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Why isn't there a paranormal slanted section for stackexchange? This site is so awesome for so many reasons and I think it would be great if those of us who study ufology and spirits could bring together their information somewhere as well. I know there are a lot of people who are probably on the fence, or even vehemently opposed to the idea of such things existing. However how people feel, think, or assume has no effect on reality. These topics are about things that do exist.

I know a lot of ufo stories have people saying those are just military technology people are seeing, or even swamp gas, Venus, etc. I know for a fact that is not true. Allow me to explain how, perhaps you reading this have heard of the term 'foo-fighter' from WW2 that pilots gave for what they described as floating balls of light that would fly near their craft. Well, I've seen seven of these such objects less than 100 ft above my head, with several witnesses, all sober, in the middle of a busy suburb. They traveled about 10-15 mph, and in perfect single file formation heading North. Truly a sight to leave you dumbfounded and awestruck. I watched these things slowly float over the house I was at, at the time, so I got to stare at them at a close distance for about 3 minutes or so before they traveled out of my view. This was at about 10 pm on a very clear-sky night.

These 'animated spheres' as I like to call them, were about 2-3 ft. in diameter and looked like a miniature sun. A gold/orange fiery plasma, is about the only way I can describe them. I can't even begin to think what causes or who they belong to but there's no way this is Earthly, or technology of man. There is just simply so much evidence backing up ufology and other hard-to-believe topics out there, that I just don't understand how skepticism remains strong, except that some people like to feel superior to others and jump on bandwagons. Also, governments like to misdirect and keep the public in the dark as well.

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    If it's so common and obvious it should be straightforward to provide clear evidence of its existence. – gerrit Apr 11 '17 at 10:21
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    If UFOs are spacecraft, then the aliens are incredible bunglers: they are unable to hide themselves properly (if they don't want to be seen) and, if they do want to contact us, they can't do that convincingly either. – hdhondt Apr 11 '17 at 10:56
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    There was a paranormal SE suggestion a bit ago. I don't know if it had enough support. – fredsbend♦ Apr 11 '17 at 14:30
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    @hdhondt I'd say that the UFO pilots are exceptionally smart. They manage to never be spotted by anybody with a high-definition camera on a tripod, only by people with a camera phone they couldn't hold still if their lives depended on it. – GordonM Apr 11 '17 at 18:03
  • "However how people feel, think, or assume has no effect on reality." I hope you see the irony of saying that and then following it up with your own subjective opinions, while claiming you are right. – Mark Kirby May 13 '17 at 12:17
  • I've directly experienced the paranormal multiple times. I guess you don't understand the difference between an opinion and an eyewitness account of an event. – Shamanik May 14 '17 at 21:59
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This question wasn't on topic on Skeptics.StackExchange.com, so I moved it to Meta.

However, it isn't really on topic here either!

Your question has three parts.

(1) A question about why there is no Paranormal Stack Exchange.

(2) A personal anecdote about seeing a UFO.

(3) An attempt to poison the well by attacking the skeptics. On a site run by and for skeptics, is basically a troll.

I am ignoring (2) as irrelevant, and (3) as a troll.

But why is there no Paranormal SE?

New Stack Exchange sites are proposed and defined at Area 51. (Yes, that's right. The irony of the name is not lost on me.)

There has been a proposal for a Paranormal SE for about a year. So far, there has been very little interest. It has only 15 followers of the 60 required to get into the next phase.

I imagine the other big problem with such a site is "When a question is about something that can't be judged by empirical evidence or the laws of nature, what does a correct answer look like?", but maybe that can be sorted in the definition phase?

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    The current proposal for "Paranormal" is the third I'm aware of; the prior two failed for a lack of highly-voted questions. – Mark Apr 13 '17 at 1:17
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Your question is basically "can we make paranormal things on-topic". Well, they sort of are and they sort of aren't. You can ask about paranormal things or events so long as the framing is skepticism revolving around a particular claim. Here's a few examples:

There's also plenty of questions tagged .

You can clearly see that the topic is not avoided at all, however, the framework in which those questions are approached is skepticism by default, as such is the nature of this site.

A further question of yours stemming from unfamiliarity with Stack Exchange is why there is not a dedicated Paranormal Stack Exchange site. All the sites in the Stack Exchange Network are almost entirely community run. Every one of them except the first few were created by the community as well. Anyone who has an idea for a site that they think would do well with the Stack Exchange design may post the idea on Area 51 (not a joke name, it's just coincidental that we happen to be talking about paranormal things as well). The idea (proposal, as it is called) must then pass a few milestones, including support and commitment from community members, before Stack Exchange the company will invest the resources to create it. There is currently a paranormal proposal, but it's not doing too well. You are welcome as much as anybody to join the Area 51 site and commit to the Paranormal proposal, however, I would not expect anything to happen with it anytime soon. If you would like to change that you can share the proposal with people on Facebook and Twitter and so on and see if they will join you in your commitment.

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    also esp or cryptozoology are in the range of "paranormal" things, whatever that means. – Sklivvz Apr 11 '17 at 17:53
  • The 404 page possibly has a blurry Bigfoot in the background so I feel like this site gets pretty out there with some questions, which is nice. – daniel Apr 11 '17 at 20:02
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I agree with you on the following sentence:

However how people feel, think, or assume has no effect on reality.

At Skeptics.SE, we're open in theory to examining whether or not a claim is true, no matter how strange they are to some people, so long as they're believed by a large number of people. (In practice, there's a couple of other restrictions, such as recent events which are being investigated by law enforcement)

Unfortunately, asking a question on the balls of light you described wouldn't be on-topic, because it's not like thousands of people regard that incident as having happened.

Also, questions that go beyond whether these phenomenon are happening would be off-topic for this Stack Exchange. So asking whether aliens like cats would be off-topic.

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Why isn't there a stack exchange site for paranormal? Because you haven't started one? Not sure what goes into creating a beta site (looks like OddThinking addresses that in his/her answer), but I'd think you'd have to have interested parties wanting to take on the responsibility of administering a site, along with setting up the criteria, goals and general rules that would govern that exchange, along with the time commitment to moderate such a site.

I certainly think that asking a site dedicated to debunking unproven, unscientific claims why there isn't a site for promoting unproven, unproveable, unscientific claims is probably the wrong place to ask.

  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – Sklivvz Apr 16 '17 at 10:24

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