Against my better judgement (Really!)

So I'm feeling better, and I decided to listen to a few paranormal podcasts.  We've all gone there and done that.  My findings thereon, to wit:

I listened to an interview (on an unnamed podcast) with Rosemary Ellen Guiley regarding her latest book, "Dream Messages From The Afterlife."  I bought the book, and Ms. Guiley's interview was good.  She is always good, though the attentive reader will remember that she did have a problem with guilt-by-association with Phil Imbrogno on their Djinn book.  I did not buy that book, because I'm not sure that I believe in the Djinn, and I'm not interested in the subject anyway.  Nonetheless, I respect Ms. Guiley, and while her podcast did not tell me anything I didn't already know (she quoted liberally from "Messages: Signs, Visits, and Premonitions from Loved Ones Lost on 9/11" by Bonnie McEnearey, which I think is one of the best books on the subject), I enjoyed it.

So Rosemary Ellen Guiley was the gateway drug back to the paranormal.

Next podcast was someone I had never heard of, an apparently well-known abductee named Derrel Sims. Mr. Sims struck me immediately as bogus.  Readers of this blog will note that while I was once a believer in "abductions," I'm now an ardent skeptic (or, more correctly, disbeliever), and I automatically reject any traditional abduction narrative--particularly contemporary ones.  (And I speak as an experiencer.)  After about thirty minutes, I terminated the podcast.  To the credit of this particular show, the consensus of this show's forum posters is that Sims is (quote) "full of it," "a clown," and "self-aggrandizing."   Which causes me to wonder why this particular show features this individual and has interviewed him several times.

Whilst browsing this same forum, I saw a mud-slinging between the show's primary host and "a former pay-per-listen podcast host and present-day blogger" who had accused the host of lying about a conversation several years ago involving employment at a radio station.  Well, intrigued at all this, and suspecting this offending blogger's identity, I went Googling to find it.  Which I did.  And while I do not agree with Jeremy Vaeni on a few things, he is capable of writing a splendid insult, so his take-down of Stan Romanek (who I'm not very familiar with anymore) as well as the podcast host was well worth the search--as well as being a timely reminder (as if we needed one) of the perils of too-close an association with the paranormal.  (I was one of those who, a while back, donated money to this podcast host.  I remember doing a Google Streetview of what he said his residential address was, in one of his then incessant pleas, and it was clearly a shot of one of those strip mall store areas.)

So, I'm not sure where I'm going to go from here.  I am at a point in life, however, where I'm happy to view the paranormal  largely as entertainment, viewed from a distance.  A safe distance.