I am currently suffering from what is becoming commonly known as the ‘paranormal hangover’, although in fairness mine may also be remnant of the alcohol consumed on Friday night too. Especially as I am not usually a big drinker, but in the company of my good paranormal friends proceeded to fulfill my quota, oops my bad! 

Alcohol aside though I had an excellent weekend of catching up with friends from the paranormal community, new and old, as well as many people that popped in because they were curious to find out a little more. Which is what it’s all about really. 

The “Mini Con” was organised by Sage Paranormal and their enigmatic leader Mariehanna Ventouris Dickson (or MJ as we call her). The day itself was well organised and as ever there were a few hiccups as these kind of events do have, but they were managed well and from start to finish the event was delivered well. My hat is off to MJ and co for organising such an excellent day. I know from organising an investigation for a team of ten at public location that it’s not easy, so organising an all day event with talks, stalls, stuff to hold interest; is really hard to do. Good work MJ and Sage. 

The main hall contained many stalls from paranormal events teams, to investigation teams, mediumship, Paranormal Radio, craft and even beer. This made for an interesting set of things to look at, but also many an interesting conversation too. Conversations which varied across the scope of the paranormal field for me. I’m pretty sure that throughout the course of the day I spoke to a few people about the gadgetry used to investigate the paranormal, which incidentally tied in well with the first lecture by Carl Hutchinson. 

Paranormal Tech

Carl delivered an excellent explanation of a few of the bits of kit out there which paranormal investigators utilise to understand a haunted location. Carl also included a few stories from some of the investigations he has been on too, which are always fascinating and after all the ‘ghost stories’ are the primary spark which often started us on our path of investigation. If you ever get the chance to chat with Carl about the paranormal from a tech side, you won’t regret it that’s for sure. 

Mediumship & MJ’s Talk

Unfortunately I missed Liz Cormell’s lecture on Mediumship as I was engaged deep in conversations with other investigators about our understanding of reality, which is a subject for another post for sure. My sincere apologies to Liz for missing your lecture, please forgive me? I also missed MJ’s lecture too for the very same reason, so apologies to you too. However I heard nothing, but positive things about both talks. Hopefully I will get the opportunity to hear them both talk in the near future. 

My Lecture on Telepathy

I done my best to deliver a brief lecture on what I have learnt about telepathy; from our understanding of the subject, to its originator Frederick Myers, all the way to the more recent research on the subject which is now beginning to take flight. It’s my understanding that telepathy is a fundemental thing that could help us understand how information could be transferred from one mind to another. Once we begin how that’s possible and how it works between the living, we may begin to theorise how or if it could be applied to consciousness after death. There’s plenty on this website about the subject, so please feel free to have a look around. 

Demonology

Jason Love’s lecture on Demonology was the final lecture of the day, which was only a snippet of the usual lectures he often delivers to universities. He also brought with him one or two haunted objects, which included a few scary looking dolls, a weird wooden box and a picture of the crying boy. The subject of Demonology has always been one of the paranormal areas which has caught my interest a little. Although the dark stories which are associated with it often make excellent reading or good plots for movies, there are equally serious aspects which Jason spoke of during his lecture. These particular cases can cause both physical and psychological trauma which often continues to exist long after the spirit, entity or demon is expelled. 

Personally I have always struggled with this side of things as I often attributed it to the families belief structure or perhaps their psychological state to begin with. That’s not to say I discounted or struck it off as fool hardy tales. I learnt pretty early on in the paranormal to be respectful of the beliefs of others, whether that belief be religious or an understanding of paranormal activity. Especially in circumstances that I had not experienced myself and thus was in no position to comment on. I guess this is an area of paranormal knowledge I need to expand a little. 

Oddly as what often happens at these gatherings, I come away with ideas and also connections with which I hope to work in the future. In this case Jason is one such connection and as long as our schedules fit, hopefully in the future I will be able to tell you of a joint project with Jason. So, keep your eyes peeled for that one. 

An Event for the Paranormal Community

All in all the Sage ‘Mini Con’ was an excellent day for networking in the paranormal field, learning a little perhaps and also bringing our community together a little more. I know in the past the term ‘Para-unity’ has been thrown around and also heavily criticised, but if that term has meaning then it’s events like these which will help achieve it. In my mind the paranormal community has great potential to help each other in understanding the unknown universe around us. The science community is beginning to research many areas that have for years been considered taboo, including telepathy, psychokinesis and much more. Many universities now have the parapsychology departments, which means we should have more true future Parapsychologist pushing the true science angle. However we still need understanding of the more spiritual side from mediumship to how we simply interact with haunted locations. Together as a community this can be achieved. I think it was MJ that said it over the course of the weekend; although a background understanding helps, experience at investigating helps, it could easily be someone that’s been in the field ten years or ten minutes that comes up with that great idea that helps us understand the paranormal. 

Personally I would like to see more standardisation in how we all document our cases and investigations, so we can share the information and data, which should allow us to cross reference and understand the paranormal a lot better. I have some ideas on this, as do others I have spoken to about. If you do too, please feel free to give me a shout? 

Sage Paracon UK in October 2016

If you missed this Saturday’s ‘Mini Con’ fear not as the Sage Paranormal team have already started work on their next event which will be bigger and better. Along with some of us that have lectured this weekend will be some bigger names in field from the US. It sounds like its going to be an awesome weekend for those with a paranormal interest and certainly packed full of cool things. 

Please check out the Sage Paranormal website and Facebook page for more details as they become available. Hopefully I will see you there..