The Unexplainers - Fact or Fantasy?

What is the paranormal?
For many people (mainly my co-presenter Mike Bubbins), this question may well be the first foray into the rich and fascinating world of the supernatural. For others, they are just words. For me, the question is a gateway to three things; Truth, Honour and Justice.

Truth: My mission since conception to expose the truth and educate the masses.

Honour: To bring honour and respect to not only myself but to those who have been mocked for their beliefs since the dawn of time.

Justice: To see believers are given their rightful place in society and that slander by non believers does not tarnish the good characters which strive to prize open society's third-eye on a regular basis. (Just look at the stuff they said about Arthur C Clark when he lived on that island with his mates).

How can we spot the paranormal?
In order to make this introduction as simple as possible, I have broken the paranormal down into four basic components, each one a cornerstone of my belief system, with reasoning as to why it is, without a shadow of a doubt, real.

GHOSTS: Without a doubt, the ghost is the most commonly discussed of all the paranormal experiences. Extensive research from my side has shown that ghosts obviously exist, especially after my mate told me about his mate who grew up with a TV set that would channel the disembodied head of his gran every time her favourite show “Dallas” was aired. Also, if this is not enough to convince you dear friend, simply ask yourself this; What is gravity? Thats right, it’s ghosts holding everything down for us.

UFOs: Simply put a UFO is one of the most terrifying things to come out of the sky (besides a plague of frogs or a bat with the face of a snake), but how do I know UFOs are real? Once again, research! One time I knew a guy who did hypnotism, and he told me that one of his clients had been chased around his bedroom by a group of small grey men shortly after he had noticed lights in the sky. I have also seen a film called E.T. which is obviously based on truth because who in their right mind would make up a story about a boy on a flying bike?

MYTHICAL BEASTS: Many (Primarily co-host Mike Bubbins) say the idea of a big cat population existing in the wilds of the UK is preposterous but be aware these are probably the same people who said a man dressed as a lady but with a beard could never enter the Eurovision song contest and do quite well.
Why am I so confident we will soon bow down and worship at the paws of all things cat? Research! On more than one occasion I have witnessed domestic cats blatantly defying their human captors and if a domestic feline can poo on a rug without so much as a sorry then a big one can easily exist in the wilds of the British Countryside Un-noticed by humankind for years on end.

FAIRIES: Fairies! Sprites! Goblins! The stuff of myth and childhood, according to weak-minded automatons (Co host Mike-Bubbins). But to those in the know, they are the stuff of fact. How can I be so sure of this? Easy! Research!! After many hours online and hanging around in small wooded glades I too have seen Fairies…or at last been told about them by a close mate who was given a cake by a group of winged mischief makers on the summer solstice of 1970 at the Isle of Wight after a Jimi Hendrix concert.

‘School days are the best days of your life’, or so the old saying goes. This could not be more true in my case. Because, with the exception of the births of my children, my wedding day, spending quality time with my family, several years during the 1990s and early 2000s (when I was travelling care-free around Canada), almost all of the holidays I’ve ever been on, nights out with my friends, lazy days on the sofa, Christmases, Birthdays, two days in Alton Towers and most weekends, school days WERE the best days of my life. It was during those halcyon days that I could immerse myself in knowledge. I was like a sponge, and facts were like water in the bath, spilt milk on the carpet, or a ring of coffee on a kitchen work surface - that is to say, I absorbed them. And just as one might wring a full sponge out before reusing it, so I wrung this gathered wisdom out to all who had ears to hear, or eyes to see. But unlike a sponge, after being wrung out, my brain retained the knowledge/water/milk/coffee. However, it was never enough for me to be told that something was so. I challenged my teachers to reveal their sources. I queried their investigative process. On more than one occasion, I would switch off the overhead projector, stand on a chair, and cry out "I don’t want to label a Bunsen Burner! I can see the tripod, the gauze, the gas tube, and that metal collar thing that rotates, thus determining the amount of air in the mix/heat of the flame! What I want to know is WHAT is fire! WHO discovered it! WHEN was it first controlled! HOW can it be harnessed for the good of mankind!" I would then proceed to use my time in the following detention to pore over textbooks, in my never-ending, unrelenting search for answers.

This mission of discovery peaked in the long, hot, summer of 1988, when, much to the chagrin of the nay-sayers and doubters, I achieved eight GCSEs. Two of these were A grades, the highest possible result achievable (This was before the addition of the, frankly preposterous, A* in the 1990s). There was, on that special day, a lot of egg on a lot of faces, I can tell you.

However, in addition to being an academic, I was a hell-raiser. A loose cannon. A maverick. This was the real reason that I failed my A Levels. I was undeterred. Socrates didn’t have A Levels, indeed, Einstein didn’t even have any GCSEs. Marie Curie had never attended Sixth Form at Barry Boys Comprehensive, even though the sixth form there was co-educational. So what to do? I wanted to continue my studies, to be the first Bubbins since my Mum and sister to go to University. Was I about to let a piece of paper saying 'Design Technology: E Geology: N’ derail my dreams? NO WAY! I had too much to offer the world. And so it was that, once again, I defied my critics, entered University, and became, after four years of intense studying, a fully-qualified PE teacher.

And that is what I bring to The Unexplainers. A commitment to the pursuit of cold, hard fact. My co-presenter, John Rutledge, a wide-eyed, gullible fool, is quick to jump to conclusions. To look to the paranormal, when the normal will suffice quite nicely. A mysterious, cat-like creature is spotted, it attacks animals as a badger might, leaving only dog-like paw prints. Where John leaps to the conclusion that a giant cat is on the loose, I take the measured response that there may actually be three animals involved, namely a cat, a badger, and a dog. What John hears as ghostly noises, I hear as the, much more likely, noises. Lights in the sky? Lights. In the sky. Fairies? I’m sorry, John, I misheard you. I though you, a thirty-nine year old man, just said FAIRIES!

This is not to say that my mind is closed to possibility. After all, as a great thinker once said ‘The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine’. I’m not sure exactly who the thinker was, an internet search brought up several possibilities. And therein lies the problem. We have given our powers of deduction over to that box of circuitry that sits on our desk, on our lap, or in our pocket. Anyone can put anything, no matter how far-fetched, online, and in doing so give it an air of authenticity. The internet is John Rutledge’s Bodleian Library, his Temple of Edfu, his Academy of Ashurbanipal (Look it up. Just Google ‘Great Libraries’). I would say to John, and to the thousands like him who look to the magical, the mysterious, or the strange; open your two eyes to the world of fact. For fact is far, far stranger than fiction. Seek the truth. Dare to believe in the unshakeable laws that govern the cosmos. Get a Library Card.