Into The Mystic

Are we just meat-based computers, or is there much more in there... and out there as well (as George Harrison wrote, within and without you)? That is the fundamental question underlying all aspects of the so-called paranormal, I believe - including UFOs.

The great mystics - which include the Christian mystics - have been wrestling with this topic from the beginning of recorded history. Jesus, for example (the greatest of all Christian mystics, although I suppose that it would be more accurate to view him as a Jewish mystic) - in John 17: 21 - 23 [KJV]:

That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

As I noted in my recent podcast with Dean Radin, this mystical core has been buried by the established churches for most of the last 2,000 years (with the odd exception), but it's still there, open to a much more interesting interpretation and discussion than you'll find coming from most pulpits. And it's in that mysticism that I believe the truth resides, should there be a truth to the paranormal beyond the structures of our rationalist / materialist worldview, because it offers us the opportunity to explore the most fascinating of all possibilities - that at a basic level (call it a quantum level), we are all God, and God is us - in which case, the things we are seeing are things we have created ourselves.

As Hildegarde of Bingen put it: "You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God."

Or, as Luke wrote [17:21, KJV] - “The kingdom of God is within you”.

Paul Kimball

The Transfiguration of the Paranormal

Max Beckmann, Birds' Hell (1938)

Apropos of the general theme discussed in my book The Other Side of Truth: The Paranormal, The Art of the Imagination, and The Human Condition (namely, that the "paranormal" is an artistic presentation to us by an advanced non-human intelligence), as well as some ongoing discussions in the comments section on various posts at Rich Reynolds' UFO Iconoclasts blog about the nature of our possible interaction with this advanced non-human intelligence, I think this quote by one of my favourite painters, Max Beckmann, is apropos:

Art is creative for the sake of realization, not for amusement: for transfiguration, not for the sake of play. It is the quest of our self that drives us along the eternal and never-ending journey we must all make. 

As I wrote at Rich's blog, I don't really care who is caressing the canvas with the brush, or when, or what it looks like - I'm more interested in what it all means, or is meant to mean. And therein lies the philosophical conversation that ufology (and all of the crazy paranormal stuff) has been missing, as does most modern formalized religion. But it's the only part of the puzzle that really matters, at least to me. 

In the quest for meaning we find ourselves, and are transfigured in the process.

But why would an advanced non-human intelligence engage in all of this, often in what seems to the modern rationalist / materialist to be the most obtuse and in many cases ridiculous ways? I quote again from Beckmann, who stated:

Imagination is perhaps the most decisive characteristic of mankind. My dream is the imagination of space – to change the optical impression of the world of objects by a transcendental arithmetic progression of the inner being. That is the precept. In principal any alteration of the object is allowed which has a sufficiently strong creative power behind it. Whether such alteration causes excitement or boredom in the spectator is for you to decide.

In order to understand "the other" (whatever that "other" may be), we must first think like an artist, whether a painter, a musician, a poet, an actor, a magician, a dancer... whatever. We must use our imagination, and try to feel what it is like to be a creator and a performer.

In short, we must think like them... and only then can we begin to understand them, and appreciate the works that they are creating.

Paul Kimball

UFOs and Wish Fulfillment

Rich Reynolds at the UFO Iconoclasts has a new post titled UFOs: Alone in the woods with your thoughts and a wish-fulfillment wherein he speculates about UFOs as a result of wish fulfillment on the part of the observer. An excerpt: You can read the entire post here. I find this an interesting line of thought worthy of discussion, but perhaps from a slightly different angle than Rich takes. I left the following comment:

Drab lives, with sexual frustration, could easily spark a wish to see or experience something unique or unusual. Today, the public (the masses) with their need to have fifteen minutes of fame – that damn Andy Warhol perquisite for life – could evoke, and often does, a wish-fulfillment, and in some, at the edge of geekiness, would use UFOs to bring that about. We often find, don’t we, that those who’ve seen a UFO or had an experience are people with a prior-to-their incidents interest in science fiction and its accoutrements (movies, TV shows, books, magazines)... That would be the basis for their wish-fulfillment, the underlying material(s) for their claim to unique human experience. 

I find this idea to be an interesting area of thought experimentation, although perhaps not quite in the same way as Rich does. I left the following comment at his blog:

This leads me back to the idea I posited in my book, that some advanced non-human intelligence is interacting with us as a way to inspire us to imagine a much broader world (for lack of a better term - interesting and fulfilling also work) than the one to which we have confined ourselves (or been confined, depending upon how you look at it). That's what art, in all it's forms, does, and I see the paranormal as an artistic presentation (and sometimes co-creation). Thus, in a sense, "they" are encouraging us not just to "wish" (upon a star?)... but ultimately to make those wishes come true.

Paul Kimball 

Roundabout

That's a photo of my Mom in May, 1966. I was born on 2 January, 1967, and I'm told I was a few days late, so I'm in this photo as well. I just didn't know it at the time.

Which makes me wonder - what will I be doing a second after I die? 

I think it will be the same thing I was doing a second before I was born.

I just have no idea what that was / will be... which is what makes it all so interesting.

Paul Kimball

Aaron John Gulyas on The Other Side of Truth

Historian and author Aaron John Gulyas joined me back in July to discuss his new book Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist, as well as his forthcoming book The Chaos Conundrum. The conversation began with an examination of the Contactee movement, focusing on its place as a significant part of 20th century American social and cultural history. Aaron and I then engaged in a discussion about the underlying political message of the Contactees, and the differences between their more experiential and individualist approach to the UFO phenomenon as compared to the more institutional approach of so-called “scientific” ufologists such as Donald Keyhoe, and how those two divergent outlooks were often structured along class lines. The conversation then turned to a look at atemporality and how it might inform much of what we call the “paranormal”. Along the way, Aaron recounted a personal experience he had whilst investigating a haunted cemetery, and he and I worked in some observations about religion and politics.

You can listen to the episode here.

Paul Kimball

Reflections on Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings

An old friend, with only a passing interest in UFOs (he's much more intrigued by ghosts), asked me the other day what I thought about the 10 cases featured in my 2007 film Best Evidence: Top 10 UFO Sightings -  my own personal opinions of each case, as opposed to the narrative of the film, which was dictated by the choices made by the panel of ufologists I enlisted to determined the top cases (with one exception, noted below), including Kevin Randle, the late Karl Pflock, the late Richard Hall, the late Mac Tonnies, Stanton Friedman, Brad Sparks, Bruce Maccabee, and Nick Pope, among others.

I thought about it, and then broke it down for him as follows:

10. Nuremberg, 1561 - A sighting that I added (bumping out the case the panel had voted in as #10) to demonstrate the point that UFO sightings predated the modern era. It happened so long ago that it would be impossible now to determine the accuracy of the report, or whether it was something anomalous, but it's worth noting that reports like it were far from unique. I think it can be chalked up to superstition, literary licence, and a misreading of a natural event.

9. Skylab III, 1973 - I have no doubt that it was a combination of space debris and camera artifacts.

8. Yukon, 1996 - This case relies solely on eyewitness testimony, and while there are multiple independent witnesses at different locations, there also seems to be a reasonable explanation that I accept.

7. Malmstrom AFB, 1967 - This case has generated more publicity than any of the others within ufology, if not the general public (Rendlesham is much better known there), largely because of the feud between "UFOs at Missile Bases" proponent Robert Hastings and James Carlson, the son of one of the officers allegedly involved in it all. I think they deserve each other, because they are both bonkers in my book. Focusing on the case instead of the feud, I don't buy it. I like Bob Salas (the primary witness) as a person, and think he is an honest man, but I also think that while he's made a genuine effort to remember things as they happened, he's got it wrong. When I interviewed him in 2006, he told me that he underwent hypnosis to recover his memories of the incident, which always rings alarm bells with me. There are no other witnesses or documents which corroborate his story - and there should be. Where are any of the soldiers who were topside who reportedly saw the UFO? I admire Bob for his advocacy of a nuclear free world, but I can't buy Malmstrom as anything other than a missile failure due to prosaic reasons, and some tall tales that he has absorbed as a truthful narrative.

6. Shag Harbour, 1967 - This case has multiple independent witnesses, all of them of impeccable character, as well as an official government investigation that called it a UFO. There are other stories that go much further, of underwater objects monitored for days by the US and Canadian navies until they flew off, but those rest on anonymous sources, and there is no documentation (although the stories were told to my friends Don Ledger and Chris Styles, whom I trust to have related them accurately - still, the stories and the witnesses can't be verified by others). What that leaves us with, I think, is a genuine mystery, but one that may or may not be as otherworldly as ET proponents would claim. It remains unsolved in my books, and very interesting.

5. Santa Barbara Channel, 1953 - The famous sighting by Kelly Johnson and his wife at their home in Agoura, CA, at the same time as a crew of top Lockheed pilots and flight engineers saw the "object" whilst flying over Santa Barbara Channel. They all wrote reports that still exist, so we can read in their own words about what they saw. There are some inconsistencies, but a general common narrative is possible to glean from it all. My friend Lance Moody has suggested that they mistook lenticular clouds for a structured craft, which I just don't buy (and neither did Johnson et al, who considered that possibility at the time of the sighting and ruled it out), but that doesn't mean I think that it was space aliens. The quality of the witnesses mark this one out as a good case, and I think it's still unexplained.

4. McMinnville, 1950 - I have always been convinced that it was a hoax. Not much more that I can say.

3. Rendlesham, 1980 - Another controversial case. There's no question that multiple witnesses saw something on two nights in late December, 1980. That's something everyone can agree on... and it's about the only thing! Skeptics like Ian Ridpath say that the US military men under Charles Halt misidentified a local lighthouse, and others suggest that the military police officers on the first night misidentified local police cars. But I'm not sure either of those jibe with the reports of the witnesses, particularly Halt, who was the deputy base commander and recorded the second incident on a tape recorder. The far out claims that have lately surfaced from Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, two key witnesses from the first incident, have further muddied the waters. Skeptics think that it just shows they're liars trying to cash in on the New Age element within ufology; believers look at their claims of telepathic communication and say that it absolutely fits with coming into contact with some advanced intelligence from another planet. This case is often called Britain's Roswell, and I think that's accurate, but not for the reason most people use the term. Like Roswell, I think it's a Rorschach test on what people think about the ETH. Either way, you'll see what you want to see. Sitting in the middle as an agnostic, I see a case that has already become so encrusted by mythologizing from both sides that it will never be solved. My gut tells me that the witnesses might have seen something weird, but they might also have been mistaken - and that's as far as I would ever go.

2. Tehran, 1976 - Still stands the test of time as an unsolved case. Genuinely mysterious.

1. RB47, 1957 - Since my film came out this long-overlooked case has enjoyed a renaissance of sorts, with skeptics trying on a number of occasions to offer a plausible explanation (which was one of these point of the film - to encourage people to examine these cases and try to come up with answers). Tim Printy tried the hardest in his SunLite publication, but it didn't ring true to me any more than the original USAF answer that it was all a misidentified commercial flight, hundreds of miles away. I showed Printy's explanation, and others, to surviving RB47 crew members I know, including Bruce Bailey who appears in the film and had his own encounter with a UFO a couple of years later, and they all thought it just didn't wash. I still consider this a truly mysterious case that remains unsolved, despite the best efforts of honest skeptics. 

So there it is. The only cases in the film that I find genuinely interesting and still unsolved are #6, #5, #2, and #1. Rendlesham is just too Roswellized for me to either credit or dismiss. The others I consider either solved, or too tenuous to merit any further consideration.

Paul Kimball

The Illogic of the Crashed ET Spacecraft Meme

The subject of Roswell and Project Mogul came up in correspondence today, and in my reply I wrote the following, which is pretty much my statement when it comes to the so-called "Roswell Incident":

It doesn't really matter to me whether Mogul was the cause or not. I'm sure that something like it, i.e. something prosaic, was what happened, for reasons I'll set out below. I've always thought that the mistake the USAF made was trying to explain away the Roswell "Incident" with a positive alternative, when any debater will tell you that if you're on the negative side of an argument all you have to do is take apart the side being put forward by the affirmative, in this case by the ET crash supporters. Once you offer an alternative, in this case Mogul, it puts a burden of proof on you that was not otherwise there, and takes some of that burden from where it belongs, i.e. on the shoulders of the crash proponents, who have singularly failed to prove their case, despite having over 30 years at it now.

Here are the reasons why I am completely convinced that there was no ET crash.

1. If aliens had sufficiently advanced technology of the kind that would permit travel between the stars (and I've talked to enough scientists to know just how mind-blowingly advanced this would have to be, Stan Friedman and his nuclear rockets balderdash notwithstanding), then it beggars belief that they would crash in spaceships that looked like something out of a 1950s sci-fi B-movie once they got here (much less crash multiple times, as some posit, including Stan).

2. However, allowing for the infinitesimal possibility that Murphy's Law applies to super-advanced aliens, it beggars belief that they would just leave the remains of the ship and their dead comrades to be found by beings who, as Stan puts it, were here to observe us because we might be dangerous someday soon. After all, they were supposedly in New Mexico to monitor nuclear testing and so forth... so how can we be asked to believe that they would let we warlike creatures have their technology? The logical answer is that we can't believe that, because the very reason the crash proponents suggest for the aliens being in New Mexico in 1947 (as opposed to some place like Iceland, or India) is the very reason why the aliens would clean up their mess before we could snag it... and if they had the ability to get here from another star system, then they would certainly have had the ability to collect or vaporize the wreckage.

3. However, allowing for the equally infinitesimal possibility that the aliens are fools, and let us have the technology in the idea that we would never understand it, then it beggars belief yet again that the United States government could have maintained what must be such a vast conspiracy to this day to keep it all quiet. I'm sorry, but that doesn't wash any more than the notion that BushCo. pulled off 9 / 11 as an inside job. Yes, there are conspiracies and cover-ups, and yes, they can be kept for a very long time, but history tells us that the reason they are kept for a very long time successfully is that they are always confined to only a few people. As soon as you start expanding the circle of knowledge, then the wheels fall off. Of course, conspiracists fall back on the old "the information compartmentalized, and only a super small cadre know the complete truth," but that's ludicrous. Even if you knew a portion of the truth, most people would be able to figure out the big picture eventually. And sooner or later if more than a couple people were involved, even at lower levels, some peon would leak something, as Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning and Daniel Ellsberg and the Rosenbergs all showed, that would have verifiable documentation to back it up.

But as I can't get past either point 1 or 2, I never really have to worry about point 3. I merely include it as an exercise in logic. And don't ask me to consider the absurd notion that the aliens staged the entire thing as a "test" or some kind of "counter intelligence" operation. That's like saying you have a dragon, but when people come around to see your dragon you explain to them that he's invisible to everyone but you. It's the ultimate in wish fulfillment excuses for something that does not withstand logical scrutiny.

What confounds me is that a lot of smart people have gotten lost in the weeds around the crashed flying saucer meme, when what they really needed to do was just apply some basic common sense and think the proposition itself through logically.

Paul Kimball

Roswell

Roswell is to a true understanding of the UFO phenomenon as the Shroud of Turin is to a true understanding of Jesus, and the cause underlying the never-ending fascination with both is the same - an unwillingness (and in many cases a simple lack of the intellectual wherewithal) to confront the real mystery of each subject.

Coast to Coast AM - Monday, 21 January 2013

Just a short note to let folks know that I'll be on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory on Monday, January 21st, from 11 pm until 2 pm PST (2 am until 5 am Tuesday morning EST for people who live on the East Coast). We'll be talking about my book The Other Side of Truth. Here's the blurb from the C2C website.

Called the Jack Kerouac of the paranormal, Paul Kimball has been experiencing various paranormal phenomena in his travels along the weird highway of life. He'll share his realizations that many strange experiences are actually interactions with an advanced non-human intelligence, including ghosts, time travelers from the past and the future, as well as angels and ETs.

I always enjoy chatting with George, so I'm looking forward to delving into The Other Side of Truth... and then taking calls from the listeners.

As for the book, we're running a ”Winter Blues” sale – the price is only USD $11.99 until the end of February. You can order it here.

Hope you get a chance to tune in!

Paul Kimball 

The Other Side of Truth book now available

The briefest of returns to let anyone who still wanders by here that my book, The Other Side of Truth, is now available. You can order it from my company's website, or at Amazon.com. It will be made available in e-book format sometime in early 2013.

Here's the info:

About

In The Other Side of Truth, filmmaker Paul Kimball crosses the Rubicon of the imagination to explore the idea that what we call the “paranormal” is actually a form of performance art created by an advanced non-human intelligence to make us think about who we are, where we have been, and where we are going. Using his own journey of discovery as the backdrop, Kimball puts forward the “other side of truth” – the world not as we have been told it is, but as we are being encouraged to imagine it could become.

Advance praise

“New thinking such as that displayed in this book is sorely needed in the paranormal field. I have seen Paul’s opinions greeted with open hostility on my radio show and elsewhere. Incredibly insane stories such as the U.S. President using a time machine to get to Mars, or culinary recipes channeled from historical figures, don’t garner half the vitriol that my good friend does. To me, that means he has something important to say that threatens the thoughtless. Good.”

- Greg Bishop, host of Radio Misterioso, and author of Project Beta.

“The Other Side of Truth is a road-trip of physical, spiritual, and mental proportions that sees Canadian filmmaker Paul Kimball hot on the trail of what is commonly, and simplistically, referred to as the paranormal. He demonstrates that there is nothing simple about matters such as UFOs, life after death, and synchronicity, and he reveals through his own fascinating experiences that the journey in search of the answers can be a deeply satisfying one.”

- Nick Redfern, author of Monster Diary, Final Events, and The Real Men in Black.

“The Other Side of Truth is a fascinating and entertaining examination of the paranormal. UFOs, ghosts, time travel, synchronicities and reincarnation are just some of the subjects covered in this thought-provoking book. Paul Kimball takes readers on a deeply personal journey, examining issues such as philosophy, consciousness, metaphysics and the nature of reality, fleshing out his insightful theories with details of some of his own bizarre experiences. Highly recommended.”

– Nick Pope, author of Open Skies, Closed Minds.

“Paul Kimball’s The Other Side of Truth shatters the bland, sterile image of ‘the paranormal’ foisted upon western society over the past thirty years. While this book won’t give the reader any answers about ghosts, extraterrestrials, or the afterlife, it will inspire them to ask questions about the world and universe around them. Presenting one man’s engrossing journey through the weirdness of our world and ourselves, Kimball’s book fits nicely on a shelf with Jacques Vallee, William James, and Jack Kerouac.”

- Aaron John Gulyas, historian and author of Extraterrestrials and the American Zeitgeist.

“In The Other Side of Truth, filmmaker Paul Kimball takes his questing intelligence on a trip with an intriguing destination: a better understanding of what constitutes the ‘paranormal’, and a broader discussion of what constitutes ‘truth’. Armed with a skeptical outlook but a remarkably open mind, Kimball takes the reader on a unique and entertaining journey through low and high culture – I love how he sweeps past the difference between the two – facts and feelings, and many remembrances of strange incidents in his own life, and arrives at a place that allows the ‘paranormal’ to breathe fresh air for the first time in many years.”

- Ron Foley MacDonald, theater / film critic and senior programmer of the Atlantic Film Festival.

“If you are looking for a vivid glimpse into some of the most frequently asked questions and thoughts about the paranormal and the unknown, then this book is for you. The Other Side of Truth is masterfully written by filmmaker Paul Kimball, who encourages the reader to open their mind not to answers, but to possibilities. It’s not just a good read, it’s a necessary one for anyone with an interest in the spiritual world, UFOs, death, reincarnation, and any other subject your subconscious may bring to your attention. Be prepared to set plenty of time aside, for when you pick up this book you will not want to put it down.”

- Kathleen Mendelin Marchbank, author of Vamplitude.

“It’s a cliché, but Paul Kimball’s The Other Side Of Truth is a ‘must read’ for the choir, the seekers and the doubters. His honest curiosity and skepticism – demonstrated over the years on my e-mail list and radio program – combine, presenting his findings in an intriguing and easy read.”

- Errol Bruce-Knapp, moderator of UFO UpDates, and host of Strange Days… Indeed and Mind Shift.

“After many years of research and adventures, and a whole lot of notes (or a fantastic memory), Paul Kimball has tried and tested all things covered under the ‘paranormal’ umbrella, from ghosts to UFOs to synchronicity. The end result is a truly entertaining, honest and eye-opening view of the mysterious world of unexplained phenomena.”

- Dave Sadler, editor of The Paranormal Review, and author of Paranormal Reality: Ghosts, UFOs, and Pussy Cats.

“Out-of-the box thinking about the paranormal that is as refreshing as it is challenging – if you come in with an open mind you just may learn a thing or two.”

- Tony Morrill, blogger at Forteania.

“Whether it’s UFOs, ghosts, or other mysteries, Paul Kimball offers a fair and critical examination of the paranormal and explores the many questions of life. After reading this book you will certainly be better prepared to answer the fundamental question that challenges humanity each and every day: What is Truth?”

– Rev. Kyle Wagner, B.A., MDiv., Anglican Church of Canada

“A glorious pastiche of things personal and things paranormal and transcendental. I can’t do justice to the contents of this book; it is fecund with information and insight that readers will savor and have to think seriously about… That Paul is well-read is obvious. That he’s a musician is overt too. His adoration of beautiful women is blatant. And his life has been and continues to be a journey of thought, fun, and a search for truth, which remains elusive and many-sided for him….and for us all.”

- Rich Reynolds, The UFO Iconoclasts

Stuart Miller - R.I.P.

Stuart Miller

I thought about posting this news at my new blog, but decided that I should post it here, on what was always a UFO-centered blog. Sadly, this kind of information is the only reason I would post here again.

The terrible news that came to me today, via Nick Redfern, is that our good friend Stuart Miller, former publisher of UFO Review (you can find a link to an old issue here) and Alien Worlds Magazine, and long-time contributor to UFO Updates and Errol Bruce-Knapp's radio show Strange Days Indeed, was killed in a tragic motorcycle accident in May.

Stuart and I at his home in Altrincham, UK - 2006

Stuart was one of the truly good guys in ufology. I had corresponded with him for a number of years prior to 2006, when he invited me to speak at a UFO Conference that he was holding in Altrincham (you can read a local news article on it here). Nick was going to be there as well, and I was headed to the United Kingdom to interview Nick Pope in London for my documentary Best Evidence, so I thought it sounded like a great idea. The problem was that Stuart couldn't pay me, which was fine (I've never taken a speaker's fee), but Best Evidence was on a tight budget, and my cameraman Findlay Muir and I had no place to stay in the Manchester area. No problem, said Stuart - we could stay with him, along with Nick and his wife Dana. And so we did, for several days after the conference was over, and had a grand time. It was at that conference back in 2006 that I met my good mate, Dave Sadler, with whom I went ghost hunting in 2009 in the Manchester area for Ghost Cases.

Stuart and Nick on Stuart's patio - 2006.

While I was at his house, I thought it would be fun to interview Stuart for Best Evidence. It didn't make the final cut, but I posted a transcript of it here a couple of years ago. In the introduction to that post, I wrote:

Stuart makes a great cup of tea (or sometimes a vat, if he’s using one of his super-sized cups), he probably knows more about motorcycles than anyone in ufology, he has a lovely family, a very friendly dog named Molly, and he enjoys his stogies. He is articulate, knowledgeable, and opinionated, which always makes for a good interview.

If I have a problem with Stuart, it’s that he's too modest (all of it genuine) about his own role in ufology. UFO Review is one of the best places to go for a comprehensive summary of the news of the day in the world of the paranormal, and his bi-monthly e-zine of the same name, which usually exceeds a hundred pages of content, is a must-read. His monthly UK reports on the Strange Days… Indeed radio show are always a good listen, and he’s to be commended for having the guts to put on a UFO conference at a time when attendance for conferences is down across the board. In short, he’s an important person within ufology, and makes, in his own way, a very significant and worthwhile contribution.

I later posted a clip from that interview, wherein Stuart discussed the Rendlesham Forest case (the clip also features Stan Friedman, Nick Pope, and Dick Hall, another good friend who passed away in 2009).

There is so much I could say about Stuart, with whom I was supposed to have lunch in 2009 when I was in the Manchester area shooting Ghost Cases. He was super keen to get together, but I just couldn't quite find the time, busy as I was filming, something I regretted then, and regret even more now. Time is the one thing you can never get back.

Stuart's great mag Alien Worlds, for which I wrote.

Sadly, he could only keep it going for 4 issues.

I'll leave you with my fondest memory of Stuart.

I was at the Conference, and things weren't going well. The English football team was playing that day in the 2006 World Cup, which meant that Stuart's timing couldn't have been worse. Looking around the room, I could tell that with only 15 to 20 paying customers, he was going to lose money... probably a fair bit of money. I felt bad for him, so while one of the speakers was giving his lecture, I sidled up to Stuart, who was standing next to the refreshment counter / bar, watching the man speak. It was perhaps 11 am.

"Tough sledding," I said. Trying to buck up his spirits, I added: "I bet there'll be more people here in the afternoon."

He just shook his head. "No," he replied. "There's probably going to be fewer people here by then."

I didn't quite know what to say, so I just stood there with him for a couple of moments, both of us silent. Then he walked behind the bar, poured himself a beer, and then poured another for me. He walked back around to the front of the bar, handed me my beer, smiled, and simply said "Fuck it."  Then he took a long drink and laughed, and we both proceeded to have a no-holds barred chat about life, UFOs, and good English beer.

This excerpt from the interview Errol Bruce-Knapp conducted with Stuart, Nick and I later that evening (and it was very late in the UK), sums up the hijinks that we were up to that grand day in Altrincham in May, 2006 - and shows what a wonderful fellow Stuart was (Nick offers his own thoughts on Stuart here; Errol comments here).

Stuart Miller was a genuinely good man, full of joie de vivre, wit, humour, and a true spirit of adventure and humanity. He will be missed by all who were lucky enough to know him.

Paul Kimball

Tea and Happy Trails

We all spend far too much time on the Internet these days, talking instead of living, pontificating about how things should be, instead of actually doing something to change them.

With respect to the paranormal, as with most things in life, "doing something" means seeking out personal experiences, both your own as an experiencer and those of others for context, and to learn from them. Alas, the lingua franca of the "subject" these days (again, as with most things in our society) is "discussion" of people (i.e. gossip), as opposed to ideas, or events, or cases. Accordingly, I'm putting The Other Side of Truth on indefinite hiatus, until at least this time next year, at which point I'll see where things stand. Maybe the journey will lead me back here (although I sincerely doubt it), but at the moment, and for the forseeable future, to paraphrase Jacques Vallee years ago, I've said all that I care to say in public.

Victoria-by-the-Sea, PEI



A couple of thoughts before I wander off to my metaphorical Walden Pond.

First, for updates on Beyond Best Evidence, which will be my final film about the UFO phenomenon, check out my company's website. You can also view all of the other films I've made about UFOs and the paranormal, including two episodes of Ghost Cases, at the website for free.

Second, the blog will still be here, although I'll be going through it over the next few months and removing a lot of old posts, particularly the ones that relate solely to personalities as opposed to ideas, or cases, or stories. In the end, a more streamlined and relevant version will remain.

The one last piece of advice I will offer is to get out there and live your life, as opposed to living through someone else's. While doing so, make sure to find time for proper Tea, one of the last remaining vestiges of a civilized and cultured society.

The Orient Hotel, Victoria-by-the-Sea, PEI...

... home of Mrs. Proffit's Tea Room!

Tell them I sent you, and make sure to have a scone with clotted cream and jam as well!

In the meantime, you can follow some of my ongoing adventures, interests and opinions, totally unrelated to the paranormal, at Day Tripper and The Philosopher King, should you be interested.

Happy trails,
Paul Kimball

Priorities

There is apparently much chatter as of late (on various blogs, and podcasts - the usual suspects) about a UFO researcher, and claims that he made up phony academic credentials. In the grand scheme of things (even "ufological" things), it is really much ado about nothing. But people these days love to talk about personalities, because it's the great leveler - you don't need a degree, or any qualifications whatsoever, to gossip, or attack people, or pile on. You barely need a pulse.

Meanwhile, I decided to "get away from it all" this weekend, and took a trip to Prince Edward Island with an old and dear friend.

Some things matter... and some things don't.

Did the UFO researcher currently under fire fake his credentials? It seems like he did.

Does it make much of a difference? No, not really, other than to him and those who worked with him.

What of any significance is left to discuss, once the lie has been exposed? Nothing.

Will it help solve the UFO enigma? Absolutely not. It's a sideshow.

It's all about having your priorities in order, folks.

Paul Kimball

Change, the Future and the ETH

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, sparking the civil war which led to the ultimate replacement of the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, it was on horseback, leading his legions of soldiers armed with swords, spears, and other similar weapons.

When the Roman Empire in the West fell in 476 CE, after five centuries as the pre-eminent power in the ancient world, it was to Germanic armies that wielded more or less the same equipment as Caesar's legions had. When Belisarius re-captured large parts of the Western Empire in the middle of the 6th century for Emperor Justinian, he too led armies that would not have seemed unfamiliar to Caesar.

Belisarius

Thus, while there were certainly changes in tactics, and formations, and even to some degree materiel, the armies led by Belisarius looked much like the armies led by Caesar six centuries earlier. There was no fundamental difference.

The same cannot be said for developments in the 20th century. Admiral Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, the foundation of British Imperial might in 1914, and the victor at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, was irrelevant by the time the Second World War ended in 1945. Blockades and great naval battles between surface fleets were meaningless when compared with first with air power, as demonstrated by the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in 1941, much less the development of atomic weapons by the end of the war - all of which came to the fore within less than a decade.

For centuries - indeed, in many respects, for millennia - human development remained relatively stagnant. Change, when it came, was generally slow and fitful.

Contrast that with my home computer. When I founded Redstar Films, just twelve years ago, I bought desktop computers for the office for my home that were near the top of the line, and which were specifically assembled by a local company. They each had 20 GB of hard drive space. The mass produced computer I'm using as I type this has 300 GB of hard drive space, and is hooked up to a separate drive that contains 500 GB of space. On the shelf nearby is another drive with a TB of space. I can edit an entire film on this computer, and post it immediately to various places on the Internet, or send it via FTP to someone in Asia, or Europe.

I could go on, but the point should be clear. Human progress has been accelerating exponentially since the beginning of the 20th century, and in particular since the end of the Second World War, at a rate that makes all of human history before then look like the slow crawl of an infant. And we haven't even really gotten started yet.

So, on the one hand, when I hear someone like Michio Kaku say that travel to the stars is far beyond our capabilities right now, and that any civilization which would have figured out how to do it must be much more advanced than us, I have to agree. It's common sense. The problem, however, comes with the timeline that he (and others) then impose for the development of that technology - not just decades, or even centuries, but millennia.

The problem is that Kaku et al assume a rate of progress for any civilization similar to human progress prior to the Twentieth Century - that is to say, slow and in fits and starts. They assume that, like Belisarius compared to Caesar, astronauts in six hundred years will more or less be using the same technology that astronauts today are using. But that doesn't seem to be the way that our development is trending. The predictive models of the past are no longer relevant.

It's possible that they're right, of course. It might even be likely. But given the way that things have gone, and are going, it cannot be said that they are certainly correct. The technological developments necessary to get us to the stars may not be thousands of years away - they may only be hundreds of years away, or perhaps even less. We just don't know anymore.

Predicting the future is a tricky thing, made trickier with each passing year.

Accordingly, it's not unreasonable to speculate that a civilization in our nearby "galactic neighborhood" could have developed these abilities before us, and made their way here at some point, without having to imagine them as god-like beings so far in advance of us that we would not be able to recognize them, or communicate with them.

That may well be the case, but it's worth remembering that it may not.

Paul Kimball

Unified Field Radio appearance

My recent appearance on the Unified Field Radio program with Justin Brown is now available - you can listen in to the episode here. We chatted about Beyond Best Evidence, Best Evidence, ghosts, UFOs, Stan Friedman and the ETH, Mac Tonnies and the cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, and all sorts of other stuff.

The program airs on 88.1 FM (CKDU) in Halifax, Nova Scotia - well worth checking out.

Paul Kimball