Review of: Strange - Paranormal realities in the everyday world (2025), by Andy Thomas

Andy Thomas. Strange: Paranormal realities in the everyday world. Watkins: London, 2025. pp 288.

When it comes to the paranormal - as with science, medicine and everything else important - I regard the source of purported information, of reported observations, to be vitally significant. 

In practice, this means that I only take seriously (which does not mean believe!) information from those few people who I have reason to believe are capable and motivated to provide the best information they can.   

Andy Thomas is one of these people; being something of a penfriend, and someone whose lecture presentations I have watched on video, and some of whose books I have read. I have formed the judgment that he is an honest and well-informed chap, who is usually worth listening to!

I have read quite a few books on "paranormal" stuff over the years, especially those by Colin Wilson (also much more widely). But a problem with Colin Wilson is that his sources on paranormal/ occult matters are mostly (more or less) well known people, mostly writers - and I tend to regard their reports as having a literary and contrived flavour. 

What Andy has done here is something that not many could do; because of his experience. For several decades he has travelled around Britain giving lectures on many subjects to all sorts of audiences, often in intimate venues. As an author and conference organizer, he is also very "well-connected" in the more "professional" world of the paranormal. 

So it would be plausible to suppose that Andy Thomas is probably in the best possible position to provide a representative overview of paranormal matters in Britain today.   

In particular, Andy has personally met and spoken with probably thousands of people, of many kinds, including many "ordinary" people; by which I mean, not people who make a living or work professionally with paranormal matters, nor professional communicators such as journalists or authors. And he has talked with these people on many paranormal themes. 

Of course Andy's contacts are not a "random" sample of the UK - which would be impossible since many people would not go to lectures of any kind, nor would they speak of paranormal matters to any stranger - but it's probably as good a cross-section of the nation as is viable. 

So, what makes Strange unique; is that it is a book about paranormal matters that consists substantially of the results of these many person-to-person meetings and communications with ordinary people -  people who have approached Andy in various ways to tell him of "something strange that happened to me". 

Apparently, he says; this happens a lot. 

After every talk mentioning paranormal matters he gives, there are those who speak from the audience and others who stay behind to share some experience; as if the subject matter of the lecture has jogged a memory, and "given permission" to speak or write. 

So one basic thesis of this book is that "Strange" is normal - or relatively so. 

In other words; a high proportion of ordinary modern people have had some kind of experience that they regard as "paranormal". 

What does Andy Thomas mean by paranormal? He describes some of the commonest themes, in approximate order of frequency:

1. Ghosts and poltergeists

2. UFOs

3. Out of body and near death experiences

4. Psychic phenomena (such as telepathy)

5. Premonitions 

6. Synchronicities

7. Crop circle events 

8. Prehistoric-site events (stone circles etc)

9. Sighting of "cryptids" or anomalous creatures

Reports arranged in a similar thematic way form the structure of the book; interspersed with reflections, analysis, and summaries from the author. 

Thomas's assumption throughout is that paranormal phenomena are real; but on the question of what they actually are, how they're caused, and what they mean he is usually "agnostic" - presenting various theories but mostly without choosing between them. 

He does not rule-out religious or simple-spiritual explanations - and mentions them; but generally he seems to exhibit a preference for materialist/ scientific explanations. For example, he several times mentions "quantum entanglement" as a putative cause of instant interaction over a distance. 

I mention this because I regard t as an example of a practice I have commented on before; by which writers on difficult-to-understand strange phenomena "explain" them by means of some idea (usually derived from physics) which is itself nigh impossible to understand! Colin Wilson's Faculty X, or Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields and resonances, are other examples. 

My own preference is instead imaginatively to try look at such things in the simplest and most instinctive way possible: that which would probably occur to a young child or tribal person. 

In other words; I favour an explanation that is usually animistic/ anthropomorphic - and relates to the relationships between living beings. 

From such a perspective there simply is not a problem in "explaining" many paranormal phenomena - since they are naturally and spontaneously taken-for-granted. 

Most of these "problems" arise from the recent models of modern science and materialism, and modern cultural ideas of what is supposedly impossible. 

So that (for instance) from an "animistic" perspective; ghosts, communications with the dead, telepathy, psychometry, out of body experiences and the like; all become something expected and normal. They need no further explanation - although they may benefit from further clarification. 

Having appreciated the range of reports in Strange - and accepting that the subject is real and worth investigation and consideration; the question arises as to the implications. 

What does it mean? How should we react to such a range of paranormal accounts?

The way I would proceed is the same as I did when I was active in theoretical science; which was carefully to distinguish the "provenance" (i.e. the sources and lineage) of proposed information; with the aim of including only those sources who were evaluated to be honest and competent.  

This means, in practice, ignoring most sources, most people - because most reports from most people cannot positively be established to be both honest and competent. 

Thus I would take seriously Andy's own reports; but most of the other reports I would not include in my analyses; because I simply don't know whether I personally would regard Andy's secondary sources as valid. 

Then, even after excluding most (in usual practice almost all) of the putative information; I would need to distinguish between, on the one hand; the "appearances" of what that person had experienced (e.g. what they had seen) - which may be generalizable...

And, on the other hand; the theoretical explanations of these experiences (the identity and behaviours of what they had seen) - which may well distort what has been perceived*.   

This isn't easy to achieve, and there is no standard method for doing it. It is a matter of judgment. 

Nonetheless such discernment needs to be done in order to cope with the many contradictions between accounts - even among accounts by those who are competent and honest. 

And finally, or rather before this process has even begun! - we need to sort out our own ultimate metaphysical assumptions concerning the basic nature of reality. 

This means that it is not really possible to be agnostic on this or any other matter; since every person actually and inevitably interprets reality from some perspective that is ultimately rooted, not in evidence, but in assumptions. 

And if we don't already know our own primary assumptions concerning reality - these will need to be discovered, made explicit, and evaluated. 

Such are my reflections provoked by reading Andy Thomas's Strange.

*Note: An interesting example of the way that our assumptions affect our understanding of perceptions related to the mythical "scarecrow shells" of World War II. RAF aircrew had been officially informed that the Germans had developed demoralizing anti-aircraft shells that exploded to simulate the destruction of a British bomber. Such shells did not exist. The actual cause of such explosions was probably RAF bombers destroyed by Luftwaffe night-fighters approaching from below with upward-firing cannon. But many expert and competent aircrew were absolutely sure that they had observed scarecrow shells.