From fwestra@... Wed Jan 30 10:11:04 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: fwestra@... X-Apparently-To: mysterylights@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 30 Jan 2002 18:11:04 -0000 Received: (qmail 52345 invoked from network); 30 Jan 2002 18:11:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.171) by m9.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 30 Jan 2002 18:11:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO mint.nl.gxn.net) (62.100.30.37) by mta3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 30 Jan 2002 18:11:03 -0000 Received: from hmm-dca-ap01-d05-035.dial.freesurf.nl (hmm-dca-ap01-d05-035.dial.freesurf.nl [62.100.38.35]) by mint.nl.gxn.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 240523BC95 for ; Wed, 30 Jan 2002 19:10:52 +0100 (MET) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 19:11:39 +0100 X-Mailer: Net-Tamer 1.12.0 Subject: Fwd = Albert Budden's response to Mike Williams (2/2) X-Mailreader: NTReader v0.36w(P)/Beta (Registered) Message-Id: <20020130181052.240523BC95@...> From: Frits Westra X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=196822 X-Yahoo-Profile: parodynl Full text of Part 2 of Albert Budden's response to Mike Williams. Part 1 posted in a separate message. Frits Forwarded by: fwestra@... (Frits Westra) Posted on behalf of: Albert Budden, Middlesex, UK Original Date: January 2002 ========================== Forwarded message begins ====================== Replies to Mike Williams' comments and questions from Albert Budden. January 2002. Part 2/2 4) Williams says: "Budden seems to believe his hypothesis covers ALL paranormal claims. Hut his parameters are too large. They have to be falsifiable." There are three aspects mixed together here. Firstly, I do NOT claim that all "paranormal" claims are explained by the EM Pollution Approach. (or the EMPA for short) As all investigators should realise, so many cases are a mixture of factors, some totally unrelated. Investigators should also bear in mind that we are not actually studying many of the phenomena at all, e.g. UFOs, but reports of UFOs and other anomalies. So we are really involved with the study of any stimuli that could give rise to a UFO report, haunting, alien visitation and so on. The mixture of causes that induces and renders understandable such reports consists of:- genuine spontaneous anomalies, the activities of human agency, apocryphal story-telling usually relating to the current authorised mythology, medical and neurological effects and illnesses, unusual seismic phenomena and misidentifications of events or phenomena that have mundane causes only revealed by technical investigations. (e.g. "The Hum" which could be heard continually by a whole UK village. Typically, a local UFO group concluded that it was the MoD testing a psychotronic weapon on an unsuspecting rural population. It turned out to be domestic gas rushing through new narrower pipes recently installed underground.) That is to say, clearly not all phenomena are due to EM fields, many are hoaxed, or are the outcome of sociological processes due to entrenched belief-systems. Also, some phenomena are caused by non-electromagnetic environmental processes such as seismic activity and infrasound. Mental illness is another source of strange reports. It is the genuine spontaneous anomalies that become understandable through the EM Pollution Approach, e.g. alien abduction experiences, "hauntings", poltergeists, some UFOs and entity "visitations", an example of which is:- A huge glowing humanoid "spaceman" made up of strip-like sections like the Michelin tyre man, which was seen by a middle-aged housewife late one night for about half an hour from her bedroom window, laying flat on his back across the roof of a house in Wales, UK. A local newspaper carried the story. Other phenomena and anomalies that have actually not only been rendered understandable by the EMPA, but through the discovery of consistent characteristics, have now been shown to be real existing discrete consciousness phenomena that the medical/psychiatric world should recognise and take seriously. Other examples of anomalies shown to be explainable by the EMPA are:- "alien encounters", "guardian angels", some out-of-body-experiences, self-reported ESP, the abilities of specific "mediums" and "psychics", "missing time", certain animal "mutilation" cases, anomalous activity of electronic and/or electrical systems, the sensation of being in the presence of an invisible being who is watching the subject intensely, apparitions associated with a place, "ghosts", phantom smells and taste anomalies, unexplained tactile sensations, ghostly footsteps, "causeless" musical phenomena, shadowy human forms and 3-D shadows, "cold spots", the ability to cause electrical equipment to malfunction, (e.g. street-light interference) strange mists and vanishing volumes of water, the mysterious appearance of puddles of liquid around houses, etc etc. (I could go on and I will take a chance and state that I could even name an unexplained phenomenon that occurs everyday in modern urban environments that is receiving governmental attention that sometimes has fatal outcomes, that you have never even heard of.) All clear now Mr Williams? just try reading my book in detail, and then I'm sure that you could answer many of your own questions. It's all there. Puzzlingly and rather oddly, Williams states that my parameters "are too large". He does not seem to understand what the term 'parameter' means. The word 'characteristic' could be used instead, or 'aspect' or 'factor'. Perhaps he means that I have applied my approach too broadly, and he is saying surely so many mysterious phenomena cannot an be understood as due to EM field effects or exposure? Well, I can actually sympathise with this comment, and have had to deal with this criticism in my own terms, Out of all of Mr Williams' statements, this criticism of trying to apply the developed approach to explain so many enigmas is a fair comment. It is a mistake that I have observed in other theorists who have developed an approach that applies to certain classes of phenomena wonderfully, but have then gone too far and spoilt everything by writing books that try to stretch the concept to cover "everything". As the EM Pollution Approach (which includes all of the natural geophysical sources identified by others) took shape in my mind back in 1994, it was constantly being tested in very empirical terms. This was due to the fact that an author who lived in the north of England had the details of several raw uninvestigated cases in the south, and he had asked me to investigate them for him to use in his forthcoming book. ("Without Consent" by Philip Mantle and Carl Nagatis) So I had the chance to actually look for certain parameters and environmental features in the field, if you will ignore the pun, in order to test and modify the embryonic EMPA as it formed in its early stages. I must say that the more that I went from location to location, visiting the homes of "abductees" and other experiencers, the more stunned I became. To my utter surprise I had guessed correctly about the "electrical histories" that existed in all of the "abductees" backgrounds, as they all without exception admitted to being struck by lightning, or having a near-miss, or had suffered major electrocution at some time in their lives, or had ball lightning float close to them as a child. I could hardly believe it, as it was only the previous week that I had visited the Breakspear in Hertfordshire, which was the only hospital in Britain who treated electrical hypersensitivity, (or EH for short) and was given precisely half an hour by the two top doctor-directors of the hospital, to ask questions about the EH condition in an interview. After a few minutes, I was staggered but thrilled to learn that the EH condition was brought on through the subject suffering what the two doctors referred to as a 'major electrical event' (or MEE for short) Here was something definite to look for in "abductees", and a few days later I found it in spades. These were the specific "electrical histories" I then discovered in all of the "abductees" I visited the following week. To cut a long story short, encouraged by this success, I began to investigate all manner of cases that came my way, including "hauntings", "alien contacts" and "alien encounters", and of course, more "alien abductions". Now in addition to MEEs, I was looking to see if any of these experiencers lived in hot spot locations. Again I was stunned each time I arrived at the various homes, as it was so obvious that they were all EM hot spots, before I even switched my TriField on. Power lines loomed over a roof of one, a mini-cab office was a neighbour of another "abductee", with a powerful RF transmitting antennae in the communal back-garden a few metres away from where she slept, another case of "haunting" involved a microwave repeater which was positioned barely two feet from the side of a house and so on for over 11 cases, all displaying not only these two major parameters, but up to another 22 others I had listed, prompted by the information-chatter from my subjects. Not all 25 parameters (listed on page 28 of "Electric UFOs") were present in every case, but the core ones were, indicating that I was dealing with a medical syndrome, one of its later symptoms being vivid hallucinations and visions of being taken away and operated upon by various types of alien... After two months of this, I knew I had made real progress in unravelling the "alien abduction" phenomenon, and had begun to think about other modern enigmas, and read accounts of them in books. This was not as good as first-hand investigation, but it began to dawn on me that EM energies, natural or otherwise may be implicated in many mysterious phenomena in a variety of ways. What if these rogue energies were an undetected common factor in a wide range of anomalies? However, as soon as the thought struck me, I also became convinced that I was suffering from "investigator's bias" where I was interpreting everything in terms of "The Theory", and I laughed at myself. I had seen it so many times in others, and here I was doing it myself! However, over the next six months or so, it gradually dawned on me that for once I had stumbled upon a factor that actually seemed to really have a very broad application, which was both curious and very unusual. The more I looked into the involvement of EM fields in anomalies, the more I seemed to find how they could be instrumental in causing phenomena. No type of anomaly seemed immune. For example, animal mutilation cases came to my attention after an article appeared in New Scientist on experiments by an Australian researcher called Chris Andrews who shot lightning-like electrical arcs through deeply anaesthetised sheep, to find out how animal and energy interacted. Andrews results showed that the electrical arcing took paths of least resistance through the animal and its external openings such as mouth and throat, anus, sexual organs, ears, eyes etc., acted as wave-guides, causing the current to flow most readily along nerves, blood vessels, alimentary canal, throats and so on. I began to look at many photographs of cases of animal mutilation where the seared flesh and gaping wounds showed thermal cauterization preventing bleeding. I was struck by the fact that the cauterized "mutilations" centered around the same areas as Andrews' experiments showed how body-openings acted as wave-guides for the powerful currents involved in such electrical arcing. It certainly suggested that electricity was implicated in the strange traumas to the animal bodies. I later found a statement by one Ms Howe in the USA, who had been studying animal "mutilation" cases for some time, which said that unidentified lights in the air were invariably associated with "mute" cases. The conclusion that almost suggested itself was that some sort of electric fireball was earthing its electrical energies through grazing animals, inducing the cauterized traumas as they "quenched" their thermal energy by contact with the animal's tissue. I had found yet another anomaly that seemed to have electricity or electromagnetics centrally implicated. The next day, co-researcher Anne Silk wrote to tell me that she had found a pattern that suggested that crop-circles occurred at points equidistant between two in-phase radio-frequency transmitters. This was just too much for me to take, and as I had never been interested in crop-circles, I did not try to check this. Now I realise that one of the reasons that EM fields seem to have such wide implications for so many anomalies, is because classes of phenomena which had always been thought of as distinct and unrelated to each other, were in reality just different variations of the same electromagnetic processes. That is to say, I realised that fundamentally, with certain exceptions, ghosts and aliens were just different versions of the same thing - field-induced hallucination. Huge categories of psychical research and ufology merged via the unifying banner of electromagnetics. II Secondly, I am only too aware that for a hypothesis to be scientific, it should be possible to test it's validity by experimentation or by duplicating methods that were used, to see if the same results are obtained independently or not. That is to say, if it could be shown to be false or true. One simple way of doing this with the Electromagnetic Pollution Approach is to ask "abductees"/experiencers (or physically check environments for yourself) if the parameters I have listed apply to them or not. These are contained in the '25 Questions' on page 28 of "Electric UFOs". If they say "no" to most of the questions, it is an indication that the hypothesis is false and does not apply to "abductees". If however, they answer in the affirmative to most of the questions, especially five key questions, then obviously the hypothesis does apply to them. In my book they are questions 4, 10, 13, 16 and 20. Also, it should be remembered, that not all of the information asked for by the questions will actually be known by the "abductee"/experiencer, e.g. if there is a transmitter of radio-frequencies near their house. Most people do not even know what a transmitter looks like. So this is something that the investigator would have to check up upon themselves. Also, not everyone is aware that they have food allergies, and there are ways of discovering this if it applies to them or not. Also, the presence of an EM hot spot means little by itself, as they are all over the place. It is the incidence of a significant proportion of the other 24 parameters that eventually develop that become the convincing evidence that mounts as each question is answered. The incidence of an EM hot spot is a necessary but not a sufficient condition in the evidential mix. If Mr Williams really bothers to read "Electric UFOs" in detail, he may realise that I am describing a certain psychological profile and a very specific electrical history. Does Mr Williams really think that I would go ahead and publish these questions for all to see, if they had not already been thoroughly checked up upon many times in many different ways over several years? He has clearly got the totally mistaken idea that the approach I have developed is a very simplistic one. Or does this over-simplification on his part really just reflect his own limited levels of understanding? 6) Mr Williams says: "Budden implies that ALL paranormal events are mag. Change = neurological change = paranormal claims. A more realistic belief might be.. Some paranormal events may cause field changes = neurological change = paranormal claims." I could hardly believe what I was reading when I got to this section of Williams' ideas. Is he serious to suggest that "A more realistic belief' is that magnetic fields are being created "paranormally"? I have already stated that I do not think that all reported "paranormal" events are caused by EM fields, but are due to a mixture of causes, including hoax, sociological effects and non-EM environmental processes, such as seismic forces, infrasound etc. However, Mr Williams is suggesting that it is the "paranormal" events that are causing the EM field changes, and astoundingly, even thinks that this is amore realistic option! I must begin to address this suggestion by Mr Williams by stating at the outset that "paranormal" events do not exist at all. The events that are usually regarded as "paranormal" are really events and processes that science has not yet understood, and the "paranormal" realities of yesterday are the "normal" realities of today. That is to say, as we learn more about events and processes that are thought of as "paranormal" and are eventually understood, they become "normalised", and are no longer thought of as "paranormal". So it is illogical to retain the view that there are classes of phenomena that are intrinsically and permanently outside of "the normal". Science advances and what was regarded as supernatural is eventually understood in terms of causations. For example, in pre-scientific times, the rings of toadstools found on grassland were regarded as "fairy-rings" and it was thought that "the little folk" made them. But when the science of botany developed, it was shown that these rings were due to a sub-soil fungus. The same basic process is still happening - the normalisation of the "paranormal". In fact, this is exactly what I am doing by developing the Electromagnetic Pollution Approach that Mr Williams is trying his hardest to resist. Quite simply, through empirical investigation and research into specifically chosen realities/phenomena regarded as "paranormal", I have discovered the causation processes responsible for them. I am so sure of the correctness of these discoveries, that I can and have predicted that certain parameters will be present in cases that I have not yet discovered, but have by others. And further, my discoveries regarding causation processes. So in effect, because of this continual process where "paranormal" events become understood and "normalised" by scientific investigation and research, Mr Williams' suggestion that it could be "paranormal" processes that are bringing electromagnetic hot spots into existence, is meaningless. Also, what could possibly be his evidence for the existence of such processes? Actually, the way that he uses the term "paranormal" suggests that he thinks that there are causeless events and processes, permanently mysterious things that happen that are not caused by anything except maybe "spirits" or aliens. This is sensationalist nonsense. He also uses "paranormal" in the same way that some people use the term supernatural - miraculous events outside of any possible context that science could investigate. Here it is the realms of faith and religion that are being considered, not science. In fact, I suspect that this is where Mr Williams is coming from - the world of belief-systems, which fulfil a quasi-religious need for him, which transforms his everyday mundane world into something more exciting. He should get out more. He should certainly realise that his ideas and frames of reference regarding what he regards as "paranormal" are and have radically changed, and his ways of thinking are out-of-date "thought dinosaurs". While you were busy looking backwards, a quiet conceptual revolution regarding ghosts and a1iens has taken place, Mr Williams. You are way behind the times. Albert Budden. --[end of part 2/2]----- ========================== Forwarded message ends ========================