“Burnt State” – The Story’s The Thing

“Burnt State”‘s own artwork provided for our Easter day interview

“Burnt State” (or simply “Robert”) is the online alias of a man who has looked deeply into our relationship to the paranormal. After my last appearance on the Paracast, I noticed his comments in their forums and asked him if he would consent to an interview on RM.

Robert is interested in the way that we use storytelling to make sense of the world; particularly the stranger parts. Any witness to something that shouldn’t be has to find a way to make sense of it and in many cases communicate the experience to others. In this  insidious way, weirdness remains locked in a context that we have created.

We started out with Robert’s own dramatic UFO sighting from childhood and how it still affects him. He made the case that trauma can be experienced as abuse, violence, or just something that doesn’t make rational sense. Our brains either cover it up or make sense of it with a story that we can handle. We discussed the problem of schizophrenics and how simple talking therapy may help them and others with buried issues.

Robert is a high school teacher and he described the pressures that children and teenagers are subjected to in an age of almost total digital sitmuli and aggressive marketing. He has some novel ways of making his students aware of this and taking back their individuality. He also had an amazing story about his Ouija board experiments.

There is just a sample of our wide-ranging conversation, so I’ll shut up now and let you listen.

P.S. The audio of UFO witness testimony discussed during the show is available here, track 15. See also the story of “Conjuring Up Philip,” mentioned during our talk.