Dr. Benson Saler - Roswell and the Making of a Modern Myth, Part III

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The final installment of my 2001 interview with Brandeis University anthropologist Dr. Benson Saler. In this part, we discuss the Roswell myth as a cultural phenomenon, and also the role that conspiracies play in contemporary society.

Paul Kimball

What is Science?

Great video.

Paul Kimball

Dr. Benson Saler - Roswell and the Making of a Modern Myth, Part II

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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.

Paul Kimball

Dr. Benson Saler - Roswell and the making of a modern myth, Part I

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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.

Paul Kimball

Ghost Cases - conclusions

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:

Don’t believe.

Don’t disbelieve.

Think.

Paul Kimball

The Case of the Haunted Cell

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.

Paul Kimball

Mac Tonnies on the cryptoterrestrials

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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.

Paul Kimball

The Case of the Baby in the Basement

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.

Paul Kimball

Karl Pflock on ufology

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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.

There will be more to come from Karl at the Other Side of Truth podcast over the next month or so.

Paul Kimball

Podcasting the Paranormal

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.

Paul Kimball

Lt. Col. Bruce Bailey's UFO Encounter

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.

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Paul Kimball

Greg Bishop - The UFO Phenomenon

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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.”

Paul Kimball

The Other Side of Truth - Podcast

Everyone else is doing it, so I figured "why not?"

The Other Side of Truth... podcast!

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.

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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.

Stay tuned...

Paul Kimball

The only "Abduction" book that's worth reading...

Or, as I wrote in The Alien Abduction Cult three years ago:

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.

Paul Kimball

The Cryptoterrestrials - A Review

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.

Paul Kimball

The 2009 Zorgy Awards

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.

Without further ado.


Top Paranormal Blog

Winner: Cryptomundo

Results
1. Cryptomundo: 245 votes / 54%
2. UFO Mystic: 83 votes / 18%
3. Posthuman Blues: 61 votes / 13%
4. The UFO Iconoclasts: 20 votes / 4%
5. A Different Perspective: 13 votes / 3%
6. De Void: 12 votes / 3%
7. The Orange Orb: 9 votes / 2%
8. UFO Media Matters: 8 votes / 2%
9. Robert Barrow: 2 votes / 0 %
10. Strange State: 1 vote / 0%
454 total votes
Paul's pick: UFO Mystic


Top Paranormal News Service

Winner: The Daily Grail

Results
1. The Daily Grail: 179 votes / 40%
2. The Anomalist: 142 votes / 32%
3. The Debris Field: 65 votes / 14%
4. Fortean Times: 38 votes / 8%
5. UFO Digest: 21 votes / 5%
6. Book of Thoth: 4 votes / 1%
449 total votes
Paul's pick: The Daily Grail


Top Paranormal Podcast

Winner: Binnall of America

Results
1. Binnall of America: 319 votes / 31%
2. Paratopia: 306 votes / 30%
3. Dark Matters Radio: 251 votes / 24%
4. The Paracast: 79 votes / 8%
5. Dreamland: 18 votes / 2%
6. Skeptiko: 17 votes / 2 %
7. Radio Misterioso: 13 votes / 1%
8. The Kevin Smith Show: 12 votes / 1%
9. Black Vault Radio: 11 votes / 1%
10. Through the Keyhole: 3 votes / 0%
11. The Joiner Report: 1 vote / 0%
1,030 total votes
Paul's pick: The Paracast


Top Paranormal Television Show

Winner: UFO Hunters

Results
1. UFO Hunters: 100 votes / 42%
2. Ghost Hunters: 67 votes / 28%
3. Paranormal State: 27 votes / 11%
4. Ghost Cases: 12 votes / 5%
5. Ghost Hunters International: 7 votes / 3%
Ghost Lab: 7 votes / 3%
7. Most Haunted: 6 votes / 3%
8. The Haunted: 4 votes / 2 %
The Othersiders: 4 votes / 2%
10. Rescue Mediums: 2 votes / 1 %
236 total votes
Paul's pick: Ghost Cases


Top Discussion Forum

Winner: Paratopia

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.

In the Hall of Fame, we are inducting the late Mac Tonnies (shown at left), the late Richard Hall, James W. Moseley and Jerome Clark.

In the Hall of Shame, we are inducting Silas Newton and Alfred Webre.

If you have to ask why with regards to our selections, then you just don't know us very well.

All the best for 2010, and see you again in a year's time.

Paul Kimball

137 years of Popular Science - free!

You can now access the entire archive of Popular Science for free!

You can search the archive here.

Try "UFO"!

Paul Kimball

The Cryptoterrestrials are coming!!

Mac's eagerly awaited final book, The Cryptoterrestrials, is now available.

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!

Paul Kimball

The 2009 Zorgy Awards - Voting Begins

Hi folks. Better late than never with the 2009 Zorgy Awards.

As with the 2008 awards, the nominations have been decided by Zorgy and I, but the choices are all yours.

Voting begins... now!

The polls will close on March 7, 2010, at 10 pm AST.

Top Paranormal Researcher
	Nick Redfern
	Christopher O'Brien
	Robert Hastings
	Anthony Bragalia
	Mac Tonnies
	Peter Robbins
	Loren Coleman
	Greg Bishop
	Nick Pope
	Kevin Randle
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Top Paranormal Blog
	UFO Mystic
	Cryptomundo
	Posthuman Blues
	The UFO Iconoclasts
	A Different Perspective
	The Orange Orb
	Strange State
	De Void
	UFO Media Matters
	Robert Barrow
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Top Paranormal News Service
	The Debris Field
	The Daily Grail
	The Anomalist
	UFO Digest
	Fortean Times
	Book of Thoth
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Top Paranormal Podcast
	Binnall of America
	The Joiner Report
	The Paracast
	Skeptico
	Dreamland
	Paratopia
	Through the Keyhole
	Radio Misterioso
	Dark Matters Radio
	The Kevin Smith Show
	Black Vault Radio
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Top Paranormal Television Show
	Ghost Hunters
	UFO Hunters
	Most Haunted
	Ghost Hunters International
	Rescue Mediums
	Ghost Cases
	Ghost Lab
	The Haunted
	The Othersiders
	Paranormal State
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Top Discussion Forum
	Book of Thoth
	Above Top Secret
	UFO Evolution
	Paratopia
	The Paracast
	Department 47
	The Black Vault
	SyFy Forums - Ghost Hunters
	SyFy Forums - UFO Hunters
	The Bigfoot Forums
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Good luck to everyone!

Paul Kimball (and Vice Admiral Zorgrot)

Sadler and Mera - new books!

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.

Steve's is Strange Happenings, and Dave's is Paranormal Reality.

Both are well worth a look.

Paul Kimball