Fairies, Folklore and Forteana THE BOGGLE FACTOR

SIMON YOUNG FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF

Many FT readers will be familiar with the Boggle Factor, the moment in a fortean account when you cease to believe.

Your average UFO researcher will be happy, say, to hear about an interdimensional spacecraft landing in your garden. But he will become anxious if the aliens, according to your account, dance a Highland jig on the lawn afterwards, announcing that you are the new messiah.

Everyone has different boggle thresholds, of course, depending on the matter in hand. Personally, I am fascinated by telepathy in dreams. I, likewise, get a kick out of fairies in the hill or ogres under the bridge and I love poltergeists. But I cannot stand the notion of precognitive dreams. The idea of visits from dead loved ones (aka ghosts) offends, meanwhile, my sense of, well, decency. As to reincarnation, I break out in hives at the words “in a previous life…”

Writing this stuff down, I’m aware that it must seem arbitrary. But there is a logic, I think, however depressing. Telepathic dreams work for me because I like the idea of hive humans dreaming in unison. I like the æsthetics of fairies and trolls because I have an almost cultish sense of landscape and place. I like poltergeists because I’m fascinated by families under stress, the main determinant of knocking and plate-flying outbreaks. But my world-view would shatter had I to incorporate prophetic dreams – time is linear, time is linear – or a belief in life (of any kind) after death. This is not to say that the evidence for these things is bad. Very often it is not. For instance, the proofs for precognitive dreams are – I’m grimacing – in many cases compelling.

But we are prisoners of our belief systems and, if our belief systems are threatened, good evidence peels off our brains like a fried onion off Teflon. If I had to – pistol at my temple – explain evidence for precog dreams, I’d try to explain it through, frankly, half-arsed ideas about telepathy.

Intellectual dishonesty? Yes, like much of our musings on politics, relationships and the world. Our minds are made for survival not for rational thought: and, remember, these same wonderfully flawed instruments that distort good thinking are also the filter (and sometimes the source) for our anomalous experiences. As Jill Bolte Taylor has it: “Most of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, but we are actually feeling creatures that think.” The solution? No idea. But a constant state of unknowing is the best guide I’ve found up the slope of knowledge and into the death zone.

Simon’s latest book is The Boggart (Exeter University Press, 2022).

I GET A KICK OUT OF FAIRIES IN THE HILL BUT I CANNOT STAND THE NOTION OF PRECOGNITIVE DREAMS