Over the last year, I’ve blogged about UFOs, ghosts, psychic phenomena, cryptids, and other unexplained topics. Every once in a while, my posts have been shared on Facebook pages dedicated to ‘skeptical thought’.

Sometimes, it’s hard to read the reactions to my posts on those pages, which often includes attacks on my credibility, my character, my sanity, and even my writing skills. These attacks come from people who don’t know me, so I have let it go.

I didn’t understand why my posts were shared so often on one particular Facebook ‘skeptical thought’ fan page, until tonight.

I was offered a “press subscription” to Skeptical Inquirer a few weeks ago. The current issue involved an article about “ghost hunting”.  I wholeheartedly agreed with the article and shared my thoughts about it in a blog post. That blog post was shared on the Skeptical Inquirer Facebook fan page today for discussion. The comment section on that page includes terrible comments about me by some people, which doesn’t surprise me.

What does surprise me is the apparent misunderstanding about my blog. So, I’ll take this opportunity to clarify things.

The Tucson Citizen website is a compendium of (unpaid) blogs. It was a newspaper – until May 2009. This fact is stated clearly on the ‘About the Tucson Citizen’ page, as well as on my ‘What is Paranormal Old Pueblo?’ page.

I learned from the comments section on the Facebook page that my ‘articles’ were brought to the attention of Skeptical Inquirer editors, due to “a pro-paranormal slant and lack of skeptical commentary”. They sent me the complimentary issues of the magazine “with the hope that [I] would look at things a bit more skeptically”.

All this effort to ‘educate’ an unpaid paranormal blogger.

To anyone who might to be confused, I assure you, this is just a blog.

————————–

Copyright © 2010 Cherlyn Gardner Strong

Read more of Cherlyn’s posts at her Paranormal Old Pueblo website

NASA has announced a press conference to be held at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2,” to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.”

The announcement has raised a significant amount of curiosity about the finding, as well as some speculation by members of the media and some UFO and alien bloggers. We’ll just have to wait until Thursday to find out what it is all about.

The news conference will be held at the NASA Headquarters auditorium in Washington. It will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency’s website.

Participants are:- Mary Voytek, director, Astrobiology Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington
- Felisa Wolfe-Simon, NASA astrobiology research fellow, U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, Calif.
- Pamela Conrad, astrobiologist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- Steven Benner, distinguished fellow, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Gainesville, Fla.
- James Elser, professor, Arizona State University, Tempe

For NASA TV streaming video and downlink information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about NASA astrobiology activities, visit: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov

————————–

Copyright © 2010 Cherlyn Gardner Strong

Read more of Cherlyn’s posts at her Paranormal Old Pueblo website

Two notable UFO waves began on November 29th, 35 years apart. One of the waves is considered to be one of the most well-documented and intriguing flaps in history. The other is notable for the man who claimed to have witnessed the UFO activity, while conducting bizarre weather experiments meant to bring rain to a community in the midst of a drought.

The Belgium UFO Wave of 1989 to 1990

As written about in Leslie Kean’s book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record, Kean wrote: “the UFO wave in Belgium was handled rationally, openly and responsibly by the government.”

The wave included a series of sightings of triangular UFOs in Belgium, which lasted from November 29, 1989 to April of the following year.

There is no one better to tell the story of the Belgium UFO wave, than the late, great Robert Stack. I remember watching this episode of Unsolved Mysteries nearly 20 years ago. The YouTube clips that follow (a two-part post), do include some commercials of the day.

View Part 2 on YouTube
Further reading: Wikipedia, Bellgian UFO Wave

Wilhelm Reich sees UFOs in Tucson

In 1954, the world was fascinated with UFOs, and so was William Reich. In fact, much of what was wrong with the world, according to Wilhelm Reich, was due to repressed sexuality and UFO invaders.

Reich was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who trained under Sigmund Freud in Vienna. He was known for forging ahead with work for which the world wasn’t quite ready. He was labeled as a “quack” by the FDA and deemed mentally ill.

Reich relocated his family to Tucson in 1954 to conduct weather experiments. On his way to Tucson, he drove through Roswell, NM, feeding his fascination with UFOs. Though Reich called the otherworldly life forms EAs (”E” for Energy and “A” for Alpha). EAs impacted the weather, according to Reich. With the aid of a “cloudbuster”, Reich was determined to bring rain to Tucson.

On November 29th, Reich observed a cigar-shaped craft through a telescope aimed at the eastern sky. He clearly observed windows in the object and continued to observe it through December 17th. While at first theorizing that UFOs were “benign observers”, his views shifted to believe that they were impacting the weather, (intentionally or unintentionally) contributing to pollution.

During Wilhelm Reich’s stay in Tucson, he deduced that a mountain range prevented rain from reaching Tucson. So for the next several months, Reich would travel further west with his cloudbuster until it rained in March 1955. Reich packed up and returned to Maine. In August of that very year, Tucson experienced the wettest month on record. No one can really say that Reich was responsible for clearing the way for the record rainfall. It rained in August 1955 like it hasn’t rained since, as documented on the National Weather Service website.

Further Reading:

Wikipedia, Wilhelm_Reich
Wilhelm Reich Museum
Dr.James  DeMeo’s Research Website
Tucson Citizen, UFOs, Orgasms and the Occult: The Tucson Connection, 11/3/2009

—————————

Copyright © 2010 Cherlyn Gardner Strong

Read more of Cherlyn’s posts at her Paranormal Old Pueblo website