I remember that at school my class was asked a question and that was "What would you say if you saw a ghost?" Really that should have been phrased as "What would you say to a ghost if you met one?" since that was what was being asked.
It was a topic used to excite the imagination and make you think. Would you be allowed to use this topic in a modern school setting? No idea.
I suppose that it depends on whether you believe that the spirits of dead people can appear after death. I for one do not. I would like to but as my late mother kept saying "What you want and what you get are two different things!"
There is a chapter in my book, Some Things Strange and Sinister titled de occultis non judicat ecclesia which translates from Latin as the Church has not yet decided on the matter of ghosts -though "Non tamen in ecclesia constituit super manes" says the same thing really. Well, if after 2000 years the organised churches with histories of ghosts of bishops and others cannot decide who can?
The organisation of investigation into the paranormal that began during the Victorian era soon showed why things are a mess. Anyone coming up with results was called a fool or charlatan. "A" had his followers and "B" had theirs and if you didn't belong to either...you had a problem.
Today "ghost hunting" is fake entertainment, definitely a LOT of charlatans and cosplaying. There has not been one iota of solid evidence --garbled noises on a digital recorder are just that. There is no recorded message along the lines of "My name is Bert Higgins and I lived at 142 Adalia Rd and King George was on the throne".
The obvious, logical quezstion is that if we are not getting any real evidence of "spirits of the dead" then WHAT are we dealing with? Psychology can answer some of this question but there are cases where any right minded investigator-researcher should have realised they need to look into other areas.
Of course, apart from in entertainment and cosplay fantasy no one ever gets to stand around and talk to a 'ghost'. Certainly ask their name and if they lived where they are encountered and how they died but these things are so fleeting. But we are not hear to talk ghosts -my mother always said that she had no problem living next to the Arnos Vale Cemetery in Bristol "I'm not worried about ghosts -they won't hurt you. Its living people you have to watch out for!"
And throughout my life I have to say that I have seen poltergeist type phenomena. I have seen, quite clearly, odd figures -others had encountered but not told me about! Again, I do not believe this the activity of the dead. Apart from one particular location where I saw nothing but got hit by a wave of fear -even then I looked around and walked back up the steps quickly -even if I was walking backward. I said "That's a weird stairway" and was then told that the lady of the house would not go down there alone and even her husband had felt the fear (though he never called it that as he was being all manly). I was not even investigating on this occasion but visiting someone.
The main thing is that you must not panic. Grit your teeth and move away from a situation but screaming and running away -never.
When it comes to the field of UFOs I entered it as a bright eyed and bushy-tailed novice who had read all the books and as I got more involved I realised that, yes, authors did spin yarns (lie) and sensationalise. I found that the much mentioned "high scientific standard of UFO research" did not exist. Petty arguments, name calling and even ufologists outrightly hoaxing other ufologists was quite common.
On the practical side I have observed, in good conditions -and quite clear- light phenomena on about 6 occasions between 1977-1985 and one three occasions at close quarters. I watched the times of the observations and closely observed what I was seeing. Only afterwards did I make notes. Someone pointed out that it was different now as with mobile (cell) phones you can take footage. I pointed out that I do not carry a phone with me!
What I realised -after intense research- by 1980 was that, excluding ball lightning and pizoelectric phenomena, there was a data base showing another phenomenon that I termed UNP -Uninvestigated (by Science) Natural Phenomenon. I also realised from my personal observations that these phenomena contained a large amount of energy which could, potentially, be dangerous at close quarter and might leave behind enough energy (let's call it that) at a "landing site" that exposure could have harmful effects -I think I am a prime example of going into these areas too often (but more of that another time).
However much I would like to see some evidence of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth in the shape of a solid, constructed object (UFOB) I never have.
When I first began recording any and every reported encounter back in 1974 I had what I call "The Common Encounter Dream" or CED. In this I found myself in an isolated location out in the countryside -a small brick building with a window. Out of this window I saw a landed flying saucer and moving about where a number entities and I realised that they were getting closer. The dream ended. Obviously, psychologically, if you are reading and processing a huge number of reports then sooner or later it will burst into your dreams.
In 1977 another person offered to help in the work -that would have made two of us in the UK!- and so he also began processing the reports. One evening this person looked at me and said@ "I had the weirdest dream about this stuff last night!" I asked him about it and he was basically describing my own dream. I found other people reading the material had similar.
Today, of course after Hopkins and Jacobs, someone will shout "suppressed abduction experience!" No. Not many people talk about this because it is seen as mundane and is common and you will hear people mention it. I knew someone who used to work at the old Fry's chocolate factory in Bristol:all day long watching and sorting chocolates and quality checking them. He told me: "For a week I just had this dream of endless sweets and chocolates going past on a conveyer belt -I was told everyone gets that when they first start".
I once work for Frost and Reed Print makers in Bristol and the routine was to roll a print, package it and then box it. After I first started doing this work I had the dream of endlessly rolling prints, packaging them and then boxing them. The fellow who started at the same time as me related the same dream. There are many such examples so why not the CED?
In UFO Contact? I noted cases in which people calling themselves UFO 'investigators' ran when an object landed in a nearby area. I have heard this kind of thing over and over again. When myself and late colleague Franklyn Davin-Wilson ran up to the copse at Cradle Hill where a moving light was seen some 30 or so sky watchers screamed at us to come back. WHY were they there sky-watching for the "space brothers" and then panicking at what the "space brothers" might do?
Charlatans out to make money from turning the subject into a jokey entertainment I do not expect to do anything seriously. I have seen LITS (Lights In The Sky) reports take up ufologists time -sometimes weeks. All over a small, moving light in the sky seen at a great distance. But multiple witness CE3K (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) relegated to the "gather dust" files. Ufologists dismissing CE3K reports is odd because the question is then -who is piloting these "craft" they claim people see?
"Truth seekers" seems to onl;y go so far as press and media attention but not in real life.
There is a question I always think about and that is what if the entities encountered are non biological -androids or whatever used for the task involved? A number of cases involving 'robots' that I looked into were imaginary in one form or another which was a little disappointing. Ufologists have often attempted to explain away unusual actions by entities in certain cases as possibly indicating "robots" of some kind.
The major problem is, of course, that no one has actually met or studied an extraterrestrial at first hand so we have to go by what a witness/percipient reports and that is tainted by their own mindset or beliefs. Extraterrestrials may not have the same interpersonal reactions as humans do -they would be from a totally alien civilisation after all. "They behave very coldly" and "They seemed indifferent" are phrases you will often hear. The other thing you will hear often is that there was a voice stating "You will not be harmed". In the latter instance this seems to be trying to let a percipient know that there is no intention of doing any permanent harm and calming them.
I was once asked what I would do if I was in a car on a lonely country road and a UFO landed yards in front of me? Firstly, I would be surprised since I do not own a car nor do I drive! But joking aside it has to be defined what this "UFO" is? If it is UNP then I would stay in the said car until it moved off -collisions with this phenomenon are recorded and can result in some vehicle or personal injury. If I see ball lightning float past me am I going to grab it? No.
If we see the supposed "UFO" as looking for all the world(s) like a constructed craft then things change. No one can really say how they would react in a given situation but after 40 plus years opf thinking about this I decided long ago what I would do -presuming that I was not paralysed by some strange force.
I would get out of the car and move slowly toward the said "UFO". In past cases entities are reported to have 'fired' beams of light in front of witnesses as if to warn them to keep a safe distance. In other cases witnesses have been waved back. My assumption would be that either this was an unplanned landing and I had been in the wrong place at the right time or that this was a deliberate landing with the intention of intercepting a human. Me.
You have to see this as being similar to encountering a landed helicopter or other aircraft. It is a means of travel even if it is "not from here". If you approached a landed helicopter then you have no idea what the crew will do or be thinking. You have to assume the crew will be friendly. Likewise with any landed UFOB you would have to assume that they are not hostile but, perhaps, carrying scientific work or surveys and do not really want any form of long term contact with humans -which is understandable.
Over the decades I have known people who have lost half their face during war, others who had plastic facial prosthetics after accidents and even badly scarred. So the idea of meeting someone/thing that does not look "normal" is not a problem. I never screamed or ran away from those people with facial scarring or prosthetics so why run away at a point where my work and research can finally be completed?
It has to be realised that we are talking hypothetically here and that from the point of my voluntarily exiting a car to being allowed to approach a landed object is just that. What happens after is Unknown. The ideal situation would be to attempt to converse with any entity(ies) and learn what I could and observe. It would be a very strange version of being approached by foreign tourists who speak little English but need information -and you usually find out more about them (again, I have had this experience more than a few times).
I know what I would like to do -rather like I know what I would ask a 'ghost' in a conversation- but exiting the car and walking toward the object might be all I could guarantee. Looking at past encounters when percipients have seen a landed object and entituies they have approached them -as I noted in UFO Contact?
Ufology has been misled by decades of myth taken as scientific fact. No flying saucer crashed at Aurora, Texas in the 1800s. No craft crashed at Roswell, New Mexico. There are not hundreds of ET space craft as well as ETs in official custody around the world. There is no mass kidnapping of humans in their millions by little Greys...or reptilians..or whichever Jacobs has come up with now.
We need to study the reports of the past 60 years and where ever possible speak to witnesses/percipients because of the inadequacies of ufology and learn what we can.
Will I ever get the opportunity to come across a landed craft from beyond Earth? Sadly, I doubt it. However, I hope that if I ever did I would follow the plan!
