Month: February 2022

“Through the unknown, we’ll find the new.” — Charles Baudelaire


I was recently poking through some online articles about the paranormal. Specifically, I wanted to get some sense of the scientific community’s take on what makes us believe in things that (they say) cannot be proven, or simply don’t exist. My purpose was to include such noise in my next novel, which will be coming out later this year.

The Scientific Community Says No Way to Paranormal Activity.

The scientific community won’t touch such topics as demons and time alteration. The brainiest theoretical physicists WILL tell you there is dark matter and dark energy out there in the cosmos, even though it can’t be seen or touched. They’ll ALSO tell you that two sub-particles can instantaneously “communicate” across light-year distances. Then, in the same breath, they’ll tell you that ghosts and UFOs and cryptids are a lot of hokum.

Why? Because such things have never been created or measured in a lab. We don’t have a Bigfoot in the San Diego Zoo, or a flying saucer on display at the Smithsonian. Ghosts cannot be summoned at random, and they don’t seem inclined to tell us their secrets anyway. Most of the scientific community, ever mindful that their paychecks come mostly from research grants given out by very practical people, won’t even touch the subject of mental telepathy or clairvoyance. To do so might ruin their reputation as serious research scientists. Better to dismiss such things as parlor tricks.

History Tells a Different Story.

Yet, the scientists we remember throughout history were first thought to be crackpots, or worse, heretics. (You say the earth isn’t the center of the universe? Are you mad?) Maybe they weren’t worried about losing a government grant, but Copernicus and Galileo literally risked their necks to stand by their cosmological theories that proved correct in the end.

In fairness, they were acting as real scientists. They studied and experimented and used math. Witnesses to paranormal phenomena, on the other hand, are almost always non-scientists, people who have never set foot in a lab. They provide iffy evidence like pictures of footprints or flying things that shouldn’t be there—the paranormal caught on camera or videos of things being tossed around a kitchen by invisible hands. Things that—let’s face it—can be duplicated by any competent Hollywood FX master.

Psychology as Explanation?

An article that struck me in my recent search was one in which just about EVERYTHING paranormal was explained away with psychology, as in imagination and hallucination. This is nothing new. Psychologists love to play this game because it validates their profession. But what about the people who experience things with a clear mind? People who show no evidence whatsoever of being off-kilter or having any motive to lie?

Evidence Exists, Interest Does Not.

The reason for my annoyance with the scientific community is that they’ll spend billions on a particle accelerator, but they won’t spend a dime on paranormal investigation of a hominid that could turn evolutionary theory on its head, or UFOs (excuse me, UAPs – Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Even the military is now admitting they exist, and they have images and testimony from military pilots to back their claim. Why aren’t we spending billions chasing down the truth about what UAPs are, where they come from, and most importantly, why they are here?

Maybe the government and academic establishments really don’t want to know the truth. Maybe they prefer that scientists focus on boring things like particles too small to see and far-away astronomical phenomena too complex to understand. The existence and nature of such things is only controversial among the scientific community. They don’t threaten our religious institutions or governmental sovereignty. In other words, they don’t hit too close to home.

Skeptics Prevail but Believers Persist.

Admitting that we are not in control of our surroundings as much as we’d like to be is just unthinkable for the skeptics. So, they put weak evidence under the spotlight and ignore the truly compelling evidence. Project Blue Book, the government’s longest (known) UFO investigation project, did it from 1952 to 1969, and look at where we are now. Latter-day skeptics are as guilty of hiding their heads in the sand as the naysayers of old who insisted that pictures could never be sent through the air and gathered up on a screen in our living rooms. I mean, imagine that hocus-pocus!

For now, we’ll just have to keep on relying on those stalwart amateur investigators who aren’t afraid to be labeled crackpots or ghost hunters. The truth is out there, and as Bob Dylan said, Step aside if you can’t lend a hand.

For those interested in good paranormal fiction, my latest published novel, The Lord of Malice, tackles the topic of demonic forces and how they get us in their grip. Written to be appealing to both adults and youth, The Lord of Malice is in the categories of both paranormal books for adults and good books for young adults. Check it out here:
https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Malice-careful-what-wish-ebook/dp/B09G7SWRS8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2GBYSJIR8HI1Z&keywords=the+lord+of+malice+michael+cormier&qid=1641426467&sprefix=the+lord+of+malice%2Caps%2C69&sr=8-1

Also among good supernatural books to read is another of my novels, Sumner Island, which explores the nature of time and how it might be altered, as well as reincarnation and a host of other topics. Check it out: https://www.amazon.com/Sumner-Island-Michael-Cormier-ebook/dp/B09FH6PWBK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2NCYFFVL7TJXY&keywords=sumner+island+michael+cormier&qid=1641426599&sprefix=sumner+island+michael+cormier%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-1)