"Our Friends from Out of Town"

       The M1 tank is "crown jewel of the American field arsenal", designed to take a direct hit from a missile, and the front and sides are the most heavily armoured sections. In 2003 they were lined up in the desert of Kuwait in units of 100: ten rows of ten tanks, preparatory to the invasion of Iraq. Then one night Luis Elizondo, in his capacity of Special Agent in Charge, received the call: "Sir, you need to get out here now. There's something you need to see."  So, having driven an hour into the desert to see for himself, Elizondo was shown a remarkable sight. A small hole, perfectly round, without rough edges, heat ablation or metal vitrification had been punched into the side of the tank. Not only that, but shining a light through it revealed an identical hole on the other side. It was just like a cookie cutter had taken a core sample of the armour - and the same holes existed in the adjacent tank. Nothing on earth could have done such a thing. The only clue to causation was that a Bedouin goatherd had seen a brilliant green flash in the night sky, directly over the tanks. But several years later Elizondo started to think it might have been produced by what his colleagues called "our friends from out of town"

Some Devilish Videos You May Have Missed

      I note that the largest number of my (admittedly small) set of readers come from the United States. It is therefore likely that most are unfamiliar with Australian YouTube influencers. One of these is the pretty commentator, Daisy Cousens. Then, one day in 2024 she paused from vlogging on social and political matters and produced a 15 minute clip entitled, "Is Mental Illness Caused by Demons?"  Part two of her story is here.  I note that the two clips are now "private" and unavailable, so I shall summarise them.

A Canadian Indian Levitation

     I began this blog with the intention of rescuing "lost" or "forgotten" reports of the paranormal: accounts, apparently genuine, squirreled away in old books or magazines which the rest of the world has passed by. This story certainly fits that category. It has also been my philosophy that, although you should never accept anything until it has been bolstered by a second report, you should not reject anything just because it is fantastic or unbelievable. There is always the slight possibility that it is part of a rare but genuine phenomenon, and one day a second example will arrive. But it you have rejected the first, then the evidence will not accumulate. This story also fits that category. I don't know what to make of it, except that it should be recorded for posterity's sake.

"Paranormal Planet"

     If you keep your eyes and mind open, you will find that the paranormal, the miraculous, the simply inexplicable not only happen, but are not even uncommon. If you haven't had an experience which defies the paradigm of modern science, which appears to violate the laws of nature that we know, then you know somebody who has. Four years ago I published a book entitled, Apparitions: tulpas, ghosts, fairies, and even stranger things, which goes further than simple ghost stories, but explores a parallel world of non-material beings which is only occasionally perceptible to us. Now I have produced a companion volume entitled simply, Paranormal Planet in which I seek to document and explore more than a dozen aspects of the paranormal which do not involve apparitions

Bless This House

     Put yourself in these shoes: you are just about to be ordained, your wife is expecting your first child, and you have been assigned to your first parish as a curate, or assistant priest. And the house the church provides for you is haunted!

The Naked and the Numb

      It is amazing how one can read a strange story, then forget all about it. Likewise, it is interesting how such stories can turn up in the most obscure places. Thus, I have been going back over my old issues of the MUFON UFO Journal (MUFON is the Mutual UFO Network in the US), and on page 12 of issue no. 436 (August 2004) was a story from Alaska by an analytical scientist, P. A. Budinger concerning a naked couple, numbness, and a mysterious salve. Let me now quote his introduction. 

A Frenchman Vanishes

      4.30 am 26 November 1979, Cergy-Pontoise, northwest of Paris, France: Frank Fontaine, 19 is loading a station wagon with clothes for an open market at Gisors. He is accompanied by Jean-Pierre Prevost, 25 and Salomon N'Diaye, 25 who I presume is of African descent. Just then they saw a long, opaque trail of white lights similar to stars, and watched it for three or four minutes, when Fontaine made a prophetic remark: "I'm going there; I want to know." The other two rushed home to find a camera. When they returned, they found the car 200 metres down the road surrounded by a halo of light like a thick fog, with three or four small spheres moving around inside it. Their friend was nowhere to be seen. Then the luminous mist shot up towards the sky, but as for Fontaine, it appeared he had vanished literally off the face of the earth.