The Otherness - Tim Watts-pages

Page 54 of 154

Page 54 of 154
The Otherness - Tim Watts-pages

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accurately, the phase of contact addressing communication and the final phase of interaction. We agreed that it wasn’t necessarily the most original title and suspected that someone somewhere might just be using it. After scanning the latest copies of all the current publications on the subject, it appeared that nobody had claimed “CES” so fortunately it was ours. Wendy had set up a mailing address with the local Post Office for anyone interested as we weren’t confident enough at this stage to deal with personal enquiries. I had managed to word and print up some useful group literature using a local library’s PC and Paul combed the area for possible meeting places in the future. Luckily he was blessed verbally and was appointed “group leader” to introduce and co-ordinate these future gatherings and explain our study to people. My job would be to deal with the group’s literature such as postal enquiries and future club newsletters which at first I didn’t think would generate much interest. To my surprise, when the advert had finally gone out to one of the magazines, we received a bigger response rate than imagined. People were certainly curious about these subjects at the time and whatever was spreading through the public interest opened up a whole new door for us. At first we were nervous by the rate of response, particularly as a new group taking on paranormal research. On reflection I would say that 60% of the enquirers were just curious and once I mailed their information, they would no doubt shelve it for another day. That was fine; the least it would do was perhaps generate news of our group. The 40% that did pursue it replied almost immediately and seemed adamant to meet up and start chasing flying saucers. It would then be up to us, the threesome to arrange a meeting for hungry enquirers and make our aims clear to them right away. I think that most of them were unaware that we were a brand new organisation with a membership of just three. There seemed to be all kinds of expectations during the time and in hindsight I can understand why. People in general want things tailor made and normally when approaching an organisation like us, they hope it will be an established group. Deep down they were hoping, as I would have if approaching a study group, to find a resourceful niche that will confirm that the unexplained is real. We needed them for contribution as much as they needed us for addressing their needs and interests. At the end of the day we could not produce a spaceship or provide true grounding for their beliefs. 54 Personally, I wanted to emphasise some scepticism to the study because that