I wondered why there had been a sudden run on sales of my Wisps from the Dazzling Darkness memoir, until I realised that the X Files had just returned to  UK TV screens this week! Our collective appetite for  that which lies beyond the boundaries of ‘normal’ does not seem to have been the least affected by the reductionist onslaught in recent years on anything and everything which lies outwith the perceptual scope of our five material senses.

I must confess to finding this particular stance by so many scientists (and other reductionists) strange, to say the least. Have they never investigated the weird worlds of quantum physics? Have they never contemplated the implications of  4% matter, 23% dark matter, 73% dark energy?  If – as contemporary scientists seems to be telling us– we only have measurable access to 4% of what’s going on, how can they be so arrogant as to dismiss what probably goes on in the 96% of energy in our universe which we cannot measure at all, as yet?

I’m very much in favour of taking a sceptical position regarding matters which seem at first sight to be impossible within conventional analytical frameworks. Sceptical, in the open-minded sense of the word, that is. However, as I have discovered over the course of my lifetime, an awful lot of people you talk to, in all kinds of contexts – bus stops, coffee bars, counselling sessions, churches, evening classes, astrology readings, cinema queues – have a story to tell, if you are prepared to listen. I am one of those people who attract other people’s weird life stories at the drop of a hat.

That was why, eventually, when I had the time to do so, I finally gave in and decided to write a book in which I told my own: atmospheres, dreams, ghosts, mediumship, mystical experience, poltergeist phenomena, prediction, premonitions, reincarnation and telepathy – yes, folks, I’ve encountered all of  that lot, much though on each and every occasion I would have much preferred not to have done so.

As far as I am concerned, ‘normal’ life hands out quite enough challenges, thanks very much, without us going looking for more in the realms of the otherworldly. However, as I – and many, many rational, reasonable, non-gullible people – have discovered, there are levels of experience which, although they lie outwith the known and measurable 4%, have a palpable reality which people cease to doubt once they have encountered it themselves.

So, readers, how about celebrating the X Files’ return by sharing some of your own tales which lie outwith the 4% of what is conventionally knowable? Be anonymous if that’s more comfortable. It would be great if you felt like leaving your story as a comment. Or email me. And in my next post, I’ll share one of my own weird stories. You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine! And – of course – you can always go over and buy my ebook. A mere $10…

500 words Anne Whitaker 2016