You see him too, right?

In my year of irregular therapy, it never came up that I am a paranormal expert. I can see why. Despite being my therapist, I don't want her to think I'm crazy.

I off-handedly mentioned the Pine Bush UFO Fair, then had to clarify exactly what that was. (She does know that I write paranormal novels, which is almost good enough of a justification.)

To my relief, she took this well. She could easily have decided this was symptomatic of some more serious break from reality rather than a niche interest.

"It's funny. One of the reasons I gave for avoiding drugs as a teenager is that I wanted to have the most coherent, objective perspective in case I did see something anomalous. Then I ended up crazy anyway!"

She understands my sense of humor by this point, so she doesn't call me out on referring to myself as crazy.

My firsthand experiences with anything past the border of the explicable are few. I am in that sour spot where I don't say anything ludicrous enough to be entertaining (I've never been abducted or shouted down a poltergeist, sasquatch has kept mum even though he reportedly camps out in the backyard of a local bait shop owner, my precognitive abilities are no keener than understanding likelihood, patterns, and psychology) but I am also unwilling to release the idea that something unusual may have happened in a small number of cases.

I was more of a believer when I was young, but I've found too many inconsistencies and curiosities since. I am a skeptic of both sides. There is a definite phenomenon occurring. It is not adequately being addressed. This doesn't mean you have a deep, personal connection with a Pleiadean. I can write off most alien abductions as hypnogogic hallucinations, but what of the ones that cannot or that other people shared? Individual UFO sightings are close to meaningless, but I live where the Great Hudson Valley UFO Flap occurred in the early eighties, inspiring Night Siege and converting government skeptic Dr. J Allen Hynek. Linda Zimmermann has made a career on the idea that the Hudson Valley is host to ghosts and aliens (and I have made a more modest career pretending it is).

I have only one paranormal experience that provokes raised eyebrows when I relate it at parties, and I am keen to deflate it as soon as it is out of my mouth.

I was working at Kevin McCurdy's Haunted Mansion at Bowdion Park in 1996, dating one girl and making out with another one, who also worked there with her boyfriend. (I mention this to better explain why I acted as I did surrounding the experience; I do not think it is anything to boast about and was embarrassed and guilty about the situation at the time.)

That night, I was working behind-the-scenes, moving walls so it would seem as though the guests switched floors in an elevator. It did not involve effort, thought, or fun, which is why I was snogging my friend between groups. All volunteers wear dressed in dark, preferably black, clothing to not stand out. This went doubly so for the behind-the-scenes crew. My friend's boyfriend showed up from his part during a quick moment between groups. (So that a part would not be left unmanned if a guest should come through, you could visit backward in the house but never forward. Someone working in Room 7 could visit all the way to Room 1, but someone in Room 2 could not visit Room 4.) Since I did not care to see a boy rightfully cuddling the girl whom I had been illicitly cuddling, I went to the hallways after the first room.

The first room was on a recorded, timed track. I knew the audio and could tell from the sounds of fake portrait dropping and pneumatic ghouls what effects had gone off. Standing in the corner where the hallway met the back door of the first room was a small girl. I would peg her as 5'3", standing straight, pale, wearing a light-colored dress to her knees. The hallway was dim and pumped full of fake fog, so I could not have picked her out of a lineup outside the Mansion. There was a constant flow of new volunteers, so I wasn't surprised to see someone I didn't know. I was surprised to see someone in a white dress that I didn't recognize from a part (we had our share of demonic brides or evil children, but the outfits were more extravagant).

Knowing that we had 45 seconds until the first room opened and released this group, I told her that she should hide. She cocked her head at me. Seeing time dwindling, I grabbed her shoulder to pull her somewhere. My hand went through her. It felt like my hand fell asleep. She melted into the shadows. I wasn't scared. I didn't have time to be, as the room released the group.

I darted back to my part and told my friend and her boyfriend that I had seen The Ghost. (I use a definite article here because we were told the structure was haunted, but it was never specific by whom or why.) It shocked them, and I felt oddly proud. After a few minutes, one of the guards came through and they told her of my experience. She shrugged, unaffected by a teenager's sighting.

The Haunted Mansion didn't have the money or skill to create a fake ghost like the one I saw. Even if they did, they would not have deployed to unsettle an unfaithful boy once and never again. I have not seen a ghost since and I've tried using gossip, an overnight stay at a murder house, and witchcraft. Orb photos do not impress me and, unless we are talking about the Phillip Experiment (which might have been 1970s creepypasta), neither do Ouija boards. I know all the theories for what ghosts could be and how they manifest, but I am not convinced. Even my experience could have been nothing more than a primed, suggestible mind and the right (lack of) lighting, though it seemed real at the time.

It was fun to put in a bio and mention during an interview, but it doesn’t give me much to go on for evidence of the afterlife. I looked for articles about any significant deaths, particularly teen girls, in Bowdoin Park and came up empty, but this was when the internet was in its infancy. I’m sure Google has a curated list of teen deaths by square mile now.

I went UFO spotting in Pine Bush when I was about 20. We drove around, took pictures of nothing, and pretended we were scared. One night, I saw three lights in a triangle rise from a forest, tilt, and vanish. It could have been a plane that I misunderstood. It has been so long that I can’t be sure I am remembering it right. We caught the sighting on video, but the crappy video camera and our speed only captured our excited reactions. Melissa, whose camera it was, taped over it shortly after.

I discount any UFO or ghost story that begins "I woke up and..." It is good that people want to believe in something, but they need to understand the natural causes before reaching for the supernatural. During one of the United Friends Observer Society meetings in Pine Bush, a man stood and stated that his son had started having nightmares. The group told him this was alien contact and that he needed to tell his young son this truth. I can only imagine the little boy who, expecting his father to assure him there are no monsters under his bed, was instead told that he is the subject of an alien invasion.

All that said, I would love to have paranormal contact that didn’t seem so normal. I acknowledge and find fascinating that people are having inexplicable experiences. I would not be averse to getting a taste of that, but I would logic it away anyway. I have the inclination, but not the demeanor, to be haunted or a contactee.

A year or so ago, I went to a talk by Steve Bassett. At the time, it did not occur to me that he was anything special, but he is famous in the UFO Disclosure movement. He claimed to know a group upstate who could "summon" UFOs and order them around, a claim I have heard a few times in different quarters. I wish I had gotten their contact information because it would make one hell of an article, if nothing else. Anything that I can summon and control with my mind doesn’t seem alien, but it could speak to the collective unconscious (or mass hysteria, but that’s why skeptical ol’ me should observe).

I had hypnogogic hallucinations a couple of times, so I understand why people assume they are paranormal. Once, around 15, I swore I felt a tiny, fully-formed hand reach from under my bed and squeeze my finger. I reacted by finding the biggest knife I could and stabbed it between the bedframe and the wall. Then, I cleared everything out from under the bed and realized that nothing, even a goblin, could have fit under there. The other time, I was in my late twenties and woke up terrified of a glowing spider web above my face. I rationalized then that I used a sleep mask and there was no way I saw this web. There could be no better testimony to how I regard this realm: I experienced something unnatural and horrific, then I figured out I was mistaken.

An girlfriend had night terrors. She would wake shrieking as though someone were, no exaggeration, murdering her. It was one of the most startling things I ever encountered. I never figured out how to soothe her. Once, people in her dorm were about to call the cops because they were certain she was being raped. She swore she never remembered what had frightened her and that she wasn’t scared on waking. A few hundred years ago, people would have diagnosed demons and forced an exorcism.

The supernatural, once a personal passion, is now a subject at which I am the expert in most rooms. That doesn't mean I believe in it more than a Greek classics major believes in Zeus. I make the excuse that my interest now is more to do with research for my stories and books, which I prove with their continued production. It is fun to listen to those who experienced the paranormal no matter what I do with it later. I'm excited indulge that tiny suspicion that there ought to be something more to the world than what is immediately verifiable.

I read a book years ago titled Gray Highways: An American UFO Journey, the premise being that two guys had a road trip around the country while interviewing illustrious figures in the UFO community. There are occasional passages about how much they are getting on each other's nerves, how they might get to be on some show on Comedy Central called The Daily Show (never heard of it), and how rude some UFO people found them. They did not go out looking for UFOs and they didn't find them, but it is entertaining anyway. This book stuck in my head as exactly the sort of thing I ought to be doing: brushing up against those whom strangeness has molested. I am skeptical that the paranormal wants to steal second when it comes to me, no matter how I offer myself.

Soon in Xenology: Sanity. Writing. Summer.

last watched: Black Mirror
reading: What the Hell Did I Just Read?
listening: Damien Rice