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The beauty of my story is that it cannot endanger anybody’s lives or their careers. Interaction is a very personal thing that doesn’t often go beyond the person involved and I can assure that my identity is irrelevant. I am neither a scientist nor government official and I doubt I am known that well beyond my street. I seek to avoid the personal disruption that even a short burst of publicity sometimes causes. On the other hand I desperately want to relay my story and my purpose for writing is primarily to touch upon a familiar note with those who know what I’m talking about. I need to establish that it isn’t just a subjective illusion that needs avoiding. The things that I once came across are perennial and have been secretly known about by our ancestors. However, I feel I will be relatively safe because the majority of people will not believe a single word I have said. That is fine because in a way I really can’t blame them. The interactive side of the paranormal puts the experiencer in a very difficult position leaving them as I am without a single shred of evidence or a witness to support the claims. That of course will motivate the sceptics and sadly leave the genuine subjects frustrated by their absence of evidential “legs”. Although I sympathise profusely with this frustration and would champion it 100%, I really don’t feel that way personally. My only request to those who don’t believe me is this: just consider where it actually is that these experiences are supposed to have happened. Have they ever taken place in the reality you know? Can you bring back a sample from a bizarre dream or sudden déja vu to prove that it actually happened? Whatever power of convincing it takes to win over the overwhelming factor of doubt isn’t something I can afford to waste my energy on. Even though I understand the doubts coming from the majority, I haven’t written this book to try to win them over in any way. My aim is to strike a chord with the small minority that this has happened to and to establish with them that these things are real. Only then will the esoteric things I describe get the investigation for which they are waiting. I want the traditions of folklore and religion to be looked into with the same seriousness that science has and for all the areas of the paranormal to be examined alongside it. It will mean getting closer to the things that we consider taboo, which is more or less what my old study group aimed to do by “getting that bit closer’. The phenomena that I have experienced suggest much about an afterlife and often hint at the mysticism of religion. The sacrilege behind these subjects shouldn’t bar them from getting the same 116