Paranormal Trace Evidence 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, and we don't want to overwhelm the show with them, 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.
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 http://store.theparacast.com/ to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, August 1, 2010: 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: Co-host Christopher O’Brien presents UFO field researcher Ted Phillips, Director of The Center for Physical Trace Research, who has spent years engaged in on-site investigation of regions where numerous paranormal events occur, including UFOs and strange creatures.
Christopher O'Brien's site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Coming August 8: Co-host Christopher O’Brien presents long-time field investigator Philip J. Imbrogno, author of a number of paranormal books including his latest, “Files From the Edge: A Paranormal Investigator?s Explorations into High Strangeness.”
Christopher O'Brien's site: Home - Our Strange Planet
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.
So Where’s the Evidence?
It’s a very common complaint from the UFO debunkers: Where is the physical evidence that anything strange is really going on? Beyond that, they can always complain that eyewitness testimony is fatally flawed, and that people can be easily fooled into mistaking conventional objects or phenomena for something unearthly.
At the same time, those debunkers fail to acknowledge that criminals have been sentenced to death strictly on the basis of statements from supposed witnesses to their offense. So we’re willing to put someone’s life on the line based on “imperfect” statements from human beings who were present when the crime was committed, but if such people talk of strange objects flittering about, well, they’ve got to be wrong.
Or maybe they don’t understand the disconnect.
Anyone who actually spends time examining the long history of UFO sightings will see there has been an awful lot of confirmatory evidence. Consider the simultaneous reports of seeing UFOs while at the same time tracking those “bogies” on radar.
UFOs have also been photographed, although it’s perfectly true that most of those photos can likely be faked. These days, with digital cameras having supplanted traditional film except for a small cadre of professional photographers, actually manipulating an image in a believable spaceship isn’t hard. Take a training course in Adobe Photoshop and you’ll be able to deliver a UFO photo that only a seasoned expert would be able to expose. And maybe not even then, particularly for the low resolution stuff generated by a cheap camera or mobile phone.
What’s most troublesome, however, are incidents of trace evidence, where a landed object leaves something behind that demonstrates its presence. Sure, crop circles may, in large part, be hoaxes, but that can’t be said for the remnants of all UFO landings. Such seasoned field researchers as Ted Phillips, who appears on this week’s episode of The Paracast, and even our own Christopher O’Brien, have spent years exploring paranormal events on the scene. They have also, on occasion, observed strange phenomena, and have been around the field long enough not to be easily fooled.
Unfortunately, the UFO field -- and all paranormal studies for that matter -- has been polluted by fakers who seek their 15 minutes of fame, perhaps a segment on a History Channel TV show or a cable news network, and thus they’re inclined to fabricate a story.
Separating the wheat from the chaff is no easy process, however. A skilled liar might even survive a polygraph examination, and there’s enough information out there from which to build a bogus claim without much inventiveness. A trained researcher ought to be able to find the holes in a faked story and expose it outright, but there’s also a ton of anecdotal information out there that, beyond an entry in a database, never receives serious study.
Of course, the faker usually attempts to embellish a story, and that extrapolation grows with each retelling, so deception becomes more and more obvious. But it’s also possible that some of these people actually had a genuine experience of one sort or another, and have seized upon that encounter to enhance their public standing.
I’ve long suspected that even some of the classic UFO contact cases may have, in part, been triggered by a genuine experience of the unusual kind. Once the witness achieves some sort of recognition, there’s the temptation to manufacturer further encounters, each more elaborate, to satisfy an expectant audience, and enhance their own stature.
This situation makes it doubly difficult to actually get a handle on what’s really going on. But that remains the ever-elusive goal of the skilled researcher, and you’ll hear more and more of them as time goes by on The Paracast. So stay tuned.
Gene Steinberg
Host/Executive Producer
"The Paracast"
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2010 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!
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, and we don't want to overwhelm the show with them, 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.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 http://store.theparacast.com/ to select your size and place your order. We now also offer a lineup of other premium merchandise featuring The Paracast logo.
Sunday, August 1, 2010: 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: Co-host Christopher O’Brien presents UFO field researcher Ted Phillips, Director of The Center for Physical Trace Research, who has spent years engaged in on-site investigation of regions where numerous paranormal events occur, including UFOs and strange creatures.
Christopher O'Brien's site: Home - Our Strange Planet
Coming August 8: Co-host Christopher O’Brien presents long-time field investigator Philip J. Imbrogno, author of a number of paranormal books including his latest, “Files From the Edge: A Paranormal Investigator?s Explorations into High Strangeness.”
Christopher O'Brien's site: Home - Our Strange Planet
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.
So Where’s the Evidence?
It’s a very common complaint from the UFO debunkers: Where is the physical evidence that anything strange is really going on? Beyond that, they can always complain that eyewitness testimony is fatally flawed, and that people can be easily fooled into mistaking conventional objects or phenomena for something unearthly.
At the same time, those debunkers fail to acknowledge that criminals have been sentenced to death strictly on the basis of statements from supposed witnesses to their offense. So we’re willing to put someone’s life on the line based on “imperfect” statements from human beings who were present when the crime was committed, but if such people talk of strange objects flittering about, well, they’ve got to be wrong.
Or maybe they don’t understand the disconnect.
Anyone who actually spends time examining the long history of UFO sightings will see there has been an awful lot of confirmatory evidence. Consider the simultaneous reports of seeing UFOs while at the same time tracking those “bogies” on radar.
UFOs have also been photographed, although it’s perfectly true that most of those photos can likely be faked. These days, with digital cameras having supplanted traditional film except for a small cadre of professional photographers, actually manipulating an image in a believable spaceship isn’t hard. Take a training course in Adobe Photoshop and you’ll be able to deliver a UFO photo that only a seasoned expert would be able to expose. And maybe not even then, particularly for the low resolution stuff generated by a cheap camera or mobile phone.
What’s most troublesome, however, are incidents of trace evidence, where a landed object leaves something behind that demonstrates its presence. Sure, crop circles may, in large part, be hoaxes, but that can’t be said for the remnants of all UFO landings. Such seasoned field researchers as Ted Phillips, who appears on this week’s episode of The Paracast, and even our own Christopher O’Brien, have spent years exploring paranormal events on the scene. They have also, on occasion, observed strange phenomena, and have been around the field long enough not to be easily fooled.
Unfortunately, the UFO field -- and all paranormal studies for that matter -- has been polluted by fakers who seek their 15 minutes of fame, perhaps a segment on a History Channel TV show or a cable news network, and thus they’re inclined to fabricate a story.
Separating the wheat from the chaff is no easy process, however. A skilled liar might even survive a polygraph examination, and there’s enough information out there from which to build a bogus claim without much inventiveness. A trained researcher ought to be able to find the holes in a faked story and expose it outright, but there’s also a ton of anecdotal information out there that, beyond an entry in a database, never receives serious study.
Of course, the faker usually attempts to embellish a story, and that extrapolation grows with each retelling, so deception becomes more and more obvious. But it’s also possible that some of these people actually had a genuine experience of one sort or another, and have seized upon that encounter to enhance their public standing.
I’ve long suspected that even some of the classic UFO contact cases may have, in part, been triggered by a genuine experience of the unusual kind. Once the witness achieves some sort of recognition, there’s the temptation to manufacturer further encounters, each more elaborate, to satisfy an expectant audience, and enhance their own stature.
This situation makes it doubly difficult to actually get a handle on what’s really going on. But that remains the ever-elusive goal of the skilled researcher, and you’ll hear more and more of them as time goes by on The Paracast. So stay tuned.
Gene Steinberg
Host/Executive Producer
"The Paracast"
The Paracast Copyright 1999-2010 Making The Impossible, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy: Your personal information is safe with us. We will positively never give out your name and/or e-mail address to anybody else, and that's a promise!