ZAN OVERALL reports on his activities as "The Skeptics' Skeptic"...


For the better part of a year I, a crop circle ‘believer’, have been attending the meetings of ‘The Skeptics Society’, a group much like CSICOP (The Committee for the Spurious Invalidation of Claims of the Paranormal), and displaying placards with pictures and information disputing the materialistic (and boring) beliefs of the soi disant "Skeptics." Call it quixotic missionary work. They've been kind, particularly their president, Dr Michael Shermer.

The following will be on a placard I will display with a photograph of Milk Hill 2001:

"A CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS BELIEF THAT PARANORMAL EVENTS ARE IMPOSSIBLE CREATES AN INFORMATIONAL BARRIER THAT NOT EVEN THE MOST POWERFUL EVIDENCE CAN PENETRATE... NOT EVEN THE EVIDENCE OF MILK HILL 2001.

I am reluctantly categorizing the Milk Hill 2001 crop circle formation as a ‘paranormal’event because, in the eyes of Skeptics Society members, it would have to be so categorized. A vast pattern of 409 circles formed in a wheat field without any human agency, accomplished in no more than five hours, on a rainy night, with no footprints on the soggy ground the next morning. Tons of wheat were made limp by some form of energy and then moved into geometrically precise positions. To a Skeptics Society member this is paranormal because in his world events indicating intelligence can ONLY by caused by living beings inhabiting corporeal forms. In my world whatever occurs is NORMAL, whether or not I can understand how it happened. The evidence shows me that corporeal entities did not physically push over those tons of damp wheat. Ergo, non-corporeal entities did. I don't have a metaphysical mind-set that prevents me from following the evidence to a logical conclusion.

Skeptics Society members and I inhabit the same little fish bowl. The difference between us is that, when food drifts down from the heavens or when an object appears out of nowhere to transport a deceased citizen of the fish bowl out of our view, I deduce that these events indicate a reality outside of the fish bowl that we are not "normally" aware of. "Skeptical" fish deny that possibility and hold meetings to support each other in that denial. (Alright, "MUFON" fish hold meetings too.)"