A question I find difficult to answer (and what puts me off the old Uncanny-likes of the world) is: do you believe?

Do you believe in aliens?

Do you believe in ghosts?

Are you #TeamBeliever or #TeamSkeptic?

I don’t know what I believe

So many questions first: what is a ghost? What do you mean by ‘ghost’? What did they mean by ‘ghost’? What do I mean by ‘ghost’?

There are hoaxes, there are charlatans, there are bloggers and ‘whistleblowers’ and entertainers who make a buck getting other people to take them seriously.

But there won’t ever be a time where ‘ghosts’ are proven to be real or not real. And I’m more interested in the people who report these things, rather than the things themselves.

What I do believe in is good faith. As long as there is at least one person who believes that they saw something they can’t explain, and which they think is beyond the ken (bloody hell, Ken) of science, then there’s something interesting to look into.

That’s what I love about Fortean Times. They report on the reports. The magazine started out it’s life being simply known as The News. It doesn’t report that aliens landed. It reports that people claim that aliens landed. It doesn’t close its mind to the possibility of something paranormal (even when it makes sense to, sometimes), but as far as its aim to allow in the ‘damned data’ (in Fort’s own words) it performs an admirable service.

A third way, and a fourth, and…

So, do I believe in UFOs? Yes, in the sense that people see things in the sky they can’t identify. Do I believe in ghosts? Yes, to the extent that people see weird shapes that look like people but aren’t. But do I believe that extraterrestrials are visiting this planet in vehicles that we call UFOs, or that when people die some remnant of them continues to exist? I’m open to the idea, but… no, that’s not a conclusion I’m about to jump to.

Maybe I’m #TeamFortean.

Believable	Possible	Hypothetical
I saw a light in the sky and I don’t know what it was.	It was a spaceship piloted by ET. It was a flare. It was a satellite.	The government is covering up the presence of extraterrestrial civilisations which have been here for decades and doing deals with dozens of successive administrations, and none of them has blown the whistle on this without a lucrative book deal in the offing.
I saw a shadow which looked like a person or a creature I know to be dead.	The spirit of the deceased lives on after bodily death. Buildings preserve a memory of emotional or traumatic events that happen within them. People have psychic connections with their loved ones which manifests in unearthly encounters with shades, though these are not truly related to the deceased.	God put a soul in every human, which leaves the body upon its death and this soul goes to Heaven, but sometimes the person has unfinished business so needs to stick around to communicate with those still in the physical world. They can be got rid of through exorcism rituals or completing the unresolved business for them.
I saw some ripples on the surface of a lake that has a reputation for unusual denizens, and I can’t immediately explain it in terms of the weather or flotsam.	The Loch Ness Monster lives here. There are overgrown / giant eels which live in this lake.	Prehistoric monsters can survive in very deep lakes for millions of years, despite not having enough breeding partners or offspring to produce one sighting every few decades.