What is immediately striking here, apart from the factual errors (the Isle of Skye is not in the North Sea and Loch Ness is not between Edinburgh and Jedburgh) is the strong desire for credibility.Personal anecdotes are offered as proof.Even on the radio claims are made to having photographs (which can’t be seen in that medium) that aren’t shown because of various restrictions.There’s no doubt that Ed and Lorraine were completely sincere in that they believed in the reality of the phenomena they studied.They have to be credited with taking seriously what mainstream science simply cannot study.I often found myself wondering why there can’t be any middle ground here.The truth only appears when all the hands are face-up on the table.
Volumes like this, that preserve misstatements of a clearly aging Ed, do not help the cause of credibility.Yes, people get forgetful with age.Yes, people sometimes misspeak.Credulity, however, doesn’t lead to credibility.Many times Tony, after receiving an intriguing answer to a question, would immediately switch the subject instead of following up with a probing request for more detail.The interview becomes a pastiche of friends remembering old times and claiming this is the truth because they all agree that it is.Perhaps my negative response comes from the fact that truth itself is under attack by the United States government even as I write.The world has lost the ability to judge objective evidence and come out with a reasoned assessment.Are there ghosts?Perhaps so, but to get to the truth of the matter will require more than the insistence that we believe “because I told you so.”