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Your Paracast Newsletter — April 2, 2011


Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
THE PARACAST NEWSLETTER
April 2, 2011


The Legend of the "Vengeful Djinn" Explored on The Paracast

Special Announcement: The Paracast is heard Sundays from 6:00 PM until 9:00 PM (Central Time) on the GCN radio network.

The Paracast Humbly Requests Your Donations: Although ads help cover a small part of our expenses, the income they produce is never enough. Also, we do not receive any revenue from the ads placed on the show by our network. So we hope you'll be willing to help fill the gap if you can to help us cover increasing server costs and other expenses -- or perhaps provide a little extra cash for lunch. No contribution is too small (or too large :). We have a Donate link on our home page, below the logo and audio player. There's also a Donate link on our forums, right below our logo. Or just send your PayPal donation direct to sales (at) theparacast (dot) com.

Attention U.S. Listeners: Let's Bring The Paracast to Your City! Last summer, The Paracast joined the GCN radio network. This represented a huge step in bringing our show to a larger, mainstream audience. Now we want your help to add more affiliates to our growing network. Please ask one of your local talk stations if they are interested in carrying The Paracast. Feel free to contact us directly with the names of programming people we might be able to contact directly. With your help, The Paracast can grow into one of the most popular paranormal shows on the planet!

You Can Now Order The Official Paracast T-Shirt: You asked, and we answered. We are now taking orders for The Official Paracast T-Shirt and a collection of other specially customized merchandise. To get your T-Shirt, just pay a visit to our new online store at Welcome to The Official Paracast Store to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.

Sunday, April 3, 2011: The Paracast covers a world beyond science, where UFOs, poltergeists and strange phenomena of all kinds have been reported by millions across the planet.

Set Up: The Paracast hosts interview long-time researchers in the field, to shed light on the mysteries and complexities of our Universe and the secrets that surround us in our everyday lives.

Join us as we explore the realms of the known and unknown, and hear great stories of the history of the paranormal field in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This Week's Episode: Gene and Chris present Rosemary Ellen Guiley and Philip Imbrogno, authors of "The Vengeful Djinn: Unveiling the Hidden Agenda of Genies," which depicts an ancient race of supernatural beings that reportedly exists in a parallel universe.

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet

Rosemary Ellen Guiley's Site: Rosemary Ellen Guiley | Paranormal Research | Ghosts & Hauntings - Visionary Living

Coming April 10: Gene and Chris present Former Governor Jesse Ventura, a conspiracy theorist and author of “63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You to Read,” who talks about the Kennedy assassination and other fascinating conspiracies in modern history.

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet

Jesse Ventura's Site: Rosemary Ellen Guiley | Paranormal Research | Ghosts & Hauntings - Visionary Living

Coming April 17: Gene and Chris present Benjamin Radford, an editor for Skeptical Inquirer, and author of “Tracking the Chupacabra: The Vampire Beast in Fact, Fiction, and Folklore.” Are reports of such creatures real, fanciful — what?

Christopher O'Brien's Site: Home - Our Strange Planet

Benjamin Radford's Site: www.RadfordBooks.com

Reminder: Don't forget to visit our always-active Discussion Forums for the latest news/views/debates on all things paranormal (and note our new Internet address): The Paracast Community Forums.

Getting to the Bottom of This Mess
By Gene Steinberg

Having explored the strange and unknown for several decades, I’m the first to admit the while process is endlessly frustrating. Despite all the efforts to figure out what’s really going on, we have mostly theories that are without “smoking gun” evidence conclusively pointing in any particular direction.

What do I mean by evidence?

Well, when it comes to UFOs, yes, there’s a lot out there, from sighting reports, to photos, movies, simultaneous radar and visual encounters, landings, and sometimes trace evidence. Witnesses include regular people, along with law enforcement officers, pilots, military personnel, scientists, and others thought of as trained observers.

There are also ongoing reports of crashes of flying saucers, retrievals of wrecked hardware, and the living or dead bodies of their pilots. The Roswell legend, about a UFO crash in 1947, refuses to die, even though most of the people who claimed to be witnesses, direct or otherwise, are no longer with us. That other alleged crash, in Aztec, New Mexico, remains highly disputed by many researchers, though some continue to assert that they have managed to uncover compelling evidence that this event was a reality, and not someone’s fantasy.

Unfortunately, until there’s further evidence to support the Aztec incident, I cannot even place it in the gray basket. UFO researcher Scott Ramsey has been working on a “tell all” book about the crash for several years, but publication dates continue to be postponed. It seems that every time the release date approaches, more new evidence is reportedly uncovered. At this point, if Ramsey feels he has a compelling case, he ought to get at least one volume in print. He can always supplement it with a second edition or a second volume later on, if he really believes that more evidence is on the way.

The situation reminds me of that famous term we use in the tech world, “vaporware,” which basically means a product or service that is promised but never delivered.

If old cases aren’t enough to stir the pot, there are those rampant arguments about one thing or another. Today it’s all about abductions, and whether two particular well-known researchers are actually following scientific methods to find out what’s going on. While healthy debate is good, personal attacks and misleading claims aren’t. I want answers, not personality conflicts that appear to be designed, in some cases anyway, to bring more hits to a site or get more listeners for a podcast.

Mind you, I have nothing against provocative discussions. Controversies can be productive too, if you can find some signal in all that noise. But when people feel they have to scream at one another, all semblance of rationality is lost. I’m sick of it.

It’s not that we shy away from controversies on The Paracast. Certainly a wide variety of opinions are being presented, and sometimes a guest seems to have a great story, but very little to back it all up. Chris and I are inclined to let the guest have their say, but make it quite clear in our questions that we just don’t “buy it.” From time to time, a guest will hang themselves, such as in the episode some years back in which the notorious huckster, Bill Knell, made all sorts of claims about getting big write-ups in major newspapers and other publications. When we wondered why none of the stories could be located in a simple online search, he became incensed and hung up.

I say good riddance to people like Knell, but he’s still around, and there continue to be reports that he is still pirating the copyrighted works of others, making illegal copies of DVDs, and selling them on his own sites. Yes, you can write to a web host and have a site removed for plagiarism, but it’s just as easy for someone to go to another host and set up a new account. This is the sort of cat and mouse game that’ll never end unless or until the authorities intervene. So far, they have bigger fish to fry. Evidently Knell’s antics aren’t sufficient to send FBI or local law enforcement agents to his home. He’s small potatoes as far as they’re concerned, and the involvement with such “silly” things as flying saucers appears to be the biggest turnoff of all.

Yes, the mountains are steep, the obstacles and forks in the road never ending, but I’ll persevere until they’re ready to send me to the retirement home, or at least till I’m no longer able to press the keys on my keyboard, or touch the screen on my iPad.

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