Read about this usage of the word confabulation at the Skeptic’s Dictionary.

Point 2 suggests the difference between what ‘really’ happened, and what really happened *to the observer* - if it was really a 50m long blimp painted in luminous paint, but the observer perceives a glowing disk, then we have a problem. Just because there was a luminous blimp in the area *does not* negate the possibility of outsized transient lumps of crockery being in the neighbourhood as well. Hence, we can't prove that the observer didn't see one.

This is a bit like the old joke: Tom arrives on the scene, notices Dick carefully spreading a fine powder on the floor. In reply to Tom's enquiries, Dick informs him that it's 'Elephant Dust' for the purposes of keeping elephants away. 'But there are no elephants around here!' yells Tom. 'Works, then, doesn't it?' sez Dick.

However, working on the assumption that the observer misidentified the blimp as something weirder, we can begin to wonder why it was mistaken for a saucer, instead of a floating Buddha, Emilia Earheart or a giant crucifix.

This wee problem, however, isn't a patch on what an investigator has to deal with, i.e. point 3., when, months or years down the road, the observer, understandably nervous and embarrassed about divulging the details of their epiphany, may add 'weight' to the story, perhaps without even conscious meaning to. What they now remember is a not simply a glowing disk but a spaceship, with flashing lights and even aliens. The term for this is confabulation - the fabrication of imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory.

The blimp story above is a speculative example, but the idea is worth bearing in mind. Just because something didn't happen doesn't mean it's not true in some sense. Hell, if we want to drag quantum physics into it, the very act of perceiving a luminous blimp as a flying saucer may even affect the characteristics of the blimp, a long shot I know. But, as good old Niels Bohr put it, "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth."

At this stage of my travels, despite having to suspect confabulation at ever corner in the murky world of forteana, there is something of the sympathiser about me. I've reached a stage where the 'fiction' of a paranormal experience is just as important as what 'really' happened. One is as important as the other, at least. Who am I to deny someone of their beliefs, their faith? If I think that someone is being heinously hoodwinked for monetary or power reasons, I feel compelled to speak up (can all those $cientologists really be happy?), but I'm generally disposed to leaving the faithful to their own devices. We don't live in a rational world all the time, so there seems very little point in being reasonable all the time.

Capture This

Eventually, all of this memory versus 'what really happened' business started leaching into the more normal aspects of my daily life, vaguely in parallel with all of the paranormal musings. Having decided that my rather sketchy knowledge of photography was insufficient, I enrolled in a photography course. Unsurprisingly, this involved taking many pictures, most of which were drab and unappealing enough to never pass the contact sheet stage.

 

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