Is the planet Venus such an anomalous thing to see in the sky? Find out in Blather.

The Complaints Board could tell me none of these things. I was told that ‘the Board does not record reasons for its decisions. In these circumstances, I am not in a position to provide a detailed response to the questions you have raised.’ Was I satisfied? Like hell I was.

Since that incident, it with no small sense of incredulity and sympathy that I read about the courtroom testimony of witnesses, while under interrogation by barristers. Can YOU recall precisely what you did last Thursday, never mind remember what you got up to on the night of, say, Thursday April 3rd 1997, to pick a date at random?

Trains, Planes, and Folies à Deux

'How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?'

–Sherlock Holmes in *A Study in Scarlet*,

Arthur Conan Doyle

Getting embroiled in the murky world of alleged paranormal phenomena tends to bring home the unreliable nature of human memory. As editor of *Blather* for the past four years, a contributor to Fortean Times for longer, and an occasional consultant to the likes of the Discovery Channel and the BBC, I had dealings with dozens of people about their allegedly paranormal experiences. It got to the point where I couldn't have a quiet drink without someone telling me their ghost stories.

Regardless of how momentous an experience was – and sometimes *because* the moment was such an epiphany – memories fade or mutate over time. They also grow in the retelling. It's a very human thing; we all swell our stories a little, to make them more exciting, incredible, or dramatic, especially if we don't think the listener believes us. The potential for memory to twist experience in the retelling becomes very evident when speaking to someone about a truly wild event, like a poltergeist haunting or UFO sighting. While, in most cases, the claimant seems sincere about their experience (regardless of what they themselves believe), the investigator is often left wondering how close the report is to the actual historical event being investigated. Sometimes events conspire to gut the matter wide open, exposing the foibles of human nature.

For example, on December 14th, 1997 (I know this, because I wrote it down), I spent a chilly evening on Bull Island, a large sandbank and wildfowl reserve just north of Dublin city centre. Out there in the dark with me were several members of the Irish Centre for UFO Studies. These people, based on ‘predictions,’ were convinced that on this night, at the three points in Ireland where certain mysterious ‘flightpaths’ intersected, UFOs would drop into the atmosphere, and show themselves to us. Bull Island was at one of these alleged intersections. None of the people I was there with seemed to find it interesting that the person making these predictions was an experienced astronomer, and that December 14th is the day after the peak of the Geminid meteor showers. I would also care to point out that Bull Island is right below the path of aircraft arriving from an easterly direction and landing at Dublin airport.

 

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