Posthuman Blues

Some researchers maintain that "paranormal" occurrences are interlinked by an underlying syntactical logic (see Loren Coleman's recent post on the Fortean "name game").

Maybe we should attempt a more formal, quantitative analysis of these claims. One example that I find oddly amusing is the famous Hopkinsville, KY "invasion," in which a family opened fire on bizarre, goblin-like beings that they assumed were alien visitors.

Many ufologists committed to the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) exclude the Hopkinsville incident from their files because, at least in retrospect, it seems so implausible; attacking an isolated farmhouse hardly seems like the behavior expected of "real" extraterrestrials. Interestingly, journalists noted that purported psychic Edgar Cayce had grown up just south of Hopkinsville. Some Forteans wondered, not completely without justification, if there might be some sort of connection.





Enter artist Budd Hopkins, whose research has rendered "alien abductions" and the ETH virtually synonymous in the public imagination. Books such as "Missing Time" and "Intruders" (both seminal works in several respects) echo Hopkins' belief that manipulative ETs are visiting Earth in order to engage in a long-term transgenic experiment.

Is Hopkins an unwitting player in an acausal mosaic of weird happenings? If so, it seems his nuts-and-bolts conclusions regarding the alleged alien presence comprise a kind of "punchline" to the unlikely antics exhibited by the Hopkinsville "goblins," who behaved more like mechanized circus monkeys than Hopkins' own methodical genetic engineers.

Skeptics will point out that "Hopkins" is hardly an unusual name. But there are enough cases of synchronicity within UFO research alone to justify a closer, more rigorous analysis. Perhaps Fortean events unfold in a barely glimpsed "Matrix," their manifestations only partially perceptible to baseline human consciousness.