Is There Anything You've Grown LESS Sceptical Of?

Zeke Newbold

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
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For me there does seems to be a direct correlation between scepticism (concerning Fortean matters) and the ageing process. To spell it out: I find myself becoming more doubtful about claims of the extraordinary the older I get.

I suppose it's an equivalent of the old canard about people becoming more politically and culturally conservative as they get older.*

So even as late as two years ago I might well have defended the idea that there was some serious hard evidence for Bigfoot - whereas now the idea that there is a huge flesh-and-lood hairy man-ape stalking the forests of North America seems to me to be unfeasible - even a bit risible ( but note the qualififcations I put in there). I can only put this down to having got older in the meantime. You seem to lose more and more of the magic in life - and hence faith in its possibilities (for better or for worse).

Or perhaps it's just the drip-drip accummulation of all the the balloon bursting that appears on this site. I don't know.

Anyway, all I really have left in the Fortean pantheon is telepathy (because I have experienced it), UFOs (albeit defining the term very broadly) and, maybe, Central Asian almas.

There's a debate raging on another thread about whether or not the Fortean content on this site has much reduced recently. Well, if it has (and I'm not so sure about that) then maybe this is just the consequence of the fact that we're all getting older!

So that's why I'm asking (plaintively): Is there anyone out there who is bucking the trend? Has anyone become more convinced of the reality of some Fortean phenomenon as they've become older?

(I'm afraid that I can't answer my own question. All I can say is that I have found myself developing more of an interest in ghosts and suchlike lately. That was never really nmy thing before, but now I find myself gravitating more to that area. This may be a subconcious acknowledgement of the approach of death
or of old person's concerns such as lineage and loss, etc But, even so, this doesn't mean that I would be any less sceptical of it all if a mundane explanation was offered which fitted).

*This at least is not true in my case - although I have become more circumspect and maybe more `centrist` over the years - but I can't really go into all that on here.
 
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The evidence for UFOs of a non-terrestrial origin has been emerging thick and fast lately, and I've been revising my perspective accordingly.

To be honest, the UFOlogy community and the high proportion of cranks and charlatans it sheltered/tolerated probably fuelled my earlier scepticism towards the whole field, but perhaps a lot of older cases are going to need re-evaluation in the future.

I'm not buying every hackneyed alien abduction narrative, but my mind has certainly opened.
 
Your focus will probably change as you get older. Just as the major Fortean subjects are quite cyclical on a 10 year basis in the wider attention they get - 90s, was UFOs, 00s ghosts. 10s Cryptozoology and now the UFOs are coming back - my own primary subjects of interest wax and wain. I was heavily into UFOs in the 80s going into the 90s but post the Alien Autopsy I got tired of the whole thing, and rediscovered my teenage zeal for the mystery beasties. It's good to let things lie fallow sometimes, especially if you're starting to mistake trees for woodlands. Go away and let it ferment and you can come up with some surprising insights. A good grounding in overall Forteana is good for spotting correspondences, too.

As for getting less sceptical, I think experience and breadth brings more perspective. Easier to get polarised when you're up close.
 
My mind is as open as it ever was, it's just that the older I've got the more checks and balances I'm able to apply to any stories I come across including my own.

However we don't understand how reality works in it's entirety we can't judge everything through the eyes of the 'working model' we find ourselves living in. So in light of various things that have happened to me I remain convinced that there are mechanisms operating that we just don't understand as yet and maybe never will.
Zeke Newbold said:
I suppose it's an equivalent of the old canard about people becoming more politically and culturally conservative as they get older.*
Click to expand...

As you say we can't go into that here but that's certainly not true in my case!

Sollywos x
 
A person will not believe in UFOs or the paranormal unless they themselves experience a paranormal event.

You have to walk in someone shoes to understand.

Over the many years I have seen it all, and I hope it turns out OK for mankind.

As a side note drones and CGI has destroyed ufology.
 
As far as Fortean stuff goes, I cant think of anything I've become less skeptical of.
For a while in my 40s, I flirted with organized religion in the form of Evangelical Christianity, but that didn't last more than a few years. I came out the other side just as skeptical and cynical as I was when I was 13.
 
I’m still open minded (and though I was never politically conservative, it’s even less as I age)* But I suppose I’ve always thought: ‘OOOH.’ (even when I experienced something) and then kind of mentally sort through explanations for a mundane solution, mainly because I would rather be disappointed early than much later on when the thing is debunked or proved to be something explainable, if that makes sense?

I still love to read or listen to or watch tales of the ‘extraordinary’, but am less likely now to look at a supposed picture/video of a ghost or UFO and think ‘OOOH’ because they’re so easy to fake now.

But I think my sheer enjoyment of reading or hearing about things has multiplied. Maybe that’s age too, having done a lot of the more mundane living/earning a crust/having responsibilities I love to sit back and think of things that aren’t!

My nan used to love relating her ghostly experiences well into her 80’s (And I wish I’d written them down, or she had) she really enjoyed thinking about it and talking about it. I expect (if I get to that age) I’ll be the same. It’s mystery, and mystery is wonderful.

*PS. I never talk about politics. That was just a by the bye.
 
Ah, message # 666, crap, Sollywos, will the gods and stars be against me today. ?

But luckily I am not too superstitious, but thanks for drawing it to my attention.

Stephen Hawking always used Cortez destroying the Mayans to explain E.T.s. vs humans.

I suspect if the Pentagon does release the UFO report, there will be a new UFO wave of craziness.
 
Believe it or not, I have seen a UFO (2 to be precise) and have experienced other totally weird experiences I can’t really explain but have described here. I’m not going to rewrite all that again. However, I’m growing tired of the same old ground being turned over again when the evidence has been pretty much discredited. Some people seem impervious to logic and evidential proof and would rather cling to what is essentially a belief system, piling on fantasy on top of fantasy -often in a circular fashion - to keep the conventional explanation at bay.
If there is one thing I’ve grown LESS sceptical about, it’s the idea that none of this is real. Maybe we’re in the Holographic Universe or we all got wiped out millions of years ago and are just a spooky imprint on the wall of death of an event horizon.
 
charliebrown said:
I have heard that some people believe we are living in a game or hologram ?

I know these humanoids have control over an energy that we know nothing about and can interfere with the science laws of

time and matter.
Click to expand...
They may be the tech support guys for this virtual reality.
 
Hey Mythopoeika, how long is the phone time wait for tech support for the earth hologram ?
 
I'm not sure if there is anything I've grown less sceptical of, but my politics (without going in to unacceptable detail) have certainly bucked the alleged trend of older people because I'm now far more left wing than I was back in the balmy days of the 1980's.
 
Recently a couple of (unrelated) people i know have admitted they have seen ABC-type animals, so i guess i have grown less sceptical about those. Although how the hell they avoid getting run over is a mystery. The cats, not the people obvs.
 
I'm still really interested in anything unexplained.
Whenever anything odd happens I try to find an explanation before I accept that it is unexplained-at least for me.
My friends tell me whenever they have anything happen as they know I'm always willing to listen.
We all think that there is something there but we don't know quite what.
 
Sollywos said:
However we don't understand how reality works in it's entirety we can't judge everything through the eyes of the 'working model' we find ourselves living in. So in light of various things that have happened to me I remain convinced that there are mechanisms operating that we just don't understand as yet and maybe never will
Click to expand...

pandacracker nods slowly in quiet agreement while he looks into the middle distance with an enigmatic expression on his face :nods:
 
What an interesting thread. Overall, I have not become more or less sceptical. For individual topics, there have been changes, but not much change actually. I agree with charliebrown that experiencing is necessary to accepting things which are contrary to consensual understanding. Also, what we form an opinion on is somewhat predicated on what we are interested in. I am not interested in UFOs and have no firm opinion about them. I vaguely think they are real and are not secret earthly government technology.

What I continue to accept: the afterlife, mind-to-mind interactions, that the mind is able to know and discern from a distance (including pre-cognition) in ways impossible while grounded in the flesh, and that the mind can affect physical objects. I personally have experienced all of these except the mind affecting physical objects in an unmistakable demonstration.

What I accept less: any of man’s versions of God, and that our last living moments determine what happens after we die (Tibetan Buddhism). BTW, both of these assume that religion and spirituality are Fortean phenomena.

What I accept more: hairy manbeasts in the Americas and Asia. I have no direct, unmistakable experience, but accept on the preponderance of evidence of different types, from different sources, over the past 50 years.
 
I came to FT to find out more of what is supposedly going on in this world and some times the next world as well, I still believe there is extraterrestrial life visiting here, and maybe the films that the Pentagon are saying are genuine are that, maybe they are slowly releasing some to minimise the public panic of when they do arrive, or to debunk them later and make everyone look like an idiot, but i still believe, (I wanna be alive when they do land), and I have seen and heard too many things myself to debunk them totally, I do believe there is more on this Earth than we think and most of you on here have experienced it, it is nice to be amongst people who question it instead of accepting it readily, but, I do not think my opinion of things has changed a great deal as i have aged especially about Aliens.

Live Long and Prosper :)
 
I genuinely believe that about 99.9% of things that are reproted as being in some way "paranormal", are, in effect, completely normal.


It is the .1% that I am interested in. And which is truly, truly magical.
 
I used to think myths and legends were just fairy stories.
Now I'm wondering if maybe there's a glimmer of truth in some of them.
Lately I've wondered if Medusa and the Gorgons didn't have actual snakes for hair but maybe dreadlocks and the tale was distorted over time?
 
According to the History Channel most cultures have stories about gods from the sky or the world having a world-wide flood.

I think it is possible that ancient aliens did help past civilizations and may have been interpreted as being a god.
 
For me it's life (or existence or consciousness or something) after death. I'm not talking about ghosts, it's the growing conviction that everything doesn't end when I die - I've reached an age where most of the people I knew from my parent's generation have gone. Except they haven't exactly.
God I hope I'm not defending Mediums and Psychics.
 
Actually working with the aging (and dying) has made me believe more in after life and psychic ability. You hear and see some creepy stuff in this field.
One resident could accurately predict bingo calls before I called them...multiple times. Others regularly saw ghosts and the like.
 
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