Closet Anomalist/Fortean Updates!

The other day (or today because of the recent Blogger maintenance issue) I posted about how I consider myself to be somewhat of a Closet Anomalist/Fortean. Which just as a quick intro, but I recommend following the link to learn more, means that I tend not to be terribly open about my interest in Fortean or Anomalous topics. Well after I posted that blog, I decided that I would try to change that about myself. The easiest way that I could think of to be more ‘open’ about that part of me was by trying to be around others like myself.

I mean Comic book fans (read nerds [by which I mean no offense I also love comics]) have Comic conventions, or more accurately in the southeastern United States where I live they have Dragon*Con. So I naturally I turned to the magic of the internets in the hopes of locating a Fortean or anomalous group that is located in the Southeastern region (within reason because gas is crazy  expensive and I am by no means rich).  The first place I decided to look was at my local MUFON chapter. Now I will save my opinions on MUFON for future posts, but suffice it to say I am not their biggest fan. However it was the first organization that came to mind. Well I looked up the South Carolina chapter of MUFON and this page is what I found. Now I’m not one to knock anyone’s website design, but I will say that from the looks of it not very many people have been to the site. Nor for that matter does it appear to have been updated anytime within the last 11 years.

So unfortunately MUFON seemed to be out of the question, although I have emailed the State Director and hope to hear back something soon but as of this post I haven’t received a reply.  I then decided to try the website Meetup.com , as I seemed to remember something about it from a few years ago. Again no dice unfortunately, oh to be sure there were some anomalous groups but they were more of the Ghost Hunting variety. Which there is nothing wrong with and I may still look into those, but that isn’t specifically what I was looking for. Lastly I decided to check Yahoo! Groups which also proved quite disastrous. The most recently active groups were last active around 2008 (apparently people don’t use Yahoo! products anymore who knew, says the guy on Blogger that has a Gmail account).

Finally after a few hours of searching I came up empty. I did find one group that had momentarily looked promising, but they were a little new-agey for my tastes. It looks as though for the moment I am stuck without any alternatives. Oh I guess I should specify what it is exactly that I am looking for. Basically in my mind I envision like a kind of old fashioned forum, where you could go and talk in person about all manner of Fortean or anomalous topics. Anything would be open for discussion, so like a discussion group or forum online but you know in actual meat space. Because unfortunately at the moment the only person that I really can talk to about all these things are my girlfriend, and all though she is super cool and listens and contributes, but  after a while she gets tired of talking about these topics (which who can blame her I guess). That and unfortunately she does not have the same base level of reading or knowledge about the topic that I have.

I suppose that in the mean time while I search for a local group I will cope by blogging here each day. It’s nice to be able to get out some of my thoughts about these topics, even if no one is necessarily reading them. Plus there is always talking on twitter with Paul Kimball, which is great. Well until tomorrow, I’m your friendly neighborhood (temporarily closeted) Fortean Philosopher Tony saying have a good one and take it easy.