At the edge of the abyss known as the paranormal stands a library. You’re advised to go in, explore the shelves of books, and read as many quality analyses and discussions as you can. Find out as many facts as possible.
So, what’s my take on the fringe, the Fortean, and the paranormal?
Although the psychosocial approach as advanced by the likes of John Keel, especially in The Mothman Prophecies and The Eighth Tower, which considers paranormal manifestations linked to human consciousness, with or without an external stimulus. fascinates me, and seems to mesh well with current cosmology and quantum mechanical physics, especially with regard to the Observer Effect and Quantum Entanglement, my view continues to favor ground-based, boots-on-the-ground, touch-it, smell-it, taste-it investigations of the outré and the Fortean.
Paranormality is real but we don’t know what it is. Apply this across the spectrum, to which ever topic stirs interest at the moment. UFOs (UAOs), ghosts, lake monsters,
Mysterious disappearances in National Parks and Wilderness Areas are covered in the seven Missing 411 books of David Paulides, available at his site CanAm.com at standard book prices. Avoid the Amazon and other sellers, who shamelessly gouge.
Empirical evidence and genuine context can be found in the UFO books from Leslie Kean and John Alexander; for Remote Viewing and ESP from Annie Jacobsen’s research as presented in Phenomena, in Remote Viewers by Jim Schnabel, and others.
For irrefutable logic in favor of the supernatural, there is Supernatural by Graham Hancock, about ibogaine.
Excellent books about ghosts and the like include Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death by Deborah Blum and Surviving Death by Leslie Kean.
The Airmen Who Would Not Die by John G. Fuller is another logic lock-in about communication from minds whose bodies are dead. His book The Ghost of Flight 401 is also recommended.
For Bigfoot, Meldrum’s book is superb, and is rooted in Abominable Snowman by Ivan T. Sanderson, the early work of David Paulides, and others.
Lake monsters have fostered excellent analysis and discussion, such as The Great Orm of Loch Ness by F. W. Holiday and Ivan T. Sanderson and the provocative, excellent Nessie: Exploring the Supernatural Origins of the Loch Ness Monster by Nick Redfern, a reliable, sensible, and open-minded author to remember when you’re browsing the fringe books.
Attention whores and professional debunkers and closed-minded skeptics who pre-judge, patronize, and condescend from a position of egocentric arrogance are what keep people in a dark age of superstitious dread and credulity. It’s the inverse of what they claim. They think everyone else is stupid and only they are left to defend the Enlightenment, when in fact the Enlightenment would reject them as unblinking fanatics and lunatics very much of the cultish church-programmed proselytizers.
Science means knowing. This requires finding out. Which relies on investigating, finding and assessing evidence in context, and making tentative conclusions changeable according to new evidence being found or developed. It is not strident denial of discussion and consideration of certain condemned topics or fields of inquiry.
Convincing skeptics requires emotion but I rely on fact, and empiricism, and on multiplex observations: witnesses, radar, photography, sound recordings, infrared, ultraviolet, and so on, combined to confirm an event. I don’t want to have to believe, I want to find out and know, and this is possible, with sufficient sifting, investigation, and the advancement of technology to assist us.
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