No matter how old or new, no matter how poorly or excellently crafted. I’ll watch any film that stars a creature from outer space, especially if it has the audactiy to intrude on our nice little earthly routines and totally freak us all out. If the creature is determined to steal our wimmin, all the better. And if we get hybrids, that’s cool too.
I wonder where our cultural bad dreams come from though.
When the first wave of sci fi flims hit the movie theaters in the 1950s, they were wildly popular right away, coming as they did on the heels of Roswell and Kenneth Arnold’s first flying saucer sighting in 1947, and fueled by the paranoia of the Atomic Age.
Since that time, alien lore has become a mainstay of American popular culture. Some people take it literally. Some take it as literature. Still others make movies that blur the line between truth and fiction intentionally.
Seven years ago, in early November, I was experiencing a can cook but won’t cook moment. Those awaiting something hot and tasty upon the dinner table happily conceded to a Chinese take-away.
Having duly ordered our evening meal, courtesy of my kids fanciful imagination (oooooo let’s have sesame chicken and noodles and you know, chowmein and maybe … zzzz), six digits and a censored version of what my kids thought they were getting, I set off to pick up dinner.
As usual, I opened the front door, bailed out and switched 90º to the right. And there stood the most beautiful vision I’ve ever witnessed – not including the odd occasion that I’d returned home after a long days work to an unusually tidy house.
Now you need to do one of two things … either suspend your disbelief or go and read the back of a tampon packet … because what I saw, I saw. This is a real event, albeit an account written seven years after the event.
For want of a better word, an Angel was stood roughly eight feet away. He was (and ‘it’ was definitely a ‘he’) around seven foot tall, clothed completely in white and he … glowed. In much the same way that a high wattage light bulb does; only he was a far more arresting (and interesting) sight than your average bedside lamp.
He radiated light, as though the light source came from deep within. Oddly, he had a limited incandescence – there was an edge to it, a defined boundary, perhaps four or five inches beyond his all too perfect figure.
He felt … serene. Not looked – felt. Because the whole event wasn’t simply limited to my vision, it was predominantly a physical experience. Rather than feeling shocked or unduly alarmed, I felt entirely tranquil, completely unruffled by the fact that I was viewing the seemingly unbelievable.
For reasons beyond my comprehension, the moment that I’d registered my ‘vision’, I’d also accepted it. Was that a direct consequence of what I felt? Who knows? I certainly (at the time) didn’t try and rationalize anything; I simply absorbed and embraced it. I felt completely safe, no shiver at the base of my spine, no feelings of fight or flight in the pit of my stomach.
The whole experience lasted a few seconds – just long enough for me to register and compute the visual and physical information. The only thing I actually thought was ‘I shouldn’t be able to see you’ – and with that, he vanished.
I remained unperturbed and continued on my way as though I’d encountered a minor blip in my equilibrium.
Why was he there, what was he doing and why did I see him? That I don’t know. What I do know are the following three things: he was an Angel; he really was the most exquisitely beautiful thing I’d ever seen, and my kids ate their dinner in complete silence for the first time in several days.
MonsterQuest was one of the first paranormal junk food shows offerred on cable TV, and of course I watched every episode. Like all of the paranormal cable shows, MonsterQuest follows a formula and does not deviate from it, no matter if the topic is Bigfoot, the New Jersey Devil, or the exceptionally idiotic clip (shown above) that addresses the mysterious flying ‘Rods’.
According to that episode, ‘researchers’ still insist that rods are creatures, even though they can be easily shown to be insects that show up as camera artifacts at slow shutter speeds.
Therein lies the major frustration with MonsterQuest: It doesn’t take too many brain cells to first get bored, and then annoyed with the dopey formula and to start wanting more.
Anyone who subscribes to cable TV knows that America has gotten way more haunted over the course of the last year or two, thanks almost entirely to the unexpected popularity of the Sy Fy network reality show Ghost Hunters.
With the debut of Ghost Hunters International last year, the ghost plague spread to Europe, South America, Australia, and even Tasmania, and today it seems that every cable network out around has to have its own ghost hunting show. (Or two. Or three.)
Even Animal Planet has a ghost hunting show now.
I confess, I love the cast on Ghost Hunters. Grant, Jason, Steve, Tango, Amy et al are the nerdy best friends I always wanted but had to give up once I graduated from junior high school 44 years ago. Now, I have permission to wallow in this stuff again, and I have to say that for a closet nerd like me it is a dream come true. I love these guys so much I don’t even care if anything happens on that show—and it’s a good thing too, because 8 out of 10 episodes, nothing does happen. Just watching them not find things is fun enough for me. Apparently, I have lots of company in that regard.
But I got thinking, why stop there?
Everybody has a ghost story or weird experience to share, and since I’ve been writing about the paranormal I’ve discovered that people want to share these stories. I get mail, I get comments, questions, and queries. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll be asking readers to share their own personal paranormal tales and photos with us, and we’ll publish the best of the best, with a byline or anonymously—your choice.
I’m also going to be reviewing all the latest paranormal popcorn fare in short bursts, and adding some thoughts of my own about what kinds of TV shows I’d personally like to see about paranormal topics and events.
So if you have a good story, a personal question about the paranormal, or a photo you are dying to share with the world, give us a buzz. You could see yourself on these pages, live and in person. (Or not! If you are embarassed, you don’t have to include your name in the published piece.)
Meanwhile, watch this space in coming weeks for a run down on the best and worst of the whole ghost busting, monsterquesting scene.
I know it isn’t politically correct to say this, and I know that, politically, it is definitely not the right time to say this, but I’m going to go ahead and say something I’ve been thinking for years and I’m going to say it right flat out, right here, right now:
I liked Oprah a lot better when she was fat and insecure.
The story goes that if the groundhog sees his shadow, he retreats back into his own den for six more weeks of cold and isolation. When human beings glimpse their own shadows in paranormal experience or event, the same thing often happens. Yet it isn’t so much the shadow itself that brings on the deep freeze as it is the retreat, the recoiling from that shadow, as if it has substance and could do any real damage.
In today’s modern world, we tend to look at time as linear. A year’s time for us is comprised of 12 sequential months beginning with January and ending with December. The months follow each other in the same order, year after year.
The years themselves also follow each other in lineal sequence: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010. Holidays within this linear system are assigned specific dates that usually do not vary from year to year. For example, Christmas always comes on December 25th, Independence Day (in the U.S.) on July 4th, Halloween on October 31rst, and so forth and so on.
Dream incubation is a method of accessing deeper levels of consciousness by asking for a question to be answered, a sign to be given, or a spirit to be contacted while you are asleep and dreaming.
Basically you are asking to have a specific dream, the nature of which depends a lot on the nature of your specific concern.
I bought my first house when I was forty years old. My mother had died and left me a little money, and I wanted a home, not an apartment. I looked at lots of houses, but my eldest daughter, who was about 10 at the time, hated them all and hated the thought of moving. She wanted to live near her friends so she could attend the same school they did, but that area of town was very expensive. Only one house there was in my price range. So I asked to see it.
The minute the real estate agent turned the key and opened the door, both my daughter and I instantly wanted the house. “This is it,” I said, before I even saw the rest of it.
If you haven’t heard that the world is due to end on December 21, 2012, then you’ve either been sealed up in your 1950s bomb shelter or vacationing in Antarctica for the last year or so.
According the latest, hottest end-of the world prophecy, the Mayan calendar ends on 12/21/12. Coincidentally, (or not), a once-in-a-millenia astrological alignment is due to occur at precisely…
People tend to have strong views on the paranormal.
They believe in it; they don't believe in it. They say the paranormal isn't science and it isn't rational and it isn't real. The love it or they mock it or they dismiss it without a second thought. They're fascinated with it or they take offense as if the paranormal means to insult them personally.
We hear a lot about what the paranormal isn't, but we don't hear very much about what it is.
What does it mean for a phenomenon to be called a paranormal phenomenon?
Pamela Grundy, Senior Editor | 
