Anti-Anti-Tricksters @ The Nightshirt

Excellent points from Eric Wargo at The Nightshirt regarding the Trickster within UFO study. He cites Hansen's most excellent The Trickster and the Paranormal,   which should be read by anyone at all interested in exploring UFOs. I've been writing about trickster like manifestations and UFOs, as well as related aspects of the enigma, for a long time now. (See my: Trickster, UFOs, Paranormal, Supernatural…, Seeing the Virgin: Tricksters Take it to the People, Speculation on Mary as Trickster, among others.)

Anti-Anti-Tricksters @ The Nightshirt: Reynolds is right that the Trickster concept can’t serve as an explanation. But at least in my reading of the topic, including George Hansen’s massive study The Trickster and the Paranormal or books tangentially invoking the concept, like Colm Kelleher and George Knapp’s Hunt for the Skinwalker, the term isn’t being used in a literalistic way to denote a “real being.” Rather it is being used, quite appropriately I think, as a shorthand term for a type of sentience or intention that seems to underlie a wide range of paranormal phenomena (ranging from UFOs to psychic experiences to hauntings) and that has a distinctly ironic, thwarting character. There’s no other term that quite fits the bill as well as “Trickster.” (Eric Wargo) [italics are mine, not Wargo's.]