Let me clear the air on my involvements in these areas. I do so just in case anyone wanted to get the opinion on something from someone who has spent a great deal of time studying some of these things. When I saw the OP I decided that the intent of this was just to make fun of everything (whether I knew what the real status of the studies were or not), but what-the-he!l maybe there are a few who'd really like to know "what's behind the curtain" on some of these matters.
Background:
A). I taught about many of these topics as a Scientific Methodology course where senior students were required to choose one anomalies subject, find what was being claimed, research if there were any actual facts, and if so, determine which alternative hypotheses fit those facts better (pointing out strengths and weaknesses.) --- by the way, it is true that most academics scoff at these subjects. It is also true that almost none of them have actually studied any of them. In other words they are farting BS. (sorry--- some of my "colleagues" do not rate much respect for their cheapshot tribalism and prejudices on these matters.)
B). My brother and I saw a domed disk "UFO" case which made me interested in the subject from then on. After getting my science prof job, I went to Chicago to meet the former USAF scientific consultant on UFOs, Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern, who had created a civilian research team, which I joined. I still am affiliated with the Center for UFO Studies, and, in the old days, was the editor of their academic journal (double-blind peer-reviewed and all that), The Journal of UFO Studies.
C). Since those days, I met with and been called in as an "expert" (if there are any such people in fields which remain mysteries) by essentially all the world's leading persons of interest except the military --- though I've met many of them as well privately.
D). As a Catholic, my background also leads me to believe in spiritual matters, and in that scientific method course there were opportunities to research several matters involving parapsychology, near-death experiences, poltergeist phenomena, apparitions et al. I decided to join the Society for Scientific Exploration which was a "quiet" group of researchers (all originally PhD's and MD's) where I met with most of North America's leading researchers on those sorts of things. A few, like Robert Jahn of Princeton (psychokinesis), Larry Dossey of the NIH's Alternative Medicine Office (non-traditional healing), and Ken Ring of UConn (near-death experiences) became friends. I also then met several cryptozoological researchers (Henry Bauer/Virginia Tech), Grover Krantz /Washington State, Roy Mackal /UChicago, who I respect. The bottomline of that is that there are reasons that most of the "big" anomalies stay mysterious yet viable, and, although the public seldom hears anything but mockery, there are really good people in each of these fields who warrior on in pursuit and anonymity.
E). I wrote, with nine other scholars, the most praised (by library journals) UFO subject book ever published --- UFOs and Government, the behind the looking glass view of how our government (and those of Sweden, France, Australia, and Spain) handled the dilemma which these "air incursions" placed upon them. The book is in well over a hundred academic libraries.
F). There's much more to my involvement with these mysteries, which I rarely have done "in the field", but rather as a typical prof with the books and journals --- but some otherwise "personal" things have also applied. The most spectacular of these are family happenings involving brothers and sisters, whose reports (poltergeist effects, apparitions, "phantom rider in car", clairvoyance, "trickster events", post-death events) have added an element of hard reality (my siblings are hard sells when it comes to "odd stuff" and completely trustworthy to me) to many areas of anomalous events even though I knew that the Vatican has long admitted the reality of much of this "paranormal" stuff.
With a whole life's worth of this sort of study, there is far too much to tell. I tried to tell some of it in my (now-inactive) blog, The Big Study, so named to indicate that it did not stop with the truncated view of the Universe of the science texts, but rather the expanded view of both science and Catholicism (and other traditions.)
So, if anyone ever wants a serious comment on any of this stuff, ask: if I've studied it, I'll probably respond. As said, I realize that the OP created this as a joke and mockery thread, so I'm probably not the guy for that.
