Unfortunately, a rather well-known and prominent paranormal investigator has been accused of fabricating his academic credentials; he was outed by what is probably a debunker, rather than someone in the paranormal field. I don't know the details, and as far as I know, outside of the debunker, no one has independently verified the information, but [ ] has so far refused to respond to the allegations and has in fact dropped out of the paranormal "field" (if it can be labeled as such).
This is significant, because anyone who self-associates with the paranormal field stands totally on his credibility; there are no outside institutions to validate, vouch for, or otherwise credit an investigator's paranormalibility. (I won't even mention "peer review," since, as another prominent paranormal investigator has asked, "Who are my peers" in the paranormal field? Does this make him peerless, like the faucets?) So if you lie about something so basic as your education, we pretty have to throw out every thing you have written, said, or opined on the subject.
Speaking of the "paranormal," as I was driving home this afternoon and listening to my usual assortment of podcasts, the issue came up, inevitably, about whether paranormal phenomena such as hauntings, "aliens," or whatnot are "evil." Are aliens evil? Is the UFO phenomenon evil? What about malicious hauntings? Psychic attacks? Energy vampires?
Speaking personally, I will say that if you turn your attention to certain aspects of the paranormal, you will definitely feel a pronounced negative vibe that seems to be not-of-this-earth. It's difficult to articulate, but it is there, and, I suspect, it's "real." For this reason, I really don't interest myself in most paranormal topics. There is a level of the phenomenon that is definitely tricksterish at best, and if you dabble in it, you run the risk of messing up your life. Why, how, and by what mechanism, I don't know. The stuff that I'm interested in probably is more defined as classic mysticism, which, to the outsider, might seem to be paranormal, but really isn't. Paranormal phenomena are, by definition, events that intrude into the physical that don't conform to the known rules and expectations of the physical world. I define mysticism, on the other hand, as an inquiry into the non-physical realm, which most of us believe exists and has an influence on our physical lives.
Plus, I've discovered that practicing the Masonic ritual--which is not very different from esoteric rituals practiced by different societies through the millennia--has a very grounding effect. So I don't have any fear in my investigations, and I have less and less fear in my physical life.
Hiya Ish, the lack of academic credentials has been verified by other people independently. More seriously, his military history is becoming the focus of investigation by Don Ecker. At times, he had suggested that he was Special Forces.
ReplyDeleteIf you remember Cliff Stone, that guy was an army desk typist and claimed to be a covert crash-retrieval expert with a history of medals and crawling under the wire to do single-combat in Vietnam. A compulsive liar and a sad tale.
The guy you don't want to mention will, no doubt, retain the support of many like Cliff Stone does. It might have been better to keep the references to [] as historical record? I spent years believing in the Bermuda Triangle, Berlitz and even Meier (as a kid) and can't say I didn't.
I met Charles Berlitz in '76 when he gave a talk at the university I was at. He did a slide show that was mostly a mishmash of weird phenomena that he tried to bend into evidence of the triangle.
ReplyDeleteI omitted [ ]'s name because I didn't want this blog indexed with all of the other inevitable denunciations that will follow from people who will say, "I suspected this because of (fill in the blank)." I have one of [ ]'s books and while reading it, I suspected it also--problem is, I never said it. So there's no point in me pretending now like I knew it all along.
Fair point; peer-pressure and socialisation is as real in ufology as anywhere else. We're all social animals and what we *say* is often removed from what we *think* by being filtered through our needs of acceptance...and not wishing to appear stupid.
ReplyDeleteBerlitz' 'Bermuda Triangle' was one of those seminal books that reinforced my interest in early teens. Later on, it was also a factor in discarding my paranormal/UFO books and magazine collection.
There seems to be some sort of gravitation anomaly in the Gulf that causes some phenomena. I have sailed through the Triangle several times, and once a fellow traveler noticed the stereotypical "strange lights" at night. It may be what I call a location-specific hot spot of sorts. But assembling every weird thing as proof of a phenomenon doesn't really do it justice.
ReplyDeleteI've witnessed UFOs (as well as has my mother), so I think that they're "there," but I think it's overreaching to associate them with "abductions" or even "aliens." They might be theoretically many separate things, including projections of some sort. I never quite bought into [ ]'s "djinn" theory because once you label a broad swath of anomalies as one specific thing, you basically kill any subsequent attempt to objectively learn about them. I have photographed a plasma phenomenon, but after 15 or so years of thinking about it, I still don't know what it is.