An exclusive sneak peak at the new issue of UFO Magazine!
by Nancy Birnes
I’ve often wondered what I’m doing here. Why this particular magazine
at this particular time? I’ve never seen a UFO nor a ghost nor a
chupacabra nor a leprechaun nor an alien. Nothing out of the ordinary,
ever.
Significantly, I’ve also never wanted
to see any of the above, not at all. I have a lot of curiosity about
things and I’m not a dullard, but I’m also not insane. I have no desire
to shatter my reality into a thousand shimmering facets as the result
of seeing—knowing—that I’m face to face with the truly weird.
No thank you.
Now,
as you can imagine, I get letters, phone calls, and emails every single
day that are full of the finest accounts of sightings and wonderment.
My mailbox is stuffed with manuscripts and books and DVDs just brimming
with really interesting accounts of high strangeness, told in careful,
loving detail.
People
stop me on the street and tell me their stories. Not a day goes by that
I don’t hear something that makes me question the very foundations of
everything I’ve ever been taught in school. Young mothers see shadowy
creatures skittering across their living room rugs; sober middle-aged
men call with reports of flying craft so big and so close that they
could count the rivets on the undercarriage.
I
listen, and I expand my mental filing system. Always expanding.
Categories and subcategories created on the spot to contain each
person’s account because if a person is telling the truth, then you
have to find a place for that truth. That truth has to exist. Because
all we have, in the end, are each other’s stories.
This is a critical point. We have our own reality and we have the stories that are told to us.
Let’s
put aside, for the moment, all the stuff we’re told that we know isn’t
true. We tolerate it, and it’s pretty awful, really. It’s most of the
information that flows around us: TV stuff, bad novels, politicians,
billboards, health-club workers, junk mail, recipes for low-fat
cupcakes … so many promises, so few rewards. It’s heavy traffic full of
bus fumes and we know not to inhale.
You’re
probably not going to die from those fumes, but you will get sicker and
sicker if that’s all you take in. You’ve got to occasionally step away
from the canned and electronic info packaging and get out into the
fresh air with a friend. You can trust your friend, or she wouldn’t be your friend, right?
Now,
when it comes to something as important as the material we handle in
this magazine, I have to tell you that real care must be taken to
preserve the truthy freshness of the product here. I personally squeeze
each and every article and constantly check for soft spots and rot. For
the most part, you can trust what you read in these pages. The articles
and columns either come from people I know and believe, or the sum
total of my mental file system supports a new writer’s premise, and you
will not be hurt if you make room for it in your own mental file
cabinet.
Given
its relative importance, there are surprisingly few periodicals devoted
to this area of thought and even fewer TV programs. It’s probably the
most important topic you’ll tackle in your lifetime, but you’re
basically on your own with it. There is no AMA, CDC, or Good
Housekeeping Seal of Approval. Yet.
If
you’re reading this magazine, you’ve either seen a UFO or an alien
personally, or you’ve heard about these things from an honest friend or
from a source you can trust. The folks who are seeing and experiencing
strange things are wired to do so, I believe. Either through luck or
fate or practice or chemicals, their brains receive sensations that the
rest of us do not. Some people are born that way and some people
desperately want to be that way; either way, they are the ones with the experiences.
But
it’s more than just mere wiring. There has to be intent. You have to
want it; you have to accept it. And then, importantly, you have to be
able to talk about it to others. If two drunken fools stumbling back
from the pub encounter a fairy ring, the one who talks about it is the
one who makes it real. It didn’t happen unless you hear about it.
The
better the storyteller, the more likely it will happen again. Potent
seeds are planted, just as potent as the brew that gets passed from
hand to sweaty hand in the middle of the night. Eventually, as you can
imagine, you might see.
I
think this is the reason the sightings change with the centuries and
the cultures. We are manifesting as surely as we are distinguishing.
Switch a Manhattan bicycle courier dodging cabs with an Amazonian
teenager hunting mushrooms and both will be frightened, blinded, and
crippled until they carefully relearn and see what’s right in front and
beside them.
So
here’s what I think is going on: All the high strangeness is really
really there, but most people are not wired to see it. Yet. The ones
who are wired are fragile and critical to the reality equation because
they have to be able to withstand and then, ideally, to report.
If
they have too much voltage and too little stamina, they can go insane
from the stress. If they only saw something once and it was a fluke,
they might become unrepentant liars trying and rekindle the power.
But
our reality depends on their stories, and depending on the quality of
their storytelling, the story will live and breed and grow in strength
until it’s real. That’s how the world is made. I think.
So,
there I was, gazing out the window earlier this evening, looking up at
the sky, wondering if UFOs are real and wondering why I never see them
and how we could get more readers … when it came to me in a blinding
flash.
If
you want a big audience, you have to stop wondering and start
declaring. Churches never wonder; they know. They know you don’t, and
they know you want to. Churches are mobbed with members, unlike MUFON,
which isn’t.
So,
If you’re wondering about UFOs and other high strangeness, you’ve come
to the right place. They are all here. And that’s the truth. UFO
Before she was Editor-In-Chief for UFO Magazine...before she was a book packager...she was an author. Is an author. Is a writer. She's baaaaaaack!
Culture of Contact
in Human Growth
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