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Quantum Immortality
Let’s talk about life. And death. And decisions we make that affect both of those seeming extremes. I don’t need to tell anyone that we live in interesting times. Just a few short weeks ago, people were getting ready to fill out their March Madness brackets, or planning a family trip around Spring Break, or even going out to eat at a favorite restaurant. But now, thanks to the coronavirus and social distancing, these mundane, normal activities feel like the ancient past. Not only that, but it’s reasonable to think that everyone who knows someone (or is) immunocompromised has found themselves feeling, well, more mortal than usual. And few things…
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Old Family, Big Secrets–October Faction Review
Every film buff and genre fan knows that January is the month when film studios quietly dump problematic films into theatres, with minimal promotion, in a bid to make at least some of the budget back via a theatrical release. With the rise of streaming services, then, it’s not too surprising to see a film or series quietly released onto a service, adjacent to a more hyped release, in hopes of driving up the numbers for the smaller show. Now, I don’t know if they actually work that way, but it sure seems like it, as Netflix dropped The October Faction onto the platform in the shadow of its highly…
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The Contactees–A Strange Chapter of the UFO Age
For better or for worse, the American UFO Contactee phenomenon that began in the 1950s has colored many people’s perceptions of UFOs for the past seven decades. The movement itself has been ridiculed for the contact with Space Brothers, and the contactees have become infamous when discussed among modern researchers. However, it’s important to remember that the average person, when pressed, will remember just three contact-related events (if they remember anything at all). These are the Betty and Barney Hill abduction, Whitley Streiber’s Communion, and the Contactee movement, regardless of whether they know any specific names. (The 1953 film The Day the Earth Stood Still lends itself to the Contactee…
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Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark–Humdrum Horror
Before I begin, let me address the elephant in the room—I am not the target audience for this movie. The source material became popular long after my school days. While I was growing up, there was precious little available for mid-level horror—it went from Scholastic collections of ghost stories to Stephen King, with nothing in between. I read The Shining when I was 12, and will forever have ‘roque/stroke’ burned into my memory. I mention this for a couple of reasons—first, because I WISH I’d had horror that was tailored for my age group, and that I went into this movie without any expectations. There’s no nostalgia factor here to…
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Into the Mystic? My Recent Encounter With Numerology
For someone who is fascinated by all things Fortean, from ghosts to UFOs to psychic phenomena and things that go bump in the night, I’ve had precious few experiences in my own life. Sure, there was the time when some compatriots and I heard something running around a loft when we knew there was no one up there. Or the time when a few of us, driving late at night, saw a weird, unnatural glow emanating from a draw a few miles from the main road. But those are extreme outliers in what has been a mundane life, as least as it pertains to Forteana. About two weeks ago, though,…
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EDITORIAL–The Need for Standardized Data in Paranormal Research
Over the past couple of decades, I’ve noticed a commonality among paranormal researchers. (For today’s purposes, I’ll use the term ‘paranormal’ to mean anything outside of the ordinary, even though the different communities might be at odds with one another. This includes, but is not limited to, the study of ghosts, cryptids of all sorts, UFOs, Ancient Alien theory, abductions, and out-of-place artifacts.) The commonality is a simple one–the odd university department or study notwithstanding, there is no set of agreed-upon data that sets the bar for what is or isn’t acceptable evidence. In other words, one investigator may count an abnormal cry or shriek in the darkened woods as…
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Mandela Effect, Part II–Why Do So Many People Experience It?
Last week, I posted an overview of the Mandela Effect–what it is, and why I think it’s mostly a collective case of faulty memory. While I haven’t completely discounted the idea that the world is changing around us, or that some people flit back and forth between dimensions of the multiverse, I strongly believe that the vast, vast majority of Mandela Effects can be explained by the fact that our memories are not as reliable as we’d like them to be. So, why do people continue to believe? I think there are two main reasons, which I’ll detail here. It’s not just memory that’s subjective, but our perception, as well.…
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Mandela Effect Thoughts, Part 1
Today, I caught myself thinking about the Mandela Effect. For those of you who don’t know, the Mandela Effect occurs when a large minority of people remember something happening in a certain way, only to find it slightly altered (or completely different) in the historical record. It derives its name from Nelson Mandela, who many thought had died in prison, or at least, years before his actual death in 2013. Believers in the theory feel that either the world has changed around them, or that they’ve slipped through to an alternate universe in which things are slightly different. Detractors say that it’s possible to mistakenly remember things on a large…