I don’t believe in aliens, because up to now I haven’t seen / met / experienced any (although there was one night years ago in Africa when I was driving through dark emptiness with a friend and we saw a circle of lights far above that seemed for a while to be tracking us, which was seriously exciting.  However the car, not being suggestible,  continued to rumble firmly on instead of dying in the best tradition, and we regretfully decided it couldn’t have been.  Damn.)  

However, I do believe in ghosts.   I’ve had one unmistakable encounter, and two others that I might have written off as odd moments of fancy, or cheese dreams,  if not for the first,  Our guru on most matters, Stephen Fry, said on QI there were no such things, which just proves he has never encountered one, because the whole thing is like throwing a switch.  You know something isn’t so, and then you know that it is.  In fact, saying I believe in ghosts is misleading, it implies an element of choice.  I know a fat and unwieldy cat can jump onto a counter from a sitting start.    Before I had a cat, I would have scoffed  at the very idea.

I am not about to regale you with the experience, because as Spock told Bones, it can’t be discussed except with someone who has shared a similar experience.     However, it does make it interesting reading about other people’s sightings.  You can read one and scoff, because they’re so obviously making it up.  And read another, and know it is true, because the detail (usually far less exciting than the made-up ones) is right. 

So Stephen Fry is wrong (tsk tsk) and I wait with both hope and trepidation to have a real alien encounter.   That would be something to blog about, eh?