I just went off my meds, and look what happened

“Mysteries at the National Parks” is a show featuring various paranormal phenomena loosely connected to U.S. national parks. Much of the material is wild and outlandish. Apparently, some people believe that there is a secret Nazi UFO base in Montana complete with railway cars á la death camp, that Adolf Hitler underwent plastic surgery and lived a quiet life at a tourist resort in Glacier National Park, and that swastikas in the hotel lounge prove it!? Ahem, surely a more down-to-earth explanation is that the swastikas are…you know…symbols used by local Native tribes? Of course, I don't believe the Nazi stuff, although I'm sure it would make a great “Biggles” comic album.

What surprised me were my reactions to the rest of the material, which was (arguably) equally extreme. Yet, I'm almost prepared to believe the lot: Lemurians kidnapping grandma's at Mount Shasta, Hawaiian curses involving intelligent fire balls or volcanic goddesses, lost cities underneath the Grand Canyon, haunted battlefields around Gettysburg…

What's happening to me?

I don't drink as much caffeine-tripped beverages anymore, nor do I munch the ridiculously large quantities of candy I used to…hmmm…should I start again, perhaps? Another possibility is that my reading of “alternative” books has finally taken its toll. Of course, there might be a third explanation, too: THEY ARE HERE. And I don't mean an enhanced Adolf Hitler…

:-0

OK, seriously. What struck me when watching the show, especially the “Native” angle (both American Indians and Hawaiians are featured), is that many of the phenomena mentioned get more believable if they are interpreted as classical spiritual visions. The experiences are often dreamlike, with the witnesses being in an altered state of consciousness. The paranormal beings live in deep forests, isolated canyons or underground. Sound familiar? Electromagnetism is sometimes part of the picture, as when “fire balls” appear in Volcanoes National Park in Hawaii. The narrator, in typical modern/Western fashion, has a tendency to interpret these events as caused by aliens, Lemurians or flesh-and-blood Nazis. Actually, they are sneak-peeking into the “astral”.

But that too is a crazy, unscientific notion not accepted by CSICOP, Anonymous and James Randi, aint it? So I better stop here and grab myself some chocolate biscuits or something!