10th Anniversary Episode with Greg Bishop, Paul Kimball and Goggs Mackay

[Gene Steinberg]

This is the episode where we put together hard-won wisdom about our paranormal universe as learned over the past decade.

Where do we go from here?

When this episode ended, we couldn't stop. So the entire crew recorded a double-sized episode of After The Paracast, an exclusive feature of The Paracast+.

To learn more about our premium subscription package, please check: Introducing The Paracast+ | The Paracast — The Gold Standard of Paranormal Radio

 

[Honey-Pot]

Way too much time was wasted on the database issue, since that was already brought-up in your recent newsletter and with Davenport too. You guys act as if the hot cases are somehow being missed and not investigated. That is very misleading. It is just the opposite. There are so many garbage reports that will gain nothing with an investigation, but the hot reports will be pounced on every time! It doesn't matter one bit, whether reported at MUFON or Davenport. He is open source already! Two organizations and two sources of information [or more really] is way better than one monolith and master control. What are you guys for? The MIC and intelligence running the show totally?

Chris pointed out the real issue related to this, and Vallee has been saying this for years. The databases are garbage anyway, because there is no in-depth evaluations of the witnesses and tracking their lives before and after the events. Why? Because everyone wants it to be ET.

No time was really spent on getting new ideas *with* new people into the mix. Pay attention to the word *with* that I used. That means new people don't count in my book unless these people come *with* new ideas too! You didn't even explore those issues, which is a real problem with a 10 year old show.

Sorry, if I'm just seeming to be bitching here, but I'm really offering constructive criticism. I did post these questions before the show, so it's worth noting here again what's missing!

The book recommendations were very good and interesting. I liked Paul Kimball's guest commentary, so he's a great addition or fill-in guest-host if/when needed.

I'll end on a positive note to just say you've had many excellent shows in the last 10 years. Try to get new guests *with* new ideas beyond the usual scope avoiding any repetition of the last 10 years at least 20-25% of the time. Cut down on commercial time for the free show if possible!

Oh yeah, seriously, congratulations for the last 10 years. I celebrate and cheers that idea.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

We went on for another hour on After The Paracast. There wasn't enough time to cover everything we wanted on the regular show. An episode of this sort works best when it's spontaneous. Especially with these guests.

 

[Burnt State]

Happy Tenth Anniversary to everyone in the Paracast Community. Thanks to Gene and Chris, and David and Paul and Greg and Goggs and all the hosts who make the show an interesting listen. Thanks to all the great posters who continue to push ideas into different edges with their own expertise - a rare thing to be certain. Hats off to the many absent and missing posters who helped define the very early years of this forum space - they were eclectic and irreverent and insightful. Here's a list of some of the ones that really defined the early ideas and thinking about paranormality for myself via the show and from reading the forum in those early years:

Absent Colleagues

As far as new topics go, I would also like to have had more forward thinking material as part of the show but it seemed to me that the goal really was to be a retrospective. With the collection of guests present it really leaned towards that natural look backwards to define the journey that Ufology has been on. If we don't address the considerable importance of data then there's nothing to really talk about in the first place than just a lot of stories. Doing things with all the data that has been collected has to be priority number one as far as Ufology is concerned. What was great to hear was these three books as being focal elements of significant books to read by the guests:

Here we see Tricksterism as an essential electric spirit of whatever it is that is behind UFO phenomena. Then there are the more cultish elements of belief which are the more sociological and dangerous aspect of the phenomena's impact on our society and culture. And somewhere in the middle of it all is some kind of natural representation of another kind of intelligence - could be belonging to a collective, to the earth, to the sky, the water or perhaps belonging to fire. What was it Hynek said UFO's were at the end - elementals? tree sprites? We remain confused but curious.

But as far as forward looking ideas I thought the two significant ones that do appear to be gaining momentum, aside from doing something functional with all the damn data, is to develop the themes of collaboration amongst the confused and curious people who study these things and to spend more time examining the witness and recognizing the role of the conscious perceiver who is remembering their experience. Ultimately, more time examining the witness more carefully & across time, in the context of the situation and the data, will allow for cases to be better parsed. I suspect a large chunk of cases need to be thrown out the door altogether because of their origin being entirely inside the mind of a perceiver or to be a natural reaction to a very mundane but not currently known natural phenomenon and interactions with things like ball lightning, tectonic plate shifts, magnetism, the brain structure and psychology of the experiencer. Once we identify which in fact are the hardcore cases of Ufology we will not be so distracted be all the different cultural clothes and outfits we have dressed UFO's in over the decades.

Being skeptical was the other important critical theme of this episode which is the point of the show right - getting a better read on the signal. Here's to more of that focussing on the signal and looking even more critically at what is noise. I've enjoyed how ATP increasingly is used to be more critical about different episodes and more doubtful and Zetetic. Let's go even further and resurrect that way of thinking.

 

[wwkirk]

Congratulations on your 10th Anniversary.

 

[Sue]

Congratulations and thank you. I was listening to the Ouellet episode where apparently Chris had been sick and was now better and now Gene was sick so Chris was picking up the slack. The discussion had particular resonance because I was sick at the moment myself. Just thinking back on ten years of not missing a week - I don't care what else you call it, that's some serious kung fu right there.

 

[Wade]

40 more years and it will be gold watches for the hosts.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

We'd need more than that if we live so long.

 

[Chuckleberryfinn]

Great episode by all, with two of my favorite individuals in this field on the air (Greg Bishop and Paul Kimball).

I have something interesting to add about Kimball's book, "The Other Side of Truth."

Early on in the text, Kimball suggests that various paranormal phenomena could be caused by a higher intelligence that is trying to challenge the way we think about reality and to expand our minds. It's not quite so simple as that, and his breakdown is more eloquently put, but that is no matter for the purpose of what follows. After reading a few paragraphs along those lines, I put the book down to ponder something. I had been working on a novel about a severed head that remains alive and talks. In passing, I called it "the talking heads book," and here is specifically what I had been pondering: "how could I incorporate this idea of a higher intelligence using paranormal phenomena to communicate with us and to expand our minds?" I had no satisfactory idea at the time and so continued the book, and here is the very next line I read after picking it back up again a few seconds later: "and after that Greg and I took a break to listen to some music by the talking heads."

It may not seem significant to any of you reading this entry, but at the time the creepiness of the synchronicity hit me very hard. I ask "how could I incorporate this into the talking heads story," and then right away read a line about Paul and Greg listening to some band called "the talking heads." What are the chances of that happening? What has to coincide, from the beginning of time until the present, in order for this event to come to pass? It was remarkable.

Of course, an hour or so later I began reading Kimball's discussion of synchronicity. This kicked off a whole series of synchronicities that terrified me. At some point, I challenged these "higher beings," and said something along the following lines: "do you want to expand my mind by terrifying me? Fine. Do it. Give me your best."

What followed was a series of synchronicities so horrible and extreme that I ended up begging the higher intelligence to please leave me alone. It was quite scary.

I have to get back to work now. Lunch break is over.

 

[Honey-Pot]

Better stay away from thinking about Crowley and invoking anything...

Keep us posted if you successfully were able to banish these away.

 

[Chuckleberryfinn]

The synchronicities stopped pretty much immediately after that.

It was as though I had caught some kind of illness, the synchronicity disease, because I was hammered by them several times a day for at least a week or more.

It was about 8 months to a year ago. The ones I remember are very personal and strike to the heart of my biggest phobias.

I'll tell about a few later when I have more free time, but the really frightening ones are too personal.

 

[Wade]

I would like to hear your experiences because regardless of their origin I have always considered any synchs or even a coincidence as a gift. For the most part I don't read into them, or try to dissect them ( but I do try to categorize them) I just appreciate them, it sort of makes me plugged in and if I go a long spell NOT having an episode i feel like you do above.

 

[Burnt State]

The synchronicities stopped pretty much immediately after that.

It was as though I had caught some kind of illness, the synchronicity disease, because I was hammered by them several times a day for at least a week or more.

It was about 8 months to a year ago. The ones I remember are very personal and strike to the heart of my biggest phobias.

I'll tell about a few later when I have more free time, but the really frightening ones are too personal.

I'd be curious to know what you thought of the Kirby Surprise episode wherein synchronicities ultimately boiled down to the notion that if you look for it you will see it. Anyone who has travelled this path before knows what I'm talking about. However, I will confess that sometimes the synchronistic experience can be pretty mind ripping and it can challenge preconceived notions in ways that will destabilize even the coolest of cats. The fact that it was your primary phobias being played back at you should prompt you to consider a co-creationist approach to these events. You may have had much more to do with the experience than you originally thought.

I have often given in to the thought experiment of UFO as higher power, or UFO as teacher, artist, invitation etc. but then I go back to thinking that this is just a ruse created in my head. This is just a plot device invented by humans to make sense of the nonsensible. After all, what higher intelligence ever tried to enlighten or lift up out of animal drudgery lower life forms? Sure we've trained our pets and horses, and pretended to teach primates some sign language. But at the end of the day it's a non-functional, enslaved side-show carnival final result and nothing more.

UFO's frequently appear as operating under the control of a higher intelligence but that's just the narrative we keep selling ourselves. This may really be just our speculations while the true heart of the mystery may simply stand outside our language, outside our comprehension of science and belong to parts of nature that we simply do not yet know anything about.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

So Ray Palmer said flying saucers are here to make us think.

 

[Burnt State]

So Ray Palmer said flying saucers are here to make us think.

I return to that phrase over and over again.

Are they with or without intent? By their motions in the sky there appears in fact to be some intentionality.

Are they wanting us to think or is it me that's asking the questions and doing the thinking?

And then I ask, well if they are intentional then what if they're a distraction, a ruse in the sky that is taking our minds away from things that we really should be thinking about?

And that's about the time I usually go take the dog for a walk and try to stop thinking altogether.

UFO's, they're a real pain in the ass.

 

[Burnt State]

BTW, thats not a COB proctologial joke.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

UFO's, they're a real pain in the ass.

Ya think?

 

[Honey-Pot]

Are they wanting us to think or is it me that's asking the questions and doing the thinking?

And then I ask, well if they are intentional then what if they're a distraction, a ruse in the sky that is taking our minds away from things that we really should be thinking about?

And that's about the time I usually go take the dog for a walk and try to stop thinking altogether.

UFO's, they're a real pain in the ass.

You've been probed one way or another. Contact Whitley?

 

[Wade]

So Ray Palmer said flying saucers are here to make us think.

.. and to sell more tabloids...
...and give people like Greer and Maussan an outlet
....and provide a platform for a collection of interesting righteous people to gather and squabble over the validity of UFOs and that of man made climate change and Roswell and a certain Washington D.C. Paleontologist.

 

[Chuckleberryfinn]

I read a lot, so less than a week after finishing Kimball's book, I also read Blatty's "The Exorcist" for the first time.

It was the scariest book I've ever read. It shook me to the core. I said to my wife the day after fishing it, "I want this book out of my sight. I wish I could unread it. But it's now forever bore into my mind, and I will never get it out."

She laughed at me, and accused me of trying to get out of her plan to watch a horror movie that night. We ended up selecting "The Babadook," since Netflix suggested that we'd likely rate it 3 or 4 stars (I would rate it, at best, a 2).

Neither of us had any idea what it'd be about. A few minutes before putting it on, I continued with my regrets about having read "The Exorcist."

"I should throw it out with the trash," I said. "That's where it belongs."

I was silent for a moment, reflecting. "But it'd probably miracle itself back onto my desk the next morning," I continued.

I soon realized that the terrible movie we would watch, "The Babadook," was about a mother who becomes possessed by a demon after reading a book that scares her. Early on in the movie, she throws the book out with the trash, and then it miracles itself back onto her desk in the morning.

This is one of the synchronicities I experienced after challenging the "higher beings" to show me their best, as stated in previous posts on this thread. It's significant because I read a book about demon possession and was terrified that I'd somehow become possessed from having read it, and then saw a movie in which that very thing happens. This took place between one to two weeks after the first synchronicity described here and was a part of a series of synchronicities that started shortly after finishing Kimball's book.

Burnt State: it's certainly possible (even likely) that these synchronicities happened because I was looking for them. You're right that it seems likely, given that the events seemed to play on my worst phobias. I was mentally unbalanced at the time, though
I've never been on any psychological medication and have never been to any kind of mental health professional.

Another synchronicity from this series had to do with my being somewhat of a hypochondriac, but it's too personal to go into even anonymously.

I will add more later. It's late, and I must sleep.