Caniswalensis's Page

This is a picture of me in 14th century armor. I wear this when practicing western martial arts with other members of a historical recreation group. I am armed with sword and buckler, in the style of Tower Manuscript I.33, the oldest surviving western martial arts treatise.

Greetings all,

I thought I would post a little about myself. It is written from my personal viewpoint, so if I say something that you find to be untrue, just consider the source. :-)

Mine is the tale of a skeptic and atheist who wishes he could believe. I am truly jealous of those that live in a larger, more interesting and more comforting world than I do. Sadly, I cannot wish myself into being a believer. I must be true to what my heart and head tell me is the right course. The worst part of it is that I was not always like this. If you are not bored yet, read on and discover how I was transformed from happy believer to resigned skeptic. It happened quite by accident.

When I was young, my mother, brother and I all believed to one extent or another in virtually any paranormal topic you can name. We were also nominal Christians, but did not really go to church.

Edgar Casey, Atlantis, Bigfoot, ghosts, & UFOs were particular favorite reading topics of ours. We even owned a complete set of the "Man Myth & Magic" encyclopedia and my brother and I just about wore them out. I just knew that with all the witnesses and evidence, all these things had to be true. I even had some “paranormal” experiences myself; a couple of out-of-body experiences, and a strange encounter with a ghost late one night in lonely wooded spot.

In our teens, my brother and I made a hot air balloon and launched it one warm summer night. Little did I realize we were also launching ourselves on the path to dreary, boring enlightenment. That balloon, glowing in the night sky, caused a UFO scare in our town. Reading of it in the paper the next day, we were amazed at the extraordinary abilities that the eyewitnesses bestowed upon our little balloon. Naturally, we immediately built and launched three more! By the time the “invasion” was over, we had racked up a respectable amount of press coverage and enough amazed eyewitness reports to give Area 51 a run for their money. All that from a couple of little balloons. We attached little significance to it at the time aside from the fun of a prank well played, but I did have this nagging little thought; the eyewitnesses had been completely convinced that our balloons had flown in formation, shot missiles, done impossible acrobatics and flown away at incredible speeds. How could they have been so wrong, and yet believe so strongly in what they were saying? I thought about it a lot as I grew to adulthood.

The balloon incident notwithstanding, I was still a true believer in all things paranormal. I turned eighteen, graduated high school & joined the navy. As I pursued my new life as an adult, both my desire to really understand these things and my reading spectrum grew with me. I began to read books having to do with science, logic and critical thinking. I realized from my reading that “evidence” and “proof” are not the same things. I came to understand the difference between subjective and objective reasoning. I discovered alternative explanations for my own paranormal experiences. Though it all, I kept thinking of those earnest reports from sane, honest people that had turned a child’s toy into an extraterrestrial craft. I then knew that I had to look beyond my own wants & feelings if I were to see the truth.

I was still reading voraciously about the paranormal, but it all seemed much less plausible to me now. I witnessed the rise of the ghost hunters and thought “Hey, the scientific approach!” After looking at their methods, I was quickly disillusioned. I generally became aware that the evidence mostly amounts to personal experience, and there is not a single scrap of objective proof for anything paranormal. I do not discount the eyewitness testimony or personal experiences. I wholeheartedly believe that people who report such things have had very real, profoundly moving experiences. I do not think they are crazy or foolish. I simply have come to the understanding that we humans are subject to mental processes that make us prone to misinterpret events. After a few more years of hanging on, I eventually “gave up the ghost” and admitted to myself I was a skeptic. The tattered remains of my religious beliefs quickly followed suit.

These days, I live in a drab world where the aliens, Bigfoot, ghosts and goblins have all long departed. If some real concrete proof of any of these things were to surface, no person in the world would be happier than me. Until then, I content myself with finding the meaning of existence in my family and friends and I pass the time with my hobbies. Those hobbies being: history, painting, vintage toys, old monster movies and my most favorite of all, anything paranormal.

Regards, Canis

P.S. if anybody actually made it all the way through this mess, you get a prize! The prize is knowing better next time! :-)

Here is a painting I did, I call it "Test Subject Six":