Site Visit: Howley Hall

Howley Hall hardly registers on any scale of national fame. It is largely unknown even in the local area - other than having loaned its name to the golf club that now abuts its erstwhile grounds. At one time, however, it was a grand country pile of the type that still lie in profusion across England.

Time hasn't been kind to the ruins. Today only one wall remains standing above ground, and is weathered and beaten into a lumpily misshapen form. Below ground, little can be seen, but there are still entrances to the top couple of the now filled-in cellars.

Despite its unprepossessing appearance and uninvolving history, it still looms large in my own memory. As a child in my mid-teens, two friends and I spent the best part of a summer walking the 3 miles or so from our homes, carrying spades, picks and a change of clothes in an attempt to excavate the cellars. We laboured long and hard to remove several tonnes of rubble and soil from the cellars and I believe it is thanks to our efforts that today the local ne'er-do-wells can clamber inside to smoke weed and drink awful lager.

Returning for the first time in many a long year, I found that the site is more overgrown than I recall as nature slowly strangles the work of man into submission. The cellar we excavated is still accessible and has been improved by the addition of a hole in the roof allowing for a fire to be lit. Very cosy, I'm sure.

Conspiracy ideation

There is a very fundamental appeal to conspiracy theories. Firstly, we know at heart that official have motive, means and opportunity to lie. Secondly, we know that there are limits to their competence. Thirdly, history shows us that in many cases the first story told by officialdom is very often false. We only have to think of famous cases such as the Birmingham Six, Guildford Four or Stefan Kiszko to know that the police have displayed an historic willingness to lie - even at tremendous cost to the innocent.

Like many people, I have therefore dipped a toe in the waters of conspiracy. However, as time has advanced, my position is now more open minded. I remain prepared to believe that cover ups continue to this day and that a compliant media will happily swallow untruths if it serves their own agenda. But I also don't write a blank cheque for conspiracy theorists. I will believe that Jimmy Savile was a monstrous paedophile, but I won't accept claims that he took part in Satanist rituals.

In many ways, the post 9/11 world is to blame. The 1990s were awash with conspiracy theories, but of a largely harmless nature. If Area 51 really did harbour alien technology, then it would actually have been kind of cool. Government motives at the time were largely painted in colours of "they daren't tell us" and as such could be regarded as harmless. Out in the USA, of course, threats of the New World Order were enough to push some conspiracy theorists into outright violence, but in most cases you could lap up a good conspiracy over a cup of tea and do no harm.

Now? The well has been poisoned - both by various "truther" movements, but also by governments themselves. There is little edification to be had in debating the reality of a 9/11 or a 7/7 or what the exact circumstances of Osama Bin Laden's death were.

So now I won't just accept any story. The facts of the 7/7 attacks, for example, are clearly more complex and suggestive than the bland certainties offered by the official reports. However, it is also clear that wacky fringe beliefs such as "the Israelis did it" are not grounded in any reality at all.

Personal Haunting Anecdotes

Recently, I received the sad news that my cousin had died unexpectedly (and as yet unexplainedly) at the tragically young age of 36. O Wednesday I attended his funeral where we celebrated his life - which he lived at remarkable pace and with apparently no regrets. Following a minor health scare at the start of the year, he made a will and left notes to various family member (me included) in case anything should happen - a prescient move as it turned out.

At the wake, his girlfriend told me how she had been "visited" by him during the evening. She awoke in the night to feel his weight in the bed next to her, and could feel him stroking the outside of her thigh. She treated this with a mixture of both alarm and comfort - joking that she hoped he wasn't looking in when she used the toilet, but apparently convinced that in some way he was still "here."

Another friend recounted how he and his girlfriend's iPads were discovered one morning, having been moved together and with one of his favourite songs being played. Yet another friend told me how their phone had inexplicably started showing photos of him when it was unlocked.

All of these people were sincere, and evidently took comfort in his continuing presence. I am sceptical about the reality of life after death, but I await with interest - and a little bit of hope - to see if he pays me too a visit.

If you're reading this, Rob, you know where to find me....

Crop Circle Nostalgia

I recently picked up a battered old copy of Timothy Good's The UFO Report 1991. At the time, the crop circle phenomena was still just creeping into the mainstream consciousness and to many people (myself included, but hey - I was only 16!) represented a very real mystery.

Crop circles at that point still mainly took the form their name suggests: mere circles. As such, early experts such as meteorologist Terence Meaden were wheeled out to explain how atmospheric vortices were a likely explanation for the appearance of the circles.

At first blush, the theory had much to commend it - after all, whirlwinds (and even the odd tornado) are hardly unknown, even in the UK. A modified, short-lived vortex could very conceivably leave a trace such as that seen in the early crop circles.

Arraigned against that explanation was the idea that it was ET Wot Done It. Somehow, people were taken by the notion that alien life forms would cross the vasty depths of space in order to flatten some wheat in Wiltshire.

As the phenomenon gained in complexity (and arguably burst into the mainstream with the massive Alton Barnes formation which found fame as the front cover to Led Zeppelin's Remasters album) the vortex theory soon began to look silly. This didn't stop its proponents from advancing ever more complicated theories as to how a vortex could create unusual shapes. All of it, with hindsight, was the merest tosh.

Good's book took me instantly book to those heady days when everything seemed possible - almost as if a message from beyond our solar system would be revealed to us among the bent wheat stems of remote field.

Of course, the wonder has gone from the topic. We're all older, wiser and - perhaps - a little sadder now.

The Northampton Clown

The currently-much-ballyhooed Northampton Clown is quite an interesting case study for anyone with a passing curiousity about localised flurries of panic. While it appears that there is genuinely someone behind this (as distinct from 'phantom social workers' or short-lived phenomena such the Halifax Slasher or Mad Gasser of Mattoon) the clown taps into a general fear of both clowns and public nonconformity.

While most are pleased to pass it off as a harmless bit of local eccentricity and fun, you don't have to look far on his Facebook page to discover rumours of paedophilia or knife carrying. There is also an equal reaction from people who think the "clown" could himself be in danger from vigilantes.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is that the clown is publicising himself. In some ways, this lessens the sense of mystery: we know that real person is really doing this, and that it is being done in a sense of fun. For lovers of the weird, it would arguably more satisfying that the tale be limited to rumour and speculation.

Conspiracy theorists.... or realists?

Time was that I was a convinced conspiracy theorist. In those fevered years between my mid teens and my mid twenties, I knew that Area 21 was holding the remains of the Roswell crashed saucer. I knew that JFK had been gunned down by someone on the grassy knoll (and I still recommend 'Best Evidence' as a great read).

And then, as reality of home ownership, a career and life in general began to settle in, I started to apply my scepticism to myself. Gradually, I opened my mind up to the possibility that I was misleading myself and as the internet became more part of my life, I started to question a lot of things that I'd held to be true. I'd been moralistic about climate change, then changed my mind. I'd been a firm supporter of the extraterrestrial hypothesis but then slowly became hugely sceptical of that.

And by the age of 30? I was among the most hardened of cynics and sceptics.

But now (as I approach 40 with greater speed than I care to admit!) I find myself somewhere in the middle. The Iraq war and the War on Terror... Hillsborough... Climategate... Savile... a constant low-level hum of instances where the official story turns out to have been untrue has reawakened my scepticism of scepticism.

I no longer believe any authority or self proclaimed expert. There are 'real' events and there are 'explanations' but they compete in the foggy swamp of human experience - somewhere beyond the reach of rationalism or science, uncollatable and intangible, but nonetheless 'real' to the person experiencing them.

Was Jimmy Savile a satanist? I doubt it very much. The reports that filled the press at the start of the year fairly stank of False Recovered Memory Syndrome. Notorious therapist Valerie Sinason seems to have been at the root of the reports, which filled the pages of the Daily Express in particular for the salacious delectation of its readership.

Still an evil bastard though.