4

The Overall Vibe Is Surprisingly Sane

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After finding a suitable hideout from the sun god guy, who, much like bears, probably feared me more than the other way around, I noticed how super calm and timid the general vibe of the convention floor was. Was ... was everyone but me stoned? If so, who's holding out, motherfuckers?

But they weren't (probably). Once again, I'd bought into the hype machine: Online, your average paranormal enthusiast, conspiracy theorist, etc. comes across as a manic drool machine clad entirely in printouts of David Icke interviews. In real life, they're that one uncle of yours who's completely normal right up until the sixth eggnog and the inevitable lecture about how the president is hiding microchips up his butt when he's asleep. That belief may very well be his only failing. At the paranormal convention, everyone is that uncle, only sober: for all intents and purposes a perfectly functional member of society, with one minor glitch. Sure, there was the occasional "ooh, look at me, I'm so freaky" dipshit, but no more than in any public gathering, and none of them took it to Lady Gaga proportions.

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And a few clearly thought this was another kind of convention entirely.

3

There's An Overwhelming Sense Of Desperation

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Yeah, of course there's a flipside. Life is no Disney movie, son, unless they make one from Mufasa's viewpoint.

See, there's a very good reason why these people keep their Sunday behavior on: an inherent fear that someone will call them out. Everyone says that you need to be really fucking confident in your beliefs, but that all flies out the window when what you believe in is a complex hierarchy of alien light creatures that require you to periodically level up in order to keep in touch with them. Or ghosts. Or little green men. Or, shit, anything on offer in this particular buffet. Sure, there are some whose convictions and egos can handle this and become self-sufficient in their beliefs (more on them in a minute). But the vast majority of the people I saw had that faint whiff of not-quite-but-almost-desperation that's so prevalent in clubs at closing time. "What if they laugh at me?" "What if they judge me?" "What the fuck am I doing here?" These are normal, human thoughts and emotions, and an event where you're revealing your strangest beliefs to the people who are technically your people but also mostly total strangers is custom made to bring them to the surface.

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"It's crazy, but I fear someone finds my fascination
with zombie ponies from outer space stupid."

2

It's Shockingly Easy To Be Drawn In

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There were hecklers.

Of course there were. How often do you get to go to a paranormal convention to see what those conspiracy bullshit folks are really like? Shit, technically, I was one.

That much I knew to expect. What came as a surprise was my reaction to them. Once again, I'm that fucker who, upon seeing a cool magic trick, immediately starts trying to figure out how it was done, like a way less effective version of Paul Giamatti's character in The Illusionist. Yet, when faced with sneering people with a sarcastic expression who were out to judge and laugh like, well, me, a strange sensation of hatred started filling me. What were these people doing, laughing at the folks doing their own thing and minding their own business? They weren't even full-on Biff Tannenin' anyone -- just failing to conceal their lopsided "oh, I'm so much better than you dipshits" grin every once in a while. Even so, I mentally started siding with the people I'd usually label as the crazies.

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Then again, if it's this guy or fucking Chad, I know who I'm rooting for.

1

The Speakers Make It Clear Everyone's Crazy After All

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Up to that point, I had somehow managed to avoid the guests of honor and their various speeches. But, as the day progressed and the bigger names started approaching the podium, I could no longer stay away. Still, maybe the strange camaraderie and odd dedication I'd witnessed would carry over to the grander stages. Maybe, just maybe, I'd gotten the whole "paranormal" thing wrong, and it was just another, slightly off-beat way to compare experiences and deal with the fucked-up hands the poker game of life keeps dealing us.

That impression lasted roughly two minutes into the first speaker's piece. Rauni Kilde, a respected doctor who at some point started buying into every fucking conspiracy theory ever and actively promoting them, was an elderly woman with vats of charisma and a gaze like a nail driven directly between your eyes. You could have told me she was a professor at Harvard and I wouldn't have batted an eyelid. And then, she dropped a page from her lecture notes without noticing it. Upon realizing that a page was missing, and without missing a beat, she declared that this happened to her quite often, and it was because the government was constantly stalking her and disintegrating her notes with their melt-rays when she wasn't looking.

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She couldn't use the "dog ate my homework" one,
because everyone knows dogs aren't real.

The rest of her 45 minutes went exactly as you'd expect. Google "10 Most Popular Conspiracy Theories" -- chemtrails, vaccination bullshit, Illuminati, aliens, they're all there -- shit, considering her advanced age and activity in the field, they might be all her.

After that, out stepped Juhan af Grann, who I'm told is an award-winning ufologist, which gives rise to the infinitely more interesting fact that there's someone out there giving out awards to ufologists. As a true testament to the possibilities of downers and uppers, he started out as a borderline puddle, showed us a half-hour documentary about ethereal giants dropping boat keys on people's cars, because fuck you, and retook the podium as the most manic entity I've ever seen, swatting back hecklers and serious questions with the energy and wit of a coked-up Bill Hicks.

Aaaand that's when I realized me and my friend were in a fucking madhouse after all.

I did manage to take one picture. Feel free to imagine this is
an alien in a wig, because for all intents and purposes it was.

SCORE:
Pauli: 1
Convention: 4 (But guess who gets to use their points after exiting the premises, fuckers. You know what, we'll call this a tie. This time.)

Conclusion

All in all, this wasn't an entirely horrible experience. I learned a lot about people who believe in this stuff and about myself in relation to them. I'm not saying I'll stop making fun of them. Still, maybe I'll cut them a couple weeks' worth of slack, if only because one of them managed to tear our people masks away and we had to burn the whole place down in retaliation.

Now that you've read this, human, remember that Pauli knows where you live. Here he is on Facebook and Twitter.