Reviewed by Peter A. McCue
Strange: Paranormal Realities in the Everyday World appears to be Andy Thomas’s eleventh book. Several of his previous books have been about the crop circle phenomenon, but this latest volume covers a wide range of anomalies, such as apparitions, poltergeist-type manifestations, out-of-body experiences, dowsing, crop circles, synchronicity, ‘time slips’, and UFOs. Over the years, he’s given numerous talks, both in the UK and abroad, and he’s often appeared on TV and radio; in addition, Thomas has been a frequent podcast guest. Audience members at his talks often tell him about intriguing experiences of their own, and I imagine that the bulk of the stories in this book come from that source. However, it also includes interesting accounts concerning Thomas himself, members of his family, and friends of his.
Three of Thomas’s associates (John Cole, Chris Connelly and Barry Reynolds), whom he refers to as “moderators”, offered comments and suggestions when he was writing the book. Helpfully, it contains an index.
Thomas’s theorising about the paranormal is eclectic and has a New Age and spiritualistic flavour. However, many of his formulations sound rather vague. For example, he refers to mediums facilitating communication with spirits, “probably [by] opening doors to other dimensions through psychic forces” (p. 46).
I noticed a couple of misunderstandings on Thomas’s part: (1) He equates extrasensory perception (ESP) with clairvoyance (p. 125), although psychical researchers generally define ESP more broadly, as also including telepathy and precognition (and perhaps also retrocognition – paranormal knowledge of the past). (2) He describes psychokinesis as the “ability to actively influence someone else’s mind” (p. 142). However, psychical researchers normally use the word to refer to ‘mind over matter’ effects, such as successfully ‘willing’ a random event generator to produce significantly more ones than zeros.
Thomas explains how he records and attributes witness testimony (pp. 12-13), although I don’t find this section entirely clear. It seems that in respect of testimony gleaned at live events, he routinely (or, at least, usually) employs pseudonyms for the alleged witnesses, and that he omits dates and place names “unless they are specifically relevant”. At points in the book, first-hand testimony (taken from emails) is cited. Real names are given in these instances, unless the informant has requested a pseudonym. However, I’m not sure what happens if Thomas quotes from an email received from an informant he previously met at a live event. Is that person still given a pseudonym or will he or she have the option of being identified by his or her real name?
For my part, I think that routine ‘anonymisation’ is unfortunate, since reports with real names tend to be more credible than accounts using pseudonyms. Certainly, in my experience, witnesses don’t always insist on anonymity. Furthermore, I believe that it would have been better if Thomas had made it clear, in each instance, whether he was using a real name or a pseudonym for the informant.
Routinely withholding dates and place names leaves the reader with somewhat ‘hollowed-out’ case reports! Another problem is that it’s often unclear whether Thomas obtained any corroboration of the stories related to him.
Case examples
A disturbed night in a flat
On an unspecified date, Andy Thomas gave a talk in Edinburgh at the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Centre (pp. 24-25). The night after the talk, he and his wife, Helen, were accommodated in a self-contained flat there. According to his book, this was at the top of the building. But I understand from Ann Treherne, the founder and former director and chair of the centre, that the flat is, in fact, on the second floor, which isn’t at the top of the building. Anyway, on the night in question, Andy and Helen had difficulty in getting to sleep, because of sounds coming through the walls. There was constant shouting, in a male voice, punctuated with bangs and crashes, as if furniture were being moved or thrown about. However, it seems that, eventually, the couple did manage to fall asleep. Later, when they mentioned the disturbance to their hosts, they were informed that no one lived on either side of the flat, although several other people had heard the same noises while occupying the apartment. Moreover, Andy and Helen were told that they were lucky not to have been kicked down the staircase, which had occasionally been reported by others!
Ann Treherne’s second book, The Vortex, tells of phenomena that she and others have experienced in the building. For example, in June 2012, while trying to sleep in the aforementioned apartment on the second floor, Paul Jacobs, a medium, was disturbed by noises, seemingly coming from the floor above. However, he was the only person in the building at the time (Treherne, 2023, pp. 69-71).
Deceased uncle assists nephew?
This is another undated story (pp. 37-38). The location isn’t given, and it isn’t entirely clear who Thomas’s informant was – whether it was the person referred to as ‘Roland’, whether it was his mother, or whether it was an unnamed third party. At any rate, in brief, the story is as follows: At some point when Roland was a boy, his mother asked him to take a heavy washing mangle up the stairs. It looked far too heavy to him, but a man appeared and said that he would give Roland a hand. They managed to get the item up the stairs, but when Roland looked round, the man had vanished. When Roland asked his mother who the man was, she was puzzled. However, his description of the man perfectly matched that of a deceased uncle of his.
Recurrent phenomena at a hospital
‘Rosemary’, who’d worked as a nurse in a hospital in South Africa, described events occurring in a particular ward (pp. 62-63). Each night, over an unspecified period, and at midnight precisely, the door in a wall would open and close, and people would sense a female presence passing through the ward. Then, the door in the opposite wall would open and close. This clockwork-like pattern didn’t appear to be weather-dependent. Of course, phenomena occurring with such regularity would potentially lend themselves to instrumental recording (e.g., with cameras), but Thomas mentions no such investigation, and he cites no corroborative testimony.
A guiding light
‘Jenny Elizabeth Beattie’ related that during the first Covid-19 lockdown, she did a lot of walking, and there was an occasion when she got into difficulty on a path above Fort William in Scotland (p. 167). It got so dark that she couldn’t see the path clearly in front of her, and she started tripping. Suddenly, a light appeared high up in the sky above her. Although it appeared quite small, it gave off enough illumination for her to make out the path ahead, which enabled her to reach the main trail safely.
Flying in a car
On Christmas Eve night (year not given), in an unspecified rural area, ‘Amelia’ had a strange experience while driving alone to meet friends at a restaurant (pp. 226-227). Suddenly, her car lifted into the air. It rose high above the trees and fields; it seemed to be under the control of an external force. Eventually, it came down gently near a roundabout, some six miles from where it had taken off. Too shaken to proceed to the restaurant, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to refrain from relating her ordeal, and guessing that her friends wouldn’t believe her, Amelia drove home.
Did the car really fly? Maybe. However, an alternative possibility is that Amelia experienced a false memory, and that her car never left the ground. But the insertion of the false memory could itself have been a paranormal event (see McCue, 2020).
Concluding comments
Thomas’s book contains some fascinating reports. Unfortunately, though, their evidential status is uncertain, given the relative lack of detail and – in many instances – the apparent lack of corroborative information. Accordingly, while the book may bolster the belief of existing ‘believers’, I doubt whether it will do much to change the minds of people who are sceptical about paranormal claims.
References
McCue, P. A. (2020). Paranormal memory tampering. Seriously Strange Magazine [a publication of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena], (155). 5-17.
Treherne, A. (2023). The Vortex: Arthur and me – Volume II. Independently published.