George Noory was joined by famed author Whitley Strieber and professor of religion Jeffrey Kripal to talk about their new collaborative work entitled The Super Natural. Kripal said that the words "super" and "natural" are separated due to his opinion that "if someone has a paranormal encounter, it’s part of our natural world" even if we don't have a scientific model for it yet. After reading Streiber's best-selling book on his abduction experiences, Communion, Kripal wrote a chapter on Strieber and sent it to him, which began their friendship.
Kripal thinks that Strieber's experiences with his visitors and other strange episodes have analogues throughout the history of mystical encounters and religious myths. Strieber's story of floating down through a floor in his house and speaking to his son and a friend in the room below is surprisingly reminiscent of accounts of Christian saints, Kripal said. He offered that Strieber's "encounters might not make sense to us, but they are well known in the history of human experience." As an example of how common unexplained occurrences can be, he related a story of a colleague who experienced an apparent teleportation of a jar of honey from a countertop into a closed container of flour while he was baking in his kitchen. Echoing an opinion expressed by many abductees, he concluded that "The sacred is deeply attractive but also deeply scary."
Speaking about exceptional experiences, Strieber observed that "in the 1950s, you weren’t supposed to see this stuff. 100 years ago people were seeing this stuff because no one was telling them that they weren’t supposed to." Strieber also related some little-known chapters in his "visitor" encounters, such as the time the entity depicted on the cover of Communion frightened a friend of his son who was staying in his rural cabin in upstate New York. The kid woke up in the night to see the creature's long fingers curling around the door to his room and never returned to the house. Since the child was disturbed and disruptive, Strieber thinks that he and his family were being protected. "We were spared having this crazy kid in our lives" he said. He also emphasized that his late wife Anne was a vital and important part of the processing of his experiences. Asked about the possibility of UFO disclosure by the U.S. government, Strieber's opinion is that if anyone had the answer to the abduction enigma "there would be disclosure the next day."
Zika Virus Threat
In the first hour, Dr. Gary Ridenour talked about the threat of the Zika virus and the chance that it may cause a world pandemic. The virus has mutated into many forms and some believe that it has been spread in part by a genetically modified mosquito, particularly in Brazil and other South American countries, where it has already reached pandemic status. The mosquito carrying the disease is an urban dweller and active in the day, making it more of a threat to populated areas. It is also suspected of causing severe birth defects that result in very small or otherwise defective brains in newborns. Ridenour pointed out that a vaccine is "over five years away." He thinks the fact that Brazil is presently hosting Carnival and the Summer Olympics in August will give the virus a chance to spread worldwide even faster. Ridenour pointed out that the symptoms are mild for most people, but cautioned that pregnant women who are at risk should have ultrasound scans performed on their unborn children.
News segment guests:Christian Wilde, Dr. John Curtis, Jerome Corsi