PARANET: A HISTORY ParaNet began as a single bulletin board system called "The Other Side," which to this day I run out of my home in Fountain Hills, AZ. The idea behind it was and remains to provide a place for the forthright, mature discussion of the paranormal. When I was growing up, there were few sources of reliable in- formation on subjects like UFOs, ghosts, and ESP. One of those sour- ces, and one of the best for the times in which he existed, was Frank Edwards, author of "Stranger than Science, Strange World," "Strange People," and other works, which provided encapsulated glimpses at odd happenings in our world. I was later to learn that Edwards was the premier Fortean writer of his time, but at 10 years old, I hadn't heard of Charles Fort, and thought the world of Frank Edwards. I became heavily interested in the UFO phenomenon, mainly because of Frank's "Flying Saucers - Serious Business." I also won- dered about such things as Spontaneous Human Combustion, Polter- geists, and the like, but UFOs were my main interest. In the summer of 1967, my father took me on a trip to Washing- ton, DC. Knowing of my interest in flying saucers, he marched me right into the Pentagon, into the liason office of Project Blue Book. There we met with an AF captain, who patiently and agreeably explained that the AF had no answers, but that they didn't consider it extremely likely that UFOs were from outer space. My father asked most of the questions (I was a bit overwhelmed at 10 years old, and he maintains a more than casual interest himself), including whether or not it was possible the AF had some kind of secret project. The captain obligingly said, "not that we know of, and if we did, we probably wouldn't test it in populated areas." He then referred us to an organization in Washington called the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). We proceeded there, and met with ret. Marine Major Donald E. Keyhoe, the director. I was sum- marily signed up as a subscribing member, and remained on the roles until NICAP's demise in 1977. But long before said demise, I had entered college and had learned the ways of rational thinking. I was indoctrinated in the scientific method, and learned that when one grows up, one abandons such silly notions as little green men, and deals with the "real world." In many talks with my roomates and fraternity brothers, I learned the sad, hard truth: no saucers, no aliens, and no rational basis for believing otherwise. "Yeah, I guess you're right," I said, and in my rush to become an adult, with all the concomitant responsi- bilities, chores, and headaches, I filed the entire subject away in the deep recesses of my consciousness. In 1978, I discovered computers; in 1981, CompuServe; and the following year, Bulletin Board Systems. I was intrigued by the enor- mous potential for improvement of human communications such media presented -- and quite underwhelmed by the uses they had been put to thus far. The most meaningful discussions I had seen take place dealt with such burning issues as VisiCalc vs. 1-2-3 and the advan- tages of a Commodore over an Atari. McLuhan would have had a field day, I mused. I gravitated to the Issues Forum, the only area on CompuServe at that time where mature, non-computer related discussions -- out- right, flaming arguments -- seemed the norm. I tried to become in- volved as much as possible, but felt shut out by my lack of know- ledge in the subjects being discussed (I dropped out of college after only a year and a half.) I decided to start a discussion on a topic I was fairly famil- iar with - and that, by definition, no one had any conclusive ans- wers about: the paranormal. Eventually I became the leader of a new subtopic in the forum, Paranormal Issues, and proceeded to submit articles, stories and documents to the electronic library in order to keep discussions going. In my reading, I discovered the existence of the dreaded CSICOP - the Committee for the Scientific Investiga- tion of Claims of the Paranormal. I had always felt that when deal- ing with so many paranormal claims, there had to be "more to the story." At last here was a group that presented that other side of things, in a most convincing manner. I've met many people who say, "I believe in psychokinesis," for example, and then ask, "what's CSICOP?" It appeared to me that there was a need to at least communicate skeptical information to people, a need that was going largely unmet, due to the relatively small cir- culation of CSICOP's journal, The Skeptical Inquirer. Its always been my belief that the truthfulness of a proposition cannot be judged until weighed against antithetical arguments. If those argu- ments are found wanting, THEN maybe you have a legitimate claim. So I started ParaNet, in order to provide a conduit for informa- tion from BOTH sides of paranormal issues. Indeed, the name of the headquarters board, The Other Side, is a double entendre, partly taken from the name of a book by Bishop James Pike, and partly from my desire to see a bilateral discussion of things paranormal. Another goal of ParaNet is to provide a network for research groups to interact in full view of the computing public. In this way, the best arguments pro and con are set forth in a place where the average user can ask questions and challenge the answers, on an equal footing with investigators and debunkers. With the advantages of instant communications and open messaging, the long lead time and hassle of writing a "letter to the editor" of some quarterly journal is thus avoided, and dialogue takes place almost in real time. ParaNet has grown to include 10 boards, and we hope to double that number in the next two years. We are directly interacting with some of the more respected names in the field, including Dr. Bruce Maccabee, Dale Goudie, Philip Imbrogno, William Moore, Dale Kaczmarek, Philip Klass, and James Moseley. We hope to become the official computer network of MUFON, and perhaps even CSICOP. ParaNet has scored some "firsts" in its short history: we were the first news media of any kind in the world to carry the sad story of the death of ufologist J. Allen Hynek; the first news media in the US to tell of the Japan Airlines UFO; and the first non-print media in the world to crack open the file on the controversial Majestic-12. Have I learned anything from operating ParaNet? Not in the sense of getting closer to any definitive answers about the para- normal. But I have learned how people's attitudes shape what they believe, and how what they believe shapes what they see. I have learned that skepticism is the best tool for investigating para- normal claims; and I have learned that, much to the chagrin of CSICOP, it is also the best tool for investigating the claims of skeptics. --Jim Speiser ParaNet Alpha investigating the claims of skeptics.