More mystery needed

About a week ago, Noah Smith tweeted a little nostalgically about this:

...and I am also sympathetic to the view that it's a little sad that there seems less mystery around lately.  Yes, I know, so much of it was silly, but as someone said in response, it was a bit of an early education in empiricism to read debunking books on the likes of von Daniken and the Bermuda Triangle.   With UFOs, though, I was never satisfied with the debunking efforts, and while Hynek may have been gullible about some cases, I always found his books pretty persuasive.   

On the definite downside in the current mystery Noosphere:  it seems that terrible, cheap and trashy American "ghost hunter" reality shows have really killed the credibility of ghosts and haunting stories.   (I know these shows have never been really popular in Australia, but I see bits of them on Youtube and elsewhere, and they are awful.  American cable TV still seems to have a lot more space to fill up with trash than we do in Australia.)  Same for bad shows about celebrity mediums.   I haven't seen a medium make a convincing looking "hit" with a reader for a long, long time.

And it's not just TV or Youtube:  it seems that I haven't even read a good first hand account of any ghost or mediumship story in an online newspaper or magazine for a very long time.   

This is a real pity.   I love a good story of that kind from a person who found it unexpected and hard to explain.   But you just get the feeling lately that the souls of the departed may be too depressed by all the fakery going on that they can't bother appearing to anyone anymore!

On the upside, of course, we have seen a real and major revival of UFO speculation, with the US Navy story which, I admit, is very cool and interesting.   Of course, drones and Starlink launches are making for many, many fake events, but there still is enough real mystery about the military related events to keep a good level of excitement there.  And revisiting some older cases is still pretty interesting.

I also somehow recently again came across this story from 2018, which I don't think I have mentioned before.   It's hard to believe, but it is seems it is still possible for a large white jet aircraft to be flying over California and Oregon and to have no one know where it ended up.  (It was tracked on radar, had no transponder working, was sighted by commercial pilots at some distance, and F 15s were sent up to try to identify it.)   I mean, really:  how is that possible that they lost track of it.  But it appears they did.  

One other persistent mystery, although again it is more of a technological than a paranormal one, is the Havana syndrome.  I don't think I have ever gotten around to commenting on it, but I saw a clip this weekend of a doctor explaining what happened to him when he visited Cuba, and again it's a case of a first hand account by a credible sounding person being surprisingly convincing.   I am inclined to think that there is a real phenomena there. 

Update:   I suppose the better heading for the post might be "Paranormal mystery down; technological mystery up".  

While I do like technological mystery, paranormal ones have always struck me as having potential to be truly revolutionary.   I mean, convincing proof of an afterlife, or even ESP, would blow the current state of scientific materialism out of the water; proof of observation by alien UFOs - not at all, really.  Hence I am a little disappointed if evidence for paranormal events seems to be fading.