Related experiences?

The Oxford dictionary defines the word paranormal as “Denoting events or phenomena such as telekinesis or clairvoyance that are beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding”.

While these are often dealt with as separate unrelated phenomena a closer look reveals many of the same patterns running through these events.

Witnesses to UFOs, ghosts and time slip cases often describe an altered state of consciousness just prior to and during their experience. Birds stop singing, traffic becomes silent, somewhat like being in a bubble or as one witness told us, like being underwater and so removed from everyday sounds. This altered state has been called the Oz Factor by researcher Jenny Randles and seems to be present in the vast majority of cases that defy explantion.

Missing or altered time is a factor in a variety of cases, from the earliest reported abduction of Betty and Barney Hill in New Hampshire in 1961 to police officer Alan Godfrey’s experience in Todmorden, Yorkshire in 1980 and the many cases detailed in Jenny Randles' “Time Storms” ( Published 2001).

And what are we to make of the old tales of fairy folk and changelings? In these stories time passes differently in the realm of the little folk and children are abducted to improve the genetic stock. Are these simple folk tales or an older version of what we call alien abductions?

Mist and clouds seems to be another common factor in many cases with reports of UFOs emerging from clouds, as in a case LAPIS investigated a few years ago, in which a witness described seeing a strange cloud from which a seemingly solid object then emerged.

In her book Time Storms, author Jenny Randles refers to several incidents involving mists or fogs.

Is this the human mind playing tricks when vision is limited or is there some objective reality to these mists and the strange events connected with them?

As you can see even this very brief discussion of a vast subject produces more questions than answers. Whether the answers are to be found externally or within ourselves it does seem that the various areas commonly associated with the paranormal are not disparate subjects at all.

Finally, to go back to that definition of the paranormal, maybe it could be modified to refer to events outside our current scientific understanding?

The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience: The True Story of the World's First Documented Alien Abduction by Stanton T. Friedman, Kathleen Marsden is available from Amazon

More information about Alan Godfrey's experience can be found at http://www.ufocasebook.com/godfreyabduction.html

Time Storms: Amazing Evidence for Time Warps, Space Rifts and Time Travel by Jenny Randles is published by Piatkus and is also avaliable from Amazon at the time of writing.