In part 2 of the interview I conducted in 2001 with Brandeis University anthropologist Dr. Benson Saler, co-author of UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth, we examine the Roswell incident as a modern myth, how conspiracy theory plays into it (and what it says about us), and how in many respects the belief in Roswell as an ET event (and, I might add, the disbelief of the Roswell “atheists”) mirrors religion. All this, and I make a comment or two about the new mythmakers of Roswell, such as Anthony Bragalia, and what their efforts portend for the future of the Roswell myth.
Today's offering at the Other Side of Truth podcast is part 1 of an interview I conducted in 2001 with Brandeis University anthropologist Dr. Benson Saler, co-author of UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth, we examine the Roswell incident as a modern myth, and researchers such as Stanton Friedman and Kevin Randle as myth-makers.
Ghost Cases wrapped up a few months ago, and I won't be doing another season (moving on to new projects). That doesn't mean that I won't continue to investigate reports of hauntings as the opportunity presents itself - it just means that I won't be doing it on television.
So, what conclusions have I come to after a season of "hunting" ghosts at thirteen supposedly haunted locations ?
First, I'm firmly convinced that after careful investigation the vast majority of ghost stories can be explained without reference to anything paranormal. Coincidences, tricks of light, fear, environmental stimuli – all can play a part in creating the appearance of something otherworldly.
There is also an element of wish fulfilment – for a variety of reasons, many people want to believe in the paranormal, including ghosts, and as a result they often find what they are looking for, usually by interpreting information to fit their own pre-conceived conclusions.
However, as with most things allegedly paranormal, there are some cases which seem to defy easy explanation. As I see it, there are two possible explanations for this.
The first is that the investigation may have been flawed, or incomplete, so that a non-paranormal answer is available, but just hasn’t been found yet.
The second is that there really is something paranormal happening.
Now, whether that means it’s the dead speaking to us from beyond the grave, or whether it perhaps represents some sort of natural phenomenon that our science doesn’t have the vocabulary to explain yet, I don’t know.
But we should always be conscious of the fact that there are a great many things about our universe, and ourselves, that we haven’t even begun to understand yet. To close ourselves off to the possibility that there might be more to heaven and earth than our current science can explain would be foolish, and… unscientific.
In other words, my conclusion about ghosts coming out of Ghost Cases is the same as it was going in, and can best be summed up by the motto I apply to all things, whether normal or paranormal:
Ghost cases that rely on single witness testimony are a dime a dozen. Without corroboration of some sort, as any good lawyer will tell you, it’s hard to prove that something anomalous might have happened. At the old jail in St. Andrew’s, New Brunswick, in February, 2009, Holly and I had the kind of encounter that every ghost investigator is looking for, where you have more than one witness both experiencing something at the same time, and that experience is backed up by independent “hard” data.
Sergeant Tom Hutchings was a 21 year old Royal Air Force armourer who was convicted and hanged for the brutal rape and murder of a local girl, Bernice Connors, who was just 19 years old, while he was stationed near St. Andrew’s in the Second World War. Hutchings, who was the last person hanged in Charlotte County, spent his final days in a small, dark, cold cell in the jail, within earshot of where his executioners constructed the gallows.
By all accounts, Hutchings was a model prisoner in his final days, passing the time quietly. He made his way to the gallows without a struggle, and had nothing to say by way of a final statement. Unfortunately for him, however, the gallows had not been built correctly. Instead of the quick death that he might have been expecting, it took Hutchings eighteen minutes to be pronounced dead, a hard way to go, even for someone who deserved it. Ever since, people had reported strange occurrences in the jail, and in his cell in particular, which led to speculation that the gruesome nature of his death had somehow trapped Hucthings’ soul in this spot, destined to haunt it for all eternity.
Given the circumstances, it seemed to me that his old jail cell would be an obvious spot to try and make contact with Hutchings, although in hindsight I have to wonder what I was thinking. Making contact with benign spirits is one thing, but should a person really be trying to meet the spirit of an executed murderer who might still hold a grudge?
Just for good measure, and on the theory of “in for a penny, in for a pound,” I came up with the bright idea of trying to antagonizing the spirit of Tom Hutchings by bringing along a noose on display at the jail as a trigger item. For a laugh, as much to amuse Holly as anything else, I placed the noose around my neck as we were locked in the dark cell by the crew. Holly and I sat next to each other on the remains of Hutchings’ old bunk, with an EMF meter beside Holly, but out of my sight, and we waited to see what would happen.
After almost thirty minutes Holly and I had not experienced anything other than the winter cold and some pleasant conversation. It was at this point that I decided to turn off the low-level camera light we had set up in one corner of the cramped cell. I thought that perhaps this would encourage Hutchings to come out and say hello. I took the noose off of my neck, and plunged us into almost total darkness, with only the barest, almost imperceptible hint of moonlight coming through the slit of a window in the wall of the cell. Little did I realize what I was getting Holly and I into.
Within minutes, something happened. I felt Holly shudder beside me, and then she exclaimed, “oh f-ck.” Now, Holly is about as level-headed as they come, and doesn’t frighten easily, so for her to utter a profanity out of the blue was an indication of just how shaken she had been by what she had just seen – a feeling of something moving in front of us. My response to her was, “that’s weird,” by which she thought I was responding to what she had experienced, but I wasn’t. Instead, while she was sensing something in front of us, I had felt a tightness wrap around my throat. I turned to Holly and said, “I was sitting here and all of a sudden I felt this cold go around my throat, like colder than the cold, the freezing bitter cold that it is in here anyway. I haven’t felt that since I was in here, and it went right around my throat.”
Holly and I had both experienced something at the same time. That was interesting enough, and a step beyond a single witness account in terms of reliability. What made it even creepier, however, was the fact, unknown to me until she told me, that Holly had glanced at the EMF meter at her side as soon as she sensed the “presence” in front of us, and it was spiking above the baseline readings that she had taken when she first entered the cell.
A presence in front of us, at the same time as I felt a deathly cold wrap around my throat, at the same time as the EMF meter spiked well beyond baseline readings. We were both pretty spooked, but we decided to stick it out in the cell a bit longer to see if anything else would happen, although we weren’t quite courageous enough to do so in continued darkness, as I turned our camera light back on.
And then, just a couple of minutes later, it happened again. Holly looked down at her EMF meter and said, “It’s up again… it’s up again…it’s up….and it’s gone.” She hadn’t noticed what I had been doing, but the camera definitely picked it up. I turned to her and said, “I cannot see the EMF thing. There will be camera confirmation on that, that just before you said that look where my head went, back down, I felt the same…” I couldn’t finish the sentence, because I was so shaken – it had been the same sensation of deathly cold wrapping around my neck.
Holly knew exactly what I meant. “Are you serious?” she asked. “Yup,” I replied. “I went, the camera will confirm, before you said it, I went like this…” at which point I recreated my head pushing down into my chest so that my neck would not be exposed. I kept my neck there as I said, “I don’t actually want to expose my neck at the moment.” Holly was genuinely concerned. “I don’t think I’ve seen you like this before, Paul,” she said. All that I could say was, “Yeah, well I have this thing about strangling and necks throats and stuff. Maybe in another life I was hanged. The noose was funny, because the noose was no threat, but this - who knows?”
We were both scared, and we called out to the camera crew that we wanted out of the cell. They obliged, and we made our way out of the cell block and back to the offices in the building as fast as we could. It wasn’t any warmer there, but it sure felt a lot safer. As we recounted what had happened inside the cell, one of our witnesses, Elaine Brough, who works as a guide on tours of the jail, told us that what we had experienced was pretty much exactly what other people had reported happening to them when they went into the cell. She hadn’t mentioned this to us before we went in, because she wanted to see if we would have the same experience without knowing what to expect. The only thing that I could think of to say to her was “mission accomplished.”
Holly and I would often talk, sometimes seriously and sometimes for a laugh, about how when the season was done we would hop on a plane, fly down to Peru, journey up into the rainforest to a village where a shaman would conduct a traditional native cleansing ritual, so that we could clear ourselves of any residual “bad energy” that might have attached itself to us. If there was any one case that brought us closest to booking those tickets, it was the old jail in St. Andrews, where neither of us could shake the uncomfortable feeling that we may have run across the spirit of a very, very bad man. For our sakes, I hope Tom Hutchings is still in that cell, still suffering for the horrible crime he committed forty-five years ago.
The latest from the Other Side of Truth podcast - the late Mac Tonnies discusses his cryptoterrestrial hypothesis for the UFO phenomenon, and compares it to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, in these excerpts from an interview I conducted with him in Kansas City, Missouri, in May, 2006.
In Quinan, Nova Scotia, a cluster of a few houses about a half an hours drive from the town of Yarmouth on the Province’s far western tip, was a small farmhouse owned by Darlene McCall for 33 years. Unexplained occurrences had been happening for decades, but when McCall’s daughter, Shelley Paddock, moved in with her in September, 2008, they became even more intense and frequent. The activity manifested itself throughout the house and surrounding property, but three areas in particular seemed to be the most active.
The first was the basement, where Paddock and McCall described being pushed by an unseen force as they walked down the stairs, and experiencing cold once in the room itself. The second area was McCall’s spare room on the second floor. She claimed that she would hear footsteps on the stairs leading to the room, and that when she entered the room she felt a malevolent presence. Finally, there was the field behind the house. Both McCall and Paddock described the sensation of someone watching them when they would be out there, and Paddock told us that “whatever it is, I won’t come out here at night. I won’t stay out here. I don’t want to be out here. It’s not nice.”
No matter how many technological bells and whistles that you employ when you are investigating an allegedly haunted location, from digital video recorders to thermal cameras, in the end I really believe that it all comes down to whether or not you have a personal experience, because that’s what we’re all really looking for. Sometimes, however, that personal experience turns out to be more than you bargained for,. At McCall’s farm, that’s exactly what happened to me when Holly Stevens and I went to investigate the haunting in February, 2009.
On the surface, the investigation had begun in the same way that it always does – Holly and I arrived with the camera crew, met with the owner of the location, got the back-story on what was supposedly going on, and then set up our gear and prepared to film. But at McCall’s farm, something was a bit different from the beginning, and both Holly and I sensed it.
For one thing, the owners, Darlene McCall and Shelley Paddock, were genuinely afraid, which is something we hadn’t really encountered on previous investigations. As McCall described the basement to us, she was visibly shaking. “The basement is pure scary,” she said. “You get the feeling when you walk into my cellar that somebody is there to grab you. Not only the feeling of coldness but just pure fear. Something down there and he’s gonna get me.” When you see that kind of fear in someone else’s eyes, or behaviour, it can definitely have an effect on you as well.
Further, there was a real sense of isolation at the farm. The house is literally at the end of the road, out in the middle of nowhere, like something out of one of those horror films where people ask for directions at a gas station miles away, only to take a wrong turn and head down the one road to the one house that no-one should ever visit. It’s one thing to investigate a building like a hotel, where there are other people just a minute or two away; it’s another to spend a night in a supposedly haunted house miles away from anyone who might be able to help if you get in trouble. That plays on the mind, particularly when the owners of the property describe whatever it is that’s going on as “evil.”
As Paddock said, “I get the feeling that something wants to get me, to harm me and mine and I don’t know how to protect me or others from it.” Presumably, whatever wanted to do them harm would be just as eager to have a go at Holly and I.
Given that the basement was a key nexus of reported paranormal activity, I decided that I would spend time down there alone while Holly and psychic Kelly Muise, who was along for the ride that evening, were upstairs in the kitchen conducting a sort of séance to try and contact whatever spirits were in the house.
Now, while I have never ruled out the possibility that some psychic phenomena might be real, I have never been a proponent of using a psychic in one of our investigations. Dale prevailed on me to make an exception at McCall’s farm, however, so I did. The results wound up challenging all of my preconceived notions about both psychics and ghosts.
As I sat on the stairs in the frigid cold basement, with the door tightly wedged shut behind me, I could hear the proceedings upstairs in the kitchen through the floorboards. No matter what I thought of using psychics, I was struck by the fact that at least it was a shared experience between Kelly and Holly (and our camera crew), while I was stuck in the basement alone. That definitely ratcheted up the creepy factor. I couldn’t help but think that if there was a malevolent presence in the house, it would probably go for me first, as opposed to the group upstairs, because that’s what I figured I would do if I was a ghost with bad intentions. As a result, I felt like a lone wildebeest, cut off from the herd by a group of hungry lions.
About thirty minutes after I began my watch in the basement, I heard Kelly and Holly start to talk about a “murdered baby” being in the basement. They were both encouraging the spirit to make contact with me, and show me where the baby was buried. This was a development that I was not exactly in favour of – indeed, the digital video camera which I had set up to record whatever happened caught me responding to Kelly and Holly, saying repeatedly, “I don’t want to meet the baby,” and “don’t come show me where the baby is.”
And then it happened. Just after another exhortation from Kelly and Holly for the ghost to pop by and pay me a visit, the door opened behind me. As a skeptic, my immediate reaction was that it had been the wind, but I could hear when the wind was blowing, as it had been earlier (without moving the door, I should add), and it hadn’t been blowing this time. Further, the door didn’t open easily, as it wasn’t a perfect fit for the frame and got caught along the ground as it opened. Not the kind of door, in other words, that was easily pushed open by a simple breeze.
I immediately went outside to investigate – my first thought was that one of our crewmembers was playing a practical joke on me – but there was nobody out there. No wind, no people, just the still of the night, and McCall’s dog, lying next to its house twenty feet away from the basement.
That was it for me. I was genuinely scared, and had no intention of going back down into the basement. Despite the fact that it was well below freezing outside, I waited for another forty minutes until Kelly and Holly had finished their séance before I went inside. I told everyone what had happened, and I’m not sure they believed me, at least until we went downstairs, retrieved the camera, and played the tape back. Sure enough, there was the door, opening behind me, at the same time as Kelly and Holly had been telling the spirit to go to me in the basement. We were all a bit shaken, although I could see McCall and Paddock nodding their heads, as if to say, “we told you so.”
Stranger still is the fact that when we reviewed the data from my audio recorder, which I had with me in the basement, we heard what sounded like a baby crying at the same time as the séance was going on and the door opened!
The next day we all headed out into the back field, where the house had originally stood, to conduct what Kelly called a spiritual cleansing. Normally I would have been in a joking mood, because I’m very dubious about things like this, but given what had happened the night before I kept my mouth shut and simply observed the proceedings. Perhaps it was by chance, but as Kelly was spreading holy water over the area, some of it landed on me. I still wasn’t sure if I had encountered an evil spirit in the basement the night before, but I have to admit it crossed my mind that maybe a little holy water wasn’t a bad thing.
It would be easy to chalk this all up to coincidence. After all, that’s the simplest explanation, and as a result probably the easiest one for people to deal with. The problem with simple explanations, however, is that they’re not always the best explanations. With McCall’s farm, and the baby in the basement, I can’t help but think that this is one time and place where something extraordinary might really have happened, and where the explanation that makes the most sense is the one that challenges everything I thought I knew about our world.
Which is exactly why I seek out these experiences in the first place.
An excerpt of an interview I conducted for the documentary Stanton T. Friedman is Real with Karl Pflock on September 9, 2001, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
I hadn’t met Karl before this, but I had read a great deal of his UFO-related material, and had been impressed by his even-keeled, open-minded skepticism. We hit it off in Cedar Rapids, and became good friends in the years that followed, corresponding regularly, and meeting again in Aztec, New Mexico, and at his home just outside Albuquerque, in March of 2004. We used to joke about our membership in MJ-12. Karl claimed to be MJ-0, whereas I took the designation MJ-13.
In this clip, Karl discusses ufology as it was in 2001 which, alas, seems pretty much the same as it is in 2010.
Keep an eye on The Other Side of Truth podcast - in the weeks to come I'll be posting clips from interviews I've conducted with a wide range of people, including Kevin Randle, Stan Friedman, Richard Dolan, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, Barry Downing, Dr. Benson Saler, the late Walter Haut, the late Karl Pflock, and others, as well as a couple of new interviews.
Most UFO researchers are aware of at least the basic details of the classic 1957 RB47 spy plane UFO encounter over Texas and Mississippi, which was voted the #1 “best evidence” UFO case by a panel of researchers in my 2007 documentary Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings. It isn’t the only UFO incident associated with what was at the time the highly classified RB47 aircraft. At the Other Side of Truth podcast I've uploaded a short clip of Lt. Col. Bruce Bailey, a highly decorated retired RB47 crew member, recounting his crew’s own UFO encounter during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the aftermath, and compares it the 1957 case.
At The Other Side of Truth podcast I have a short clip from a longer interview I conducted with my good friend Greg Bishop in Los Angeles in 2007, wherein he sets out his overall view on the UFO phenomenon, and how we should approach it.
Bonus points for the first person who can identify the theme music for this “epsiode.”
In Episode 1, excerpts from an interview I conducted with longtime UFO proponent / researcher Peter Gersten at his home in Sedona, Arizona, in September 2007, about 2012, what he calls the "cosmic program," and other topics.
Unlike regular paranormal podcasts, mine won't be on a regular basis. It will be a mix of clips from past interviews I've conducted, and a few new interviews as well, posted as time and mood allows.
Kevin Randle, Russ Estes and William Cone got it right in The Abduction Enigma when they wrote, at p. 359:
"Here's what it all comes down to. There is not a single shred of physical evidence that alien abductions areaking place other than the tainted testimony of the abductees. The physical evidence to support the claims is nonexistent. What has been offered as proof has been eliminated through testing by objective scientists or additional research by unbiased investigators. The scars, the missing fetus, or the implants do not carry the proper medical documentation to make a strong case, and in fact, suggest something else altogether."
I'll go further than Randle, Estes and Cone, who confined their critique to stating that the abductionologists had simply not proven their case. In my view, this has become an Alien Abduction Cult (of personality), aided and abetted by some in ufology who should know better. The abductionologists themselves are beyond irresponsible - they are dangerous, causing real pain and suffering to people who in at least some cases no doubt need real help.
Perhaps it's high time that the proper authorities take a closer look, not at "alien abductions", but rather at those who claim to be investigating them, because, with one or two notable and courageous exceptions like Kevin, "ufology" has proven itself wholly unwilling to confront the creators and purveyors of the Alien Abduction Cult.
Meanwhile, the ultimate irony for anomalists is that, should there really be a paranormal element to a few of these "abduction" cases, the Alien Abduction Cult has so muddied the waters with their bunk that it will be almost impossible to ever chart a different course.
When you exclude the peripherals, from the table of contents and acknowledgements, to the foreword and afterward written by Nick Redfern and Greg Bishop respectively, The Cryptoterrestrials, the final work by the late Mac Tonnies, comes in at a slim 98 pages. However, in a prime example of quality over quantity, Mac has left us with an impassioned and thought-provoking clarion call for a new way of thinking, not just about the UFO phenomenon or even the paranormal in general, but about ourselves.
The UFO phenomenon is the focus of The Cryptoterrestrials, at least on the surface. Mac takes direct aim from the beginning at the purveyors of ufological orthodoxy, namely those people who are convinced that the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis is the Extraterrestrial Fact (a subject I've written about here). He pulls no punches, skewering the majority of ufology both for their blind adherence to the ETH, and for their willing self-marginalization.
"The ufological 'community' suffers from creative anemia," he writes. "While its luminaries might noisily claim otherwise, ufology collectively wants to be marginal. With the lamentable exception of a few spokesman who feel the need to 'explain' the phenomenon's intricacies to a wary public (often in the guise of would-be political discourse), the ostensible UFO community remains afraid of stepping into the rude glow of widespread public attention. And it has a right to be afraid." (p. 25)
It's not that Mac rejected the ETH - indeed, in the book he writes that it remains a viable, if shopworn, hypothesis. What he rejected, and what people like Nick, Greg and I reject, are those who say that the ETH is the only answer, or even the best answer. After all, how can one say any hypothesis is the "best" hypothesis when faced with something as weird as the UFO phenomenon? With the ETFacters, it isn't a matter of science anymore, or logic, or following the evidence to where it leads - it's become all about the perpetuation of their belief system within an ever-shrinking community of flying saucer evangelicals. People like Stan Friedman have done more to undermine the cause of the ETH within the broader public than a hundred Seth Shostaks or James McGahas, not necessarily because they are wrong, but because they are so convinced that everyone else is wrong. Mac rejected, as Greg, Nick and I do, their intellectual rigidity, as well as their lack of any true sense of wonder, or appreciation for the mystery of it all.
If Friedman et al have spent the last few decades hunkered down in the ufological equivalent of an intellectual Jericho, then Mac is the guy standing at the walls with the trumpet, and The Cryptoterrestrials is the blast that should bring the whole decrepit edifice of certainty crumbling down. In his foreword, Nick compares Mac to the Ramones and the Sex Pistols, the brash and liberating antidote to what had become a stale status quo. It's a perfect metaphor, for there will indeed be more than a few people who read The Cryptoterrestrials and think Mac is the ufological version of the Anti-Christ. But if anything could use some anarchy, it's ufology.
In the end, however, it doesn't matter whether people within ufology "get" what Mac is saying, because he was aiming his sights a lot higher. Rather than just reinforce existing views, or rehash old ground, Mac takes the foundations that have been built by writers and researchers as diverse as Jacques Vallee, John Keel, Whitley Strieber and David Jacobs, and expands upon them, even as he points out the flaws in their theories. His goal is not to find a definitive answer, or to create an alternative orthodoxy, but rather to ask as many questions as he could, and try to come up with some ideas about where we may find the answers. He was a true revolutionary, a New Light for the paranormal.
So, what are the cryptoterrestrials? In Mac's hypothesis, they are a race of indigenous humanoids who share this planet with us. Technologically superior in many ways (but not, perhaps, all ways), they are on the decline, even as we continue to ascend - they are, if not a dying race, then one whose time has passed. And we are the noisy, and in many ways dangerous "new" kids on the block. Unlike Vallee or Keel, Mac does not sidestep the physical reality of the UFO phenomenon - in his hypothesis, they exist in this world, literally.
I interviewed Mac in Kansas City in 2006 about a number of subjects while filming Best Evidence, including the cryptoterrestrials.
Does the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis make any sense? Anyone who reads The Cryptoterrestrials will be hard pressed not to admit that it makes as much sense as any of the other theories on offer, and perhaps even more. What began as a thought experiment for Mac (I know, because I was there when he first started thinking about it seriously, on a trip to Los Angeles) became in the end a thorough review of the evidence and the literature, and some pretty grounded speculation about what it all points to. But it wasn't Mac's intention to write a definitive conclusion to the discussion about the UFO phenomenon, or the paranormal; rather, it was his intention to get that discussion started again, and to get people thinking, for the first time in a long time, about what really might be going on - including the possibility that we are being visited by beings from another world.
Unable to disprove a negative, I have no choice but to concede that some UFO encounters may originate in space. And it would be the height of arrogance to proclaim that the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis and the Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis are mutually exclusive. And of course, cryptoterrestrials don't preclude "inter-dimensional" travelers either. (p. 52)
What was important to Mac, at least at this stage, was to ask the correct questions, because only then might we be able to get back on the road to finding some answers, if not about the phenomenon itself, then about ourselves, and our almost symbiotic relationship to it. "If we're dealing with a truly alien intelligence," Mac concludes, "there's no promise that its thinking will be linear. Indeed, its inherent weirdness might serve as an appeal to an aspect of the psyche we've allowed to atrophy. It might be trying to rouse us from our stupor, in which case it's tempting to wonder if the supposed ETs are literally us in some arcane sense."
Earlier in this review, I called Mac the "New Light of the paranormal." Most readers won't understand the reference. Let me explain. In the late 18th century, in the Maritime colonies, religion was dominated by the Congregational Church, which maintained a rigid, Calvinist orthodoxy. In 1776 a young preacher, Henry Alline, began to travel amongst the communities of the colonies, talking about a better way - free will, an almost mystical view of faith, and a personal experiential relationship with the divine. Most important, he rejected all of the man-made conventions that he called "non-essentials," over which various denominations argued incessantly, as nothing but hindrances to the central message - the redeeming love of God. Like Mac, Alline died far too young (in 1784, at the age of 36). He was derided by the guardians of the old order, who called him the "ravager of churches," in much the same way as I suspect Mac will come to be viewed as the ravager of the ET orthodoxy. Finally, like Mac, he presented a simple, concise, and transformational message. He was a true "New Light" - and so was Mac, who insisted that we must not lose sight of the central message: that we are dealing with a non-human intelligence which remains a mystery. Amidst the noise, that is the signal.
In a world where hyperbole has become the lingua franca, The Cryptoterrestrials is that rare work which merits the appellation "a must read." It represents a true paradigm shift in our understanding of the mysteries of the paranormal. This is a book that deserves to be read and discussed far and wide, and which offers up an opportunity to revitalize the UFO subject, and make it relevant again - but only if we are courageous and intellectually honest enough to embrace it.
As the Academy Awards begin for the film industry out in Hollywood, the coveted Zorgy Awards will now be announced from Halifax, N.S., for 2009's best in the world of the paranormal, as voted by you, the Academy of Other Side of Truth readers.
Results 1. Paratopia: 196 votes / 44% 2. The Paracast: 78 votes / 18% 3. Above Top Secret: 62 votes / 14% 4. The Bigfoot Forums: 42 votes / 9% 5. Book of Thoth: 22 votes / 5% 6. UFO Evolution: 16 votes / 4% 7. The Black Vault: 14 votes / 3% 8. Department 47: 5 votes / 1% SyFy Forums - Ghost Hunters: 5 votes / 1 % 10. SyFy Forums - UFO Hunters: 4 votes / 1 % 444 total votes Paul's pick: The Paracast
Top Paranormal Researcher
Winner: Loren Coleman
Results 1. Loren Coleman: 275 votes / 43% 2. Mac Tonnies: 136 votes / 21% 3. Nick Redfern: 88 votes / 14% 4. Greg Bishop: 35 votes / 5% 5. Nick Pope: 29 votes / 4% 6. Anthony Bragalia: 24 votes / 4% 7. Kevin Randle: 19 votes / 3% 8. Christopher O'Brien: 16 votes / 2 % Robert Hastings: 16 votes / 2% 10. Peter Robbins: 9 votes / 1% 647 total votes Paul's pick: Mac Tonnies
Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to all of the people who stopped by to vote.
A few quick observations:
1. Loren Coleman has to be the Barack Obama of the paranormal - the man knows how to rock the vote. I think his double win is also a reward for the good work he does, and a sign of the esteem in which he is held.
2. The top four vote getters in the Podcast category are all good shows, in my opinion - each brings something different to the table. I would also like to highlight Skeptiko, which didn't poll very well this year, but is a show that you should give a listen to, if you aren't already familiar with it.
3. The Daily Grail has won for the fourth year in a row, which is even more amazing given that Greg Taylor posted a note at that site this year asking people to vote for The Anomalist! Kudos to Greg and the Grail gang.
4. Also, kudos to my friend Tim Binnall, who had to fight off Paratopia and Dark Matters Radio this year, but managed to hold on and snag a fourth consecutive Podcast Zorgy for Binnall of America.
And now, for this year's Hall of Fame and Hall of Shame inductees, as chosen solely by Vice Admiral Zorgrot and I.
I remember when he first started to think about putting his ideas with regards to indigenous humanoids into book form. He asked me what I thought (we were traveling in California at the time). I told him that I didn't really buy the hypothesis, but I would buy the book, and keep an open mind.
He smiled, and said he didn't really buy the hypothesis either - that was what believers did. He just wanted to start a discussion, bandy some interesting ideas about, look at things in a different way, and see where it went.
From author John Shirley:
"The Cryptoterrestrials is the most refreshing speculation on the paranormal I've seen in ages. The ideas in this book will be harvested by science-fiction writers and TV shows like Fringe for decades. Even skeptics will have a great time reading this well written book of wild conjecture. Mac Tonnies' final Fortean landmark is the Book of the Damned for the 21st century. Fans of the paranormal: be there or be square.”
Mac understood that it was the journey that mattered, not the destination. I look forward to taking one final trip with him and his cryptoterrestrial friends!
My friends Dave Sadler and Steve Mera (with the Unknown Phenomena Investigation Association in the United Kingdom) worked with me on four episodes of Ghost Cases last year. They are both top notch paranormal investigators, and they both have new books available.
It's an old refrain, often used by UFO researchers when they want to highlight the bona fides of a particular UFO case - military personnel and police officers are "trained personnel" who make for better witnesses, and also of better character, ergo, the UFO case that centers around them is much more difficult to refute.
To which I say (to quote an American general from World War II) - Nuts!
Soldiers are highly trained to do one thing - kill people. They do, of course, have other areas of training as well, but this is their primary function, even in our feel-good age of nation-building and peacekeeping/making.
Police officers are trained to enforce the law, which involves a number of different skill sets, most of them physical, because at their core, the average patrol officer (the vast majority of police officers, and the ones who seem to come into the most frequent contact with UFOs) is in the business of breaking up trouble, or trying to stop it before it starts. They are not investigators.
Most soldiers and police officers are good at what they do. But are they trained any better than Joe or Jane Q. Public when it comes to observing and reporting on events that could be called abnormal / paranormal?
I don't think so, at least not as a general rule. You have to look at the individual soldier, or police officer. For example, there's nothing about the group of soldiers involved in the 1980 Rendlesham case that stands out as being anything extraordinary in terms of their ability to observe events.
Another canard is that military personnel and police officers are somehow immune - or at the very least, less susceptible - to emotions, perhaps even panic, than your average civilian. Again, there is no objective basis for this conclusion. It depends, at the end of the day, on the individual, and the circumstances.
For example, a Green Beret might have nerves of steel, but a cook, or even a military policeman, might be less steadfast. And one suspects that even the best-trained soldier or police officer can overeact, or panic, given the right set of circumstances.
Doubt that? History is replete with examples that drive home my point. One stunning example can be seen in the case of the tasering death of Polish-immigrant Robert Dziekanski by four RCMP officers in 2007. There are many others.
Stan Friedman is often fond of saying that people are good observers, but poor interpreters. I agree with the latter part of the statement, but not the former. Having served with the RCMP myself when I was in law school, I know first hand how tricky observation can be, particularly under duress, and especially when one relies on memory after the event to reconstruct it. This is the biggest flaw in the Roswell accounts, which were given decades later.
The best scenario - although still not perfect - is for a witness to have made notes immediately after an event, as police officers do. Then you can always "refresh your memory" later, as we used to say when being cross-examined on the witness stand.
But no matter what, any single witness is of questionable value. What is needed is some sort of independent corroboration. Obviously, physical evidence would be best (and there is some of debatable worth with Rendlesham), but other witnesses viewing an event, preferably who are unknown to the first witness, and even better if they're looking at it from a different angle, will do as well in terms of making a case worth studying.
Then there's the character question. Often researchers will imply, and sometimes even state outright, that military personnel and police officers are of impeccable character, and would, of course, never lie, or commit any misdeeds.
Again, history says otherwise. A current and noteworthy example can be seen with CAF Colonel Russell Williams, who has just been charged with multiple murders (note: yes, I'm aware he's innocent until proven guilty). Prior to this, if he had been a UFO witness, he would no doubt have been pointed to by researchers as an exemplary man, incapable of any malfeasance. He was, after all, a respected and accomplished senior commander, whose tour of duty included a stint as commanding officer for Camp Mirage, the secretive Canadian Forces forward logistics base that's not officially acknowledged by the government or military, but has been widely reported to be near Dubai.
This is not to dismiss military or police witnesses, of course. Rather, it is to remind people that no UFO case can stand on just eyewitness testimony, and no eyewitness testimony should be allowed a free pass, or the equivalent thereof, based on what amounts to an appeal to authority.
It's always fun when I have a new film that premieres, and today is no exception. This time it's not on television (although it will probably wind up there in one form or another at some point), or in the theater, or the other usual media - nope, this time it's right here, free of charge, direct to you.
The Island of Blood is a low budget, lo-fi, slightly tongue-in-cheek, mostly serious look at the chupacabra phenomonon in Puerto Rico with my good pal Nick Redfern and Puerto Rican researcher Orlando Pla. It also features interviews with real witnesses, and an official government investigator of the phenomenon.
Nick Redfern and I "hunting" chupacabras in Puerto Rico. As charter members of the Challengers of the Unknown, we're about as intrepid as it gets. Or not...
An outtake from "Island of Blood," which will be available this week.
If you look at the sidebar on the left of this page, you'll notice a box (and a link) for the fan page of The Other Side of Truth that I've set up on Facebook. Come on over and join up - it serves as a nice and easy central repository of my work in the paranormal, particularly my various media appearances and my films. All in one easy to find locale!
In 2006 I made Fields of Fear, about Canadian cattle mutilation investigator Fern Belzil, for Space: The Imagination Station. Here it is in its entirety, courtesy of our distributor, Paranormal TV.
The film features Fern, as well as my friends Greg Bishop, Nick Redfern and Kevin Randle.
Last year I was lucky enough to be one of the guests on Coast to Coast AM's "ghost to ghost" Halloween special, which was cool. I like the cut of Ian Punnett's proverbial jib as host, and it was fun to chat about ghosts and Ghost Cases with him, and to hear some of the stories from the listeners.
I wanted to end Best Evidence with a statement from someone who represented the future of UFO research and thinking. There was no one more appropriate than Mac, who was the best of the new generation of forteans.
There is so much I could say. There is so much I will say in the days to come. But for the moment, all I can say is that one of the many, many things Mac and I shared in common - and something which our mutual pal Nick Redfern, from whom I heard this terrible news, always teased us about - was our devotion to the Smiths. The following was a favourite for both Mac and I...
The last time Mac was in Halifax, shooting some interview segments for a documentary produced by another company here, he and I went out one night for a short drive that turned into a three hour marathon drive to nowhere, as we listened to the Smiths and talked about life, and the universe, and UFOs, and all the others things that you talk about with best friends. About thirty kilometres outside of Halifax, I noticed that the light on the gas gauge had gone on, meaning I was running low. Out in the rural area where we were, at that time of night, there were no service stations open. I told Mac I thought we had enough to get back to town, but then I added, mischievously, that I wasn't sure, and we might have to hoof it, in November. He just looked at me, said "figures that the first time I ever 'ran out of gas' with someone it would be with you on a dark, lonely road in Nova Scotia." We both had a good laugh!
In the days and weeks to come, those are the good memories that I will cherish, and share here.
Mac's light, which burned brightly, but for far too short a time, will never go out.
A review of Ghost Cases, from an advance screener I sent to Joe Harvat at Department 47.
Paul was good enough to forward me an advance copy of Episode Two of Ghost Cases. I had the chance to watch it Friday night and I have to tell you I really enjoyed it.
Ghost Cases takes a little different approach from what you might be used to on Ghost Hunters. In this particular episode, Paul and Holly visited a rural farm house in which seemingly paranormal activity was making life pretty uncomfortable for its living occupants. I felt Paul and Holly took the time to tell you a little more about what these people were experiencing and how it affected their lives. Like in most UFO cases, the only concrete thing we usually have is the witnesses, and understanding them may give us our best clue to understanding the phenomenon. You also get to know a bit more about the hunters too. You understand that Paul and Holly are just normal people with normal fears and foibles who just happened to be engaged in an unusual activity.
Ghost Cases is not so technology-centric as Ghost Hunters. For example, they are assisted by a psychic in this case - something I believe that Ghost Hunters used to do but abandoned for a more science-based approach. I would certainly like to see a follow-up to the case to see whether the psychic's efforts had any real or lasting effect on the manifestations there.
As a former TV guy, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that the production values and videography were quite good - at some points rather artistic. They kept a few miscues in it (people sometimes at a momentary loss for words and such). I liked that. It gave it more of a sense of reality - in stressful situations, sometimes you do struggle for words.
I hope they pick up the show down here. I think it would be a thoughtful counter-point to some of the overwrought shows we get in the States.
In part 2 of the interview I conducted in 2001 with Brandeis University anthropologist Dr. Benson Saler, co-author of UFO Crash at Roswell: The Genesis of a Modern Myth, we examine the Roswell incident as a modern myth, how conspiracy theory plays into it (and what it says about us), and how in many respects the belief in Roswell as an ET event (and, I might add, the disbelief of the Roswell “atheists”) mirrors religion. All this, and I make a comment or two about the new mythmakers of Roswell, such as Anthony Bragalia, and what their efforts portend for the future of the Roswell myth.
