It’s official… the contest is over, and it’s now time to announce the winners of Wm Michael Mott’s free book giveaway! Thanks to all the folks who submitted entries, and on behalf of Mott himself, as well as Joshua P. Warren and others who have participated in the contest, you interest in phenomenology is much appreciated.

Please keep in mind, the views expressed in these essays cover a wide array of opinions that do not necessarily reflect those of the moderators of this site, or even this contest. The are intended only as commentary or satire, and should be enjoyed as such!

That being said, our first place prize goes to Vance Pollock, an amatuer historian and researcher who provided this hilarious essay for us, based on actual historical events:

I nominate Pauly Shore and Barbara Streisand in the demon category, Richard Simmons and Dick Clark for their unexplainable immortality (no further comment) and the allegedly late Ronald Reagan because he is a cyborg.

I once saw a clip of Reagan receiving a crystal award statuette. A protestor leapt to the stage, snatched the crystal and smashed it on the ground, at which point Reagan visibly “shorted out” and had to be rolled off on a hand cart.

A great many mortals can see through the spell of Shore and Streisand, much like characters from They Live without sunglasses.

Upon learning of his prize winning essay, Mr. Pollock provided this video to accompany his essay:

Second place goes to Scott Lyall, an independent investigator in the UK:

For my money, the best film to deal with a Fortean topic was the BBC’s Ghostwatch. Briefly, it was a feature length drama broadcast on Halloween 1992 that purported to be a live broadcast from a poltergeist infested house on a London council estate. It starred a number of celebrities playing themselves, which confused many viewers into believing they were watching a real live broadcast. The line between fact and fiction was also blurred by it referencing various real life cases (it borrowed to an extent from the infamous Enfield poltergeist case). Even knowing it was a drama, I kept forgetting myself as the events escalated, especially with the fleeting appearances of the ghost in the background of a number of scenes and the gradual exposition of extremely unpleasant nature of the history of the house, though the OTT ending where the TV studio was taken over by the polt and the host possessed kind of blew the believability.

The tricksterish aspect to it is a delight-the makers of this were genuinely bemused by the outrage caused by viewers being duped. It had been conceived, filmed and advertised as a drama and they’d no intention of fooling people. But yet it was one of the BBC‘s most complained about programs, and has never been repeated. A suicide has been laid at it’s door, and allegedly two cases of post traumatic stress disorder in children who viewed it.

Reaction to films can often depend on the context you see them in, and I first saw Ghostwatch in a house where someone had died six months previously, and I knew I’d have to walk home through a dark wood that local rumour held to be haunted and where I’d an odd experience a few years earlier that I’d interpreted as a ghost! That combined with the juxtaposition of the supernatural in a mundane setting was a heady mix for my 17 year old mind, giving a genuine chill I’ve not experienced again since.

Oddly, this seems to be the fictionalised blueprint that most ghost hunting programs now follow- but don’t let that put you off!

Third place goes to John Colaw, former director of Skywatch Kansas, who submitted the following:

False-flag public UFO disclosure is imminent, as predicted by Werner Von Braun in 1977. Von Braun correctly predicted a sequence of threats – communism, then terrorism to be followed by asteroids and culminating in a staged alien invasion. Governments all over the world are releasing UFO reports, the US soon to follow suit. Black triangles are likely ours; harbingers of imminent false UFO disclosure. Consolidation of power and weaponization of space are the goals. True disclosure competes with this agenda-driven false disclosure. Economic collapse coupled with invasion fears will empower the New World Order, unless genuine UFO disclosure occurs first.