I Love a Mystery. Still.

I was watching a show on The History Channel, the subject: USOs (Unidentifed Submerged Objects), the soggy analog to UFOs. While this may be a new subject to many people, I am in familiar waters here.

I grew up with the weird. UFOs, USOs, ancient astronauts. Lost civilizations, alternative histories, pole shift. Bigfoot, Nessie, cryptozoology. These and anything else rumored and fantastic were my diet. Ivan T. Sanderson, John Keel, and Jacques Vallee were my mentors, at least in book form. I sat on the front patio with binoculars watching for anomalous lights in the night sky (really, it didn't have anything to do with the girl across the street and her inadequate window blind). I traipsed around the mountains near my home looking for odd tracks and spoor. I actually had interview forms prepared, for reports of the fantastic. Just. In. Case.

So I find the current heavy flow of TV programs devoted to the fantastic almost irresistible. Some of the shows are cheesy, heavily sensationalized rehashes of hoary old tales. But a surprising percentage of the specials offer new material, well-researched and -presented. These shows are popular enough that money is available to invest in research, and I have learned that I cannot overlook even a story with which I think I am very familiar since the shows may uncover new witnesses or finally show a photo or video of which I had heard but never seen. I don't always sit and watch the shows, but typically instead keep an ear on them while doing housework or somesuch, while occasionally focusing in on a tidbit.

Tonight's show on USOs, a broad term encompassing everything from anomalous blobs or pinwheels of light underwater to sonar contacts with objects moving through deep water at incredible speed, was particularly interesting, offering new material and even fresh perspectives on timeworn reports. For example, I learned that Christopher Columbus logged a report of an unusual light which rose out of the water, hovered over the water "with a light like that from a wax candle", then sank back beneath the waves -- a report I do not recall previously hearing. There was also video footage from a similar occurrence in Puerto Rico, which I had heard of but never seen.

I have to contrast the almost-nightly "high strange" show ("high strange" used as a measure in the weird world -- the more highly strange something is, the more deserving it is of research) with the popular media wasteland in which I grew up. There were a few books on UFOS in the public library, Keyhoe and Adamski and the like, copies of which I soon owned myself. There were a few worn books on "monsters" and anomalous creatures, Yeti and Nessie -- copies of which I soon owned myself. The bookstores had a few of the more mainstream titles on sensational subjects, Frank Edwards and James Churchward and the like, and need I mention that these soon appeared on my bookshelf? I slowly added more titles via constant scrutiny of used book stores.

It wasn't until 1973 and a TV special entitled "In Search of Ancient Astronauts" that the trickle became a flood. The special, based upon Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods?, caught the public attention and started a new craze of interest in anything high strange. (That, and the fact that there was a "flap" of UFO sightings getting a lot of press just then.) Suddenly, many old works were back in print, as well as many new works with provocative titles and covers which just happened to use the font and layout of the cover of Chariots. I can assure you (since I read all of them) that a lot of it was crap, the research and "logic" composed primarily of questions and dubious interpretations of mythology. (One standout I recall: the author asked, "Since some of the stars we see from Earth obviously form into shapes which we call the constellations, is it too much to assume that the stars were rearranged to configurations which would mean something to us here on Earth?" Well, yes -- especially since many of those "obvious" constellations are not obvious at all and have widely different interpretations depending upon the culture of those naming them...)

Anyway, suddenly everyone was interested in subjects for which shortly before they had mocked me; at the age of 13, I was the "old hand of high strange". Public interest kept rising (and in fact has never stopped rising), and the TV series "In Search Of..." in 1975 further popularized many subjects and stories which had until then resided only between the covers of my well-worn paperback books. If I had been a bit older, I might have been able to dine out as an "expert" on high strange; as it was, I was called upon to argue points with people who were themselves "instant experts" based upon what Leonard Nimoy had told them the night before. (Nimoy was the distinctively-voiced host of "In Search Of...")

One of the popular questions of the day was, "Do you believe in flying saucers?" The question always made me wince, not for the least reason due to its nonsensicality -- what are you asking me I believe about them? But of course the assumed meaning was "Do you think flying saucers are physical objects piloted by people from other places in space"? I had to develop an answer, the question was so common that it was unavoidable. And I have been pondering the question for almost four decades now.

And the answer? No. Yes. Maybe. There is no answer. Or rather there is no answer, no absolute, which can rest easily upon the evidence presented to date.

But its the wrong question. Ask rather, "Do you believe the UFO phenomenon is real?" and I will answer with a firm yes. The "UFO phenomenon" -- reports of odd moving shapes in the sky, sometimes coming to rest upon the earth -- is a constant in human experience. Can I explain it? No.

This position is very frustrating, even challenging, to those for whom the answer is the goal. For them the answer is everything, so much so that they may go to some embarrassingly silly lengths to swallow "proof" or formulate theories in which the average 6-year-old can pick holes. What's the point of wondering, these people feel, if you cannot reach a conclusion?

But I side with John Keel, one of the great names in UFOlogy. He stated, simply and famously, that

Belief is the Enemy.

Once you start to believe in a certain way, especially in subjects highly strange, two things begin to happen: you unconsciously don blinders which keep you from seeing contrary evidence, and you actually start to attract people and phenomena which will most directly prove your belief as true in your eyes. I have seen it happen many times -- people set out looking for knowledge, for proof, then start chasing after belief and once down that path the "ratchet effect" named by Jacques Vallee sets in and these folks steadily believe odder and odder things and accept weaker and vaguer things as proof and one day they are wondering why the rest of the world is looking at them with very odd expressions.

The people who chase after belief have some excuse; delve a way into these subjects and you will start to encounter reports of very odd things indeed, stick around a bit more and some of these things start to happen around and to you. (Read John Keel's The Mothman Prophecies for a classic overview of this escalation. But please ignore the dreadful movie of the same name.) As you start to "live the life" and more things happen around you, a sly little delusion of grandeur creeps in and the focus shifts from the world at large to your own little world and suddenly you are not a reporter but a player. This shift can be seen in the autobiographical reports of dozens of UFO researchers. (Again, I refer you to Mothman Prophecies for a discussion -- Keel is very aware of this psychological effect, even as it is happening to himself.) Suddenly, it seems as if "proof" is all around you, and you marvel that people in general can not see it, and it may become something of a mission in life to inform them, educate them. Save them, even.

UFO enthusiasts are sometimes characterized by detractors (and competitors, for it is a highly competitive field even in the midst of people sharing their research findings) as paranoids. And it is easy to argue that position. If the government is opening your mail, you must be important or they wouldn't bother, right? If the Space Brethren choose me from all on the planet for a revelation as to their purpose here, I am demonstrably special, yes?

But while it is easy to label contactees, abductees, and people who run around crop circles with divining rods as kooks and paranoids, I think we are actually dealing with a much bigger distinction here, something of a chasm. And which side of the chasm you are on is largely decided by How Much You Need To Believe. People who have a high need to believe (and as the subject at hand is highly strange a high need for belief is required) are above that chasm wall over there, people who keep more of an open mind are over here on this side.

You may have noticed just then the shadow of the one of the most often-used weapons in the high strange armamentarium -- "true believers" often accuse skeptics and critics of having "closed minds". But in my many years of being involved with matters high strange, it has been my experience that the opposite is true -- it is the true believers who operate with closed minds, or at least minds with only tunneled access, the tunnels passing between the blinders which their belief has caused them to adopt. Their desire to find support for their belief all-too-often closes their minds to all but that which directly feeds their belief.

I for years worked in a bookstore where I was in charge of the "High Strange" titles. And by extension, the "High Strange" customers. It was fascinating, and I genuinely enjoyed interacting with customers to find out what they were looking for and best supply the books they needed. But I also soon learned to keep a certain detachment from the customers, to keep them at arm's length. Many of them would make the erroneous assumption that, since I was knowledgeable about subjects highly strange, that I was, perforce, a believer. And some of the people were "especially highly strange", clinically paranoid, the sort of person whom you do not want to know personal details about yourself lest their belief system should involve visiting your home late some night...

(This is no exaggeration. Some of my regular customers, people who had sought to involve me in their meetings and socializing, were later implicated in the disappearance and murder of the wife of one of the group members. And part of the planning for the murder evidently happened in the cafe of our bookstore. Keeping these people at arm's length was a good policy.)

I'll say it again: Belief is the Enemy. An enemy made stronger by the fact that many people do not have a strongly internalized distinction between the definitions of "believe", and "think", and "feel".

But yet, I still love a mystery.

I am delighted that even though there are more cameras on the planet than ever before, with more people toting them around who would like nothing better than to have something sensational to post on the Net, we still don't have definitive pictures of cryptozoological stars like Nessie or a sasquatch. It thrills me that, even with GoogleEarth an example of how carefully the planet is scrutinized from orbit, there are still wildernesses in which new species are discovered each year, that even on a world which seems to be shrinking every day due to telecommunications there are still Mysterious Places. I am stimulated by the idea that, for all of our amazing ability to analyze materials left by previous denizens, many of our "conclusions" regarding how they lived are actually just guesses.

There is always more to discover. We are far from running out of mysteries.

And I love it.