teachers Who Gathered Us
The teachers came warm. Small and gentle, the size of children themselves, they felt safe because they matched us. I found them cute. A being who stands at a child’s own height carries little threat, and the school above the corner ran on that mercy; teachers built to reassure the students they had gathered.
There they showed us how to wake the dormant strands of our own DNA, skills we needed because we already bridged two worlds. Cherilyn and I were two of those students, chosen young, walked in through a kitchen door by a girl one year older who moved on the same hidden knowing. We learned how to levitate things, and eventually we learned how to levitate ourselves. But since I had been traveling all my life astrally, it was easy for me.
Neither of us held the school in our waking minds. Our daylight selves knew only a pull, a wanting, a building at the corner that claimed a small girl’s whole attention. Our souls held the rest. That is the way of the Experiencer, who lives in separate rooms until the hour arrives to open them, our lives and minds kept apart until the time is right.
The old couple met us with kindness and a gentle confusion, two tiny girls at their kitchen door, and they walked us in while the sealed floors waited above. We stayed in the kitchen. Our manners held us there. My whole body wanted to bolt through the house and climb to the top and confirm with waking eyes what my soul already knew by night, and I trust Cherilyn felt the same tug.
We held still, ate what they set before us, drank our milk, and walked back up the road in silence. We climbed to the alley where our two backyards met, and there we parted for our own kitchen doors, neither of us saying a word that mattered.
Two Ways of Knowing
That is the part I hold closest. A child obsessed with a sealed building, circling it in flight and failing to enter, and a best friend who took my hand and walked me to the door.
The astral child pressed against the upper floor and stayed sealed out. The earthly child, Cherilyn beside her, knocked and won a welcome for cookies and milk.
Two ways of knowing, and the humbler one opened the door. We learned together, two girls of Avalon, in a school the daylight world stayed blind to.
The Book That Named It
The memory waited in me for decades, sealed the way the upper floors stayed sealed, until the hour arrived to open it. That hour came in February of 1997. A friend I will call Adam pressed a book into my hands as I ran for my plane to Australia, Whitley Streiber’s The Secret School, and he went out of his way to be sure I carried it aboard.
Adam knew me from the day we met at a spiritual center, and he knew me at once for what I am. He cared, without agenda, the way a true friend cares.
I read the book across the Pacific and felt a sealed piece of my own childhood turn like a key, the school at the Captain’s house rising into my waking mind at last.
Streiber’s pages held many echoes of my own and more differences besides, and they gave me words for a thing I had carried since I was four.
When the Key Turned
I spent my 43rd birthday in Australia. I traveled there with my live-in partner, Jason. Little did I know how much my life was soon to change.
Jason and I loved each other, but we knew we would not be together forever. He knew I was going to get married again and Jason knew he would never get married again.
By summer, I met Sasha. 1997 became the finest year of my life, and it began with a mystery piece of my grand personal puzzle sliding into place.
You will know when it is time. I met Sasha that summer at a conference at Mt. Madonna in Santa Cruz, CA. It was love at first sight. But I wasn’t sure what to do with that, as I was living with Jason. We were in an open arrangement, so it was ok. But I also wanted it to be just right.
By the fall of 1997, I moved in with Sasha on Maui. Jason and I remained best friends until his passing a few years later. I believed his heart and soul wanted me to be safe before he could let go of his mortal coil. He was an alcoholic, and I never discovered the source of his intense pain. But we loved each other unconditionally, and that’s what we both needed at the time.
Author Bio: Janet Kira Lessin
Janet Kira Lessin is an author, experiencer, researcher, broadcaster, and co-founder of Aquarian Media. A lifelong contactee and consciousness explorer, Janet writes from personal memory, recovered experience, and decades of investigation into extraterrestrial contact, Anunnaki history, hidden schools, experiencer testimony, tantra, consciousness, and humanity’s place in the larger cosmic story. Her work preserves the emotional, spiritual, and human dimensions of contact while inviting readers to explore the boundaries between memory, dream, soul travel, disclosure, and awakening.
Author Bio: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin is an anthropologist, author, counselor, teacher, and researcher with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from UCLA. He has spent decades exploring consciousness, human origins, Anunnaki history, tantra, counseling, and the deeper patterns that shape human civilization. As Janet Kira Lessin’s husband, co-author, and longtime creative partner, Sasha contributes scholarly insight, mythic context, psychological depth, and a lifelong commitment to helping humanity understand its hidden history and cosmic inheritance.
Janet & Sasha met in the summer of 1997. By fall, they moved in together in his house in Maui. They’ve been together ever since, and 2027 will be their 30th anniversary. This is the third marriage for both of them, and like the saying goes, “The third time is a charm.”
Authors Janet Kira Lessin | Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin | Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore | © 2026 Aquarian Media
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Article Title
The Door Cherilyn Opened: Two Girls and the Secret School of Avalon
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A childhood friendship, a sealed crow’s nest room, and the hidden school that waited until memory knew its time.
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By Janet Kira Lessin
Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
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The Door Cherilyn Opened: Two Girls and the Secret School of Avalon
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Janet Kira Lessin recalls childhood astral flight, her best friend Cherilyn, the bright red Captain’s house in Avalon, and the hidden school later awakened by Whitley Strieber’s The Secret School.
Short Excerpt
As a child in Avalon, Pennsylvania, Janet Kira Lessin flew beyond walls, windows, and rooftops toward a sealed room in the bright red Captain’s house. Her best friend Cherilyn did what the astral child could not: she knocked. Decades later, Whitley Strieber’s The Secret School gave Janet words for the hidden school her soul had carried since childhood.
Social Media Description
Some childhood doors open in daylight. Others wait for the soul to remember the way.
In The Door Cherilyn Opened: Two Girls and the Secret School of Avalon, Janet Kira Lessin returns to her childhood in Avalon, Pennsylvania, where astral flight, a mysterious, bright-red house, a brave best friend, and a hidden school converged into one unforgettable memory.
Cherilyn took Janet by the hand and walked her to the kitchen door of the Captain’s house. The old couple gave them cookies and milk. The upper floors waited above them.
Decades later, Whitley Strieber’s The Secret School: Preparation for Contact unlocked the name for what Janet had carried all along.
You will know when it is time.
YouTube Title
The Door Cherilyn Opened: Two Girls and the Secret School of Avalon
YouTube Description
In this memoir chapter, Janet Kira Lessin returns to Avalon, Pennsylvania, where childhood friendship, astral travel, and hidden memory converged around one bright red, three-story house near Ohio River Boulevard.
As a child, Janet flew out of her bedroom at 800 Orchard Avenue and moved with ease through walls, windows, doors, and ceilings. Yet one place resisted her: the upper crow’s nest room of the old river captain’s house, today known as Captain’s Quarters.
Her best friend Cherilyn, with long dark hair, bangs, and blue eyes, did what Janet’s astral self could not. She took Janet by the hand, walked her down the road in broad daylight, and knocked on the kitchen door.
Inside, an old couple welcomed the two girls with cookies and milk while the sealed upper floors waited above.
Years later, in February 1997, a friend pressed Whitley Strieber’s The Secret School: Preparation for Contact into Janet’s hands as she left for Australia. Reading it across the Pacific, Janet felt a sealed piece of childhood memory turn like a key.
This is a story of friendship, hidden schools, small grey teachers, memory, timing, and the way some truths wait until we are ready to know them.
Written by Janet Kira Lessin
Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore
© 2026 Aquarian Media
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Janet Kira Lessin, Sasha Alex Lessin, Whitley Strieber, The Secret School, Preparation for Contact, Avalon Pennsylvania, Captain’s Quarters Avalon, Ohio River Boulevard, experiencer memoir, childhood experiencer, alien contact, small grey aliens, secret school, astral travel, out of body experience, contactee stories, hidden memories, recovered memories, ET contact, alien teachers, childhood friendship, Cherilyn, Aquarian Media, Claudia Lenore, consciousness, DNA activation, levitation training, memory awakening, Australia 1997, Maui Hawaii, experiencer testimony
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Avalon Pennsylvania, The Secret School, Preparation for Contact, Whitley Strieber, Janet Kira Lessin, Sasha Alex Lessin, Cherilyn, Captain’s Quarters, Ohio River Boulevard, 800 Orchard Avenue, experiencer memoir, childhood memories, astral travel, out of body experiences, secret school, alien contact, small grey aliens, ET teachers, hidden school, contactee stories, memory activation, recovered memories, DNA awakening, levitation, childhood friendship, Avalon Grade School, Avalon High School, Presbyterian kindergarten, Australia 1997, Maui Hawaii, Aquarian Media, Claudia Lenore
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#JanetKiraLessin #WhitleyStrieber #TheSecretSchool #PreparationForContact #ExperiencerMemoir #AvalonPennsylvania #AlienContact #SmallGreys #SecretSchool #AstralTravel #ContacteeStories #HiddenMemories #MemoryAwakening #ETContact #AquarianMedia
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The Door Cherilyn Opened: Two Girls and the Secret School of Avalon
Some memories wait behind sealed doors until the soul is ready to open them.
In this new memoir chapter, Janet Kira Lessin returns to childhood Avalon, Pennsylvania, where she flew at night beyond walls and rooftops toward the bright red, three-story Captain’s house near Ohio River Boulevard. One room remained sealed to her: the crow’s nest above the river.
Then her best friend Cherilyn did what the astral child could not. She took Janet’s hand, walked her to the kitchen door in broad daylight, and knocked.
Cookies, milk, an old couple, two polite little girls — and above them, the hidden school waited.
Decades later, Whitley Strieber’s The Secret School: Preparation for Contact gave Janet words for what her soul had carried since childhood.
By Janet Kira Lessin
Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore
© 2026 Aquarian Media
X / Short Post
Some childhood doors open in daylight. Others wait until memory knows its time.
In The Door Cherilyn Opened, Janet Kira Lessin recalls Avalon, astral flight, a bright red Captain’s house, small grey teachers, and the book that finally named the hidden school.
#TheSecretSchool #ExperiencerMemoir #AlienContact
Researcher/Contributor Credit: Claudia Lenore
Claudia Lenore contributes research and contextual support to Aquarian Media projects, helping to organize, preserve, and strengthen the historical, cultural, and experiential background of Janet Kira Lessin’s memoir and disclosure writings.
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Janet Kira Lessin | Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin | Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore | © 2026 Aquarian Media
Part I YouTube Description
The Secret School in Avalon — Part I: The Door and the Girl Who Knocked
In Part I of The Secret School in Avalon, Janet Kira Lessin returns to her childhood in Avalon, Pennsylvania, where night after night her soul rose from 800 Orchard Avenue and flew above the rooftops toward a bright red river captain’s house on Ohio River Boulevard.
One room stayed sealed: the crow’s nest at the top of the house.
Janet longed to enter, but the astral child could only circle the threshold. Then her best friend Cherilyn did what Janet could not do alone. She took Janet by the hand, walked her to the kitchen door in broad daylight, and knocked.
Cookies, milk, an old couple, two polite little girls — and above them, the mystery waited.
This first chapter follows the house, the hill, the two captains, the repeating family pattern, and the childhood friendship that opened the first outer door.
By Janet Kira Lessin
Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore
© 2026 Aquarian Media
Part I Tags:
Janet Kira Lessin, Secret School in Avalon, Avalon Pennsylvania, Captain’s Quarters, childhood experiencer, astral travel, Cherilyn, Ohio River Boulevard, experiencer memoir, Aquarian Media
Part II YouTube Description
The Secret School in Avalon — Part II: Daylight School and the Hidden Classroom
In Part II of The Secret School in Avalon, Janet Kira Lessin follows the thread from ordinary childhood into the deeper mystery beneath it.
After Janet’s childhood encounter aboard a mothership, she confused the extraterrestrial beings she met with the concept of God she heard about from family and church. To a four-year-old child, Sunday School became the place where she might speak to that presence again.
Janet begged to attend Presbyterian kindergarten so she could walk beside Cherilyn, her best friend. By day, the girls attended school, sang, walked through Avalon, and lived the small-town life of another era. By night, another school waited.
This section explores the double world Janet and Cherilyn carried: church, neighborhood, and classroom on one side; soul memory, small Grey teachers, DNA awakening, and hidden instruction on the other.
By Janet Kira Lessin
Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore
© 2026 Aquarian Media
Part II Tags:
Janet Kira Lessin, Secret School, Sunday School, small Grey aliens, ET teachers, hidden classroom, DNA awakening, Avalon Grade School, experiencer memories, Aquarian Media
Part III YouTube Description
The Secret School in Avalon — Part III: The Book That Named It
In Part III of The Secret School in Avalon, the hidden childhood memory finally finds its name.
For decades, Janet Kira Lessin carried fragments of a secret school connected to the bright red captain’s house in Avalon, Pennsylvania. The memory waited inside her, sealed like the room she could never enter as a child.
Then, in February 1997, as Janet prepared to fly to Australia, a friend placed Whitley Strieber’s The Secret School: Preparation for Contact into her hands. Reading it across the Pacific turned a key. The school at the Captain’s house rose into waking memory, and Janet recognized that what she had carried since childhood was real.
This final part ties the story together: the sealed house, Cherilyn, the small teachers, the lost memories, the 1997 Australia trip, and the life-changing year when Janet would soon meet Sasha on Maui.
You will know when it is time.
By Janet Kira Lessin
Contributing Author: Dr. Sasha Alex Lessin
Researcher/Contributor: Claudia Lenore
© 2026 Aquarian Media
Part III Tags:
Janet Kira Lessin, Whitley Strieber, The Secret School, Preparation for Contact, Communion, recovered memories, Australia 1997, Sasha Alex Lessin, experiencer testimony, Aquarian Media
