Category: Personal thoughts

  • NOTE: I used to have several older essays on the paranormal posted on my author site. When I recently updated the site, I removed all this material and decided to post it here. This essay was originally posted in 2004.  —- Why I'm Not a Skeptic For the past couple of years, as a sideline…

  • After the usual procrastination, I've finished the job of culling old, unwanted posts. I left in the ones that I think may still be of interest, as well as a few that I just happen to like.  My criteria for elimination were pretty straightforward. In general. I deleted posts that …  dealt with transient political…

  • In an effort to clean up the blog archives, I'm removing stuff that's no longer relevant, including most of my political commentary. I want the blog to be focused on the paranormal, without the distractions provided by outdated posts on Hurricane Katrina and the controversy over waterboarding.  In retrospect, I probably never should have used…

  • For a variety of reasons, I've decided the time has come to essentially shut down this long-running blog. I've certainly enjoyed our conversations over the years, and I appreciate all the feedback – well, most of the feedback! 😊 – that I've received. But I think it's time to move on. For one thing, having…

  • My friend Michael Tymn, who's written several excellent books on evidence for the afterlife and who maintains a blog at the White Crow Books site, interviewed me recently about my new book The Far Horizon. He asked good questions, as you would expect.  I noticed that one commenter on Mike Tymn's site said that the…

  • Well, I guess I can cross "appearing on a nationally syndicated radio show" off my bucket list. I did that earlier this week with my appearance on Coast to Coast AM, hosted by George Noory. It was sort of a trial by fire for somebody who'd never done a radio appearance before, if you don't…

  • Roger Knights directed me to this story in the Washington Post. It's heartwarming and reassuring, and may provide some comfort in these increasingly crazy (and crazy-making) times. The story is written by a hospice social worker, Scott Janssen, who, like many people in that field, has encountered patients with compelling stories of deathbed visits and…

  • I'm sorry to say that our longtime commenter Bruce Siegel passed away this week.  As I understand it, Bruce, who was in his seventies, had suffered from serious cardiovascular problems since at least 2016.  Though I never met Bruce, I got to know him online through his many comments here and through occasional emails. After…

  • In our last adventure, we looked at the Gnostic myth of creation as presented in The Secret Book of John, one of the ancient documents found at Nag Hammadi. As a story of God's origins and the subsequent creation of the material world, the myth is interesting but perhaps not particularly persuasive. There is, however,…

  • I just published a short story, "Undertow," which is available for download at no cost in any ebook format. It can also be read online or printed out.   As I wrote in the promotional copy,  This little story may be only eight pages long, but it took a surprisingly long time to come together.…