THE DIVIDE

Let's just get this out of the way: yes , I know ghost hunting is a pseudoscience. No, I don't fully buy into it, just like I don't fully buy into the popular UFOlogical or cryptozoological lore. Most ghost photos are reflections, most "orbs" (especially orbs. Like, 99% of orbs) are specs of dust, and most EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena, or audio recordings of ghosts) recordings are the results of pareidolia: essentially, the misidentification of something mundane as significant in some way.  Most recordings alleged by ghost hunters to be voices of the dead end up having earthly explanations. I'm especially unimpressed with recordings not taken in a controlled environment. If you're talking, moving, or shuffling around, your recorder is going to pick up all sorts of random sounds and white noise that you might not pick up on in the moment. Generally, if you're having to guess at what's being said, it's probably not worth scrutiny. EVPs that ar...

I was probably eight or nine when I saw my first UFO. The sun had set an hour earlier, and the hills of rural upstate New York were shrouded in darkness; the sky filled with twinkling stars. I was sitting in the passenger seat of my dad's car as we drove through what I semi-fondly referred to as "the middle of nowhere," a stretch of Route 88 that meanders through seemingly endless rolling hills and miles of farmland as far as the eye can see. An alien landscape to a child whose only perception of New York is a massive city bustling with people. My eyes were transfixed out the window, trying to keep myself occupied during the long, five-hour road trip to my dad's new house, farther outside of New England than I had ever been before. A portion of Route 88 in Worcester, NY (via Google Maps) We were driving along a ridge, with only a guardrail to separate the road (and us) from a cliff that dropped off almost immediately. This gave us a wide view of the adjacent valley. S...