I've gradually and sadly concluded, over two decades, that almost no Fortean phenomena are actually real, no ghosts (as independent non-corporeal entities), no lake monsters (for the most part, possible a big eel or two), no aliens, no yowies or bigfoot no 'ESP'. '.
Indeed a sad state of affairs, sir!
I would ask you - and those with a similar attitude -to try and distinguish between a mood - a mood of weariness - and an actual thought out conclusion.
So you've bean studying `Forteana` (hate the word!) for twenty years. That's quite a long time (although it's been a lot longer for me). So a feeling of `been there/done that` jadedness descends on you. This is natural, but is nothing more than a form of tiredness.
To use an analogy: a guy is heavily into music in his twenties and thirties. He goes to see new bands/concerts, whatever, reads the music press avidly, maybe has a band of his own...and so on. Then somewhere, let's say, in his mid-forties the jadedness creeps in. He starts saying that there's no good new music anymore...and then later on, by extension, he adds that even the stuff that he onced liked is a bit overrated and so on.
Of course this is nonsense: nothing has changed except him. He has become jaded. And being jaded is a
subjective state of mind - not a worked out position. Don't be bluffed by it.
Then again you wouldn't be
over-extrapolating would you? By this I mean drawing a general conclusion from a specific circumstance.
So I used to be entranced by the whole Loch Ness Monster thing. So I read up on it. After much doing so, and some thinking, and some internet exchages of views I concluded with reluctance that there is nothing to the story - it's just a mix of local folklore, misperceptions and the tourist trade.
Now if I were to over-extrapolate I would then attach this conclusion onto all other unexplained mysteries. So the Loch Ness Monster is a sham ergo so must UFOs be - because that's another Unexplained Mystery mentioned in the same breath, isn't it?
But this just doesn't follow.
Another analogy. A guy fancies some woman. After some gathering of resolve,he finally approaches her. The woman makes it known in no uncertain terms that she finds him completely uninteresting - and laughs him off. The guy goes home and cries. He concludes that he is too plain/unexciting/old...whatever for any woman to ever take a fancy to him...and resolves to live like a monk henceforth. About a week later, however, he is casually looking at an attractive woman in a supermarket. Their eyes meet and the woman makes it known that the feeling is mutual....
Both events happened. Both are true. Should the guy think of himself as Quasimodo or Brad Pit? The fact is that both could be true - because the universe is not obliged to conform to the human mind's desire for consistency.
So don't over-extrapolate. You say you've decied that there's nothing in UFOs/ghosts/bigfoot,aliens and telepathy. That's quite a wide area you have sweepingly dismissed there.
Have you really looked into them all? Because if you have then you must have an awful lot of time on your hands! I'm an aspergic with no family and very few friends - hence lots of time for study - and I haven't looked into all of these.
Take ghosts. I've maybe read four books in my whole lifetime on the topic of ghosts (It fails to excite me, somehow). So I don't feel arrogant enough to expound on the topic. It might all be BS or there might be a treasure trove of interesting cases in it all - I just don't know. So, unless you're the world's greatest scholar, I would suspect that there is some topic area in that list that you don't really know much about.You only think you do because....you're over-extrapolating.
Another thing to be wary of on the same lines is to
think too much within the box of your own specialism.
There seems to be quite a lot of posters on here who have been boning up on psychology, or maybe studying it at Uni. Well done you, but we are getting lots of off the peg phrases like `cognitive dissonance` and `confirmation bias` and so on.
It is natural that a psychologist would see everything as being `all in the mind` - because their specialism dictates that. A chemist thinks everything is one big chemical reaction. An ecenomist thinks that everything is dictated by economic forces.A specialist in `the media` thinks that everything is a `media construct` (hence Fortean Times's very own `UFO correspondent`!)
So someone sees - let's say - a `ghost`. The psychologist will immediately focus on the witness as the subject (and potential patient). Why have they hallucianated thus? Of course the witness could have seen a chemical reaction. Or an economic force. Or a media construct. Or maybe even.... a ghost.
As Freud himself said: `Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar`.