I just heard that The Red Queen has passed after fighting cancer.. I’m pretty sad about that. The world was a far more interesting place with her in it.
Back in the misty-mists of time I ran across a lady from the US state of Oregon. This was in the bad-old days of Yahoo groups and Myspace. Somewhere around 2008 I think. I ran across a Yahoo Group. I don’t remember what it was called. UFOs and Skeptics – something like that. Supposedly it was for people who have UFO experiences (read abductees) and skeptics so people could exchange ideas. Hey! I was a skeptic! So I joined up.
The Lady from OR was one of the mods of the group. After a couple of posts I found out that she wasn’t interested in a balanced conversation. What she seemed to want was to, um “discipline” anyone who even mildly disagreed with her or was skeptical.
I mean, TODAY that’s not so unusual. There are plenty of web pages which solicit comments and allow commentator on the , um right side of an issue to utterly trash and insult people having an unpopular or opposing position.
Back in 2008, this was, to me anyway rather novel way of “finding the truth” and “exchanging ideas of unusual phenomena. Ideas were exchanged alright, but I found this was a one way exchange only. Her ideas to me – nothing more. I thought this was a pretty bad way to gain knowledge and discuss much of anything – and I told her so!
She responded –
‘I’m not so much interested in “debating” with the likes of you all anyway. Think of it as a game, I certainly do.” –We don’t care much what you think, you’re all just here for us to make fun of.”
I mean really!
She and I had a number of “debates.” after this outburst. I guess you could call them that. Some of them got so convoluted I noticed she responded and argued with her own posts thinking they were mine. The Yahoo post threading was kind of confusing.
Eventually, something happened with her job and she started accusing me of stalking her or whatever. I started calling her “The Red Queen” since she reminded me of Lewis Carroll‘s antagonist. (Not the queen of Hearts, the other one.)
I did look her up and traced the work IPs she was using to hit this site over and over. I mentioned that to her once. Is that stalking? I honestly don’t think it is. Back in those days, people watched their web-page stats a lot closer than today.
Apparently she got fired from her education gig, and of course she blamed me.
She made it plenty clear that she wanted nothing to do with the Odd Empire, so I backed off and went on to other things.
Over the years I heard of her from time to time, from pretty interesting places too. Until now I’ve left her be.
Back in 2009 or so I wrote –
“Chiefly; she’s not out to rip people off. Her convictions are sincere–honest even. Not many people in the UFO biz can say that. She’s not selling anything except what she believes, and it must be truly frustrating that not many people will believe with her.
I sincerely hope that the Red Queen can find whatever it is she is seeking—someday, somewhere. Far out in the galaxy of strangeness, she may find that there are many many others out here seeking the same things, just some go about it in different ways. Truth is not something that can be found through hating others or by a dogmatic belief system. Truth cannot be forced by repeating the same things and over again. Truth is something that changes day by day, that alters itself to fit a current reality.”
Truth is a wonderful thing, for those who find it, for those who have the courage to speak it.“
She wrote in 2015;
I was asked today why I think UFO debunkers (and so-called UFO “skeptics” which really, are one and the same) do what they do. Why do they care so damn much about proving UFOs don’t exist? (They’ve gotten lazy; they don’t even bother. The subject isn’t even worth their time to mock, much. But still, they have at it, as any journey into the JREF will reveal.)
I remember seeing her on The James Randi Educational Foundation forum (JREF) Let us just say that she didn’t have a very good experience there. I used to see her on Reddit as well.
As to her idea that skeptics “care so damn much about proving UFOs don’t exist?” Well; I’ve never met a skeptic who wants to prove they don’t exist. What most skeptics do is try to discover if an experience has enough hard evidence to suggest that something external to the experiencer has happened, then try to figure out what that something could be. This is in stark contrast to a lot of believers who, after seeing anything unusual will assist that they saw a spaceship from planet “Bitzzeko” and get angry if you even question them. ( I mean, it could have been a galactic cruiser from planet Hykooona. You never know!)
I suppose to folks with high strangeness experiences might think that skeptics are attacking their integrity. I don’t believe that is the intent of skeptical inquiry unless the person having the experience believes that their memories are unimpeachable, which of course is silly.
Memory, however is very impeachable and malleable. Psychology and Psychiatry have proven this over and over. This is why personal testimony is the worst kind of legal evidence in a court of law.
In the UFO biz it’s often the only form of evidence.
It’s a hard lesson to learn and alas, many-many people in the UFO “biz’ are unable to understand this. An experience may be important to you, the experiencer. Unfortunately you can’t use that as evidence of much of anything. I do sympathize, but I also dislike humoring people so as not to hurt their feelings.
Over the years, The Red Queen kept up a steady stream of UFO related articles in a number of magazines and web publishing. And blogs! She published many-many blogs! It was nearly impossible to keep up with all of them!
Here are some of Red Queen’s blogs, the ones she kept up over the years. There were dozens! Many more than this small list and for a while she kept them up. She was incredibly active on the Internet.
https://orangeorb.blogspot.com//
https://ufomary.blogspot.com/
https://mothmanflutteringstwo.blogspot.com/
https://paranormalbigfoot.blogspot.com/
https://vintageufo.blogspot.com/
https://animalforteana.blogspot.com/
https://saucersightings.blogspot.com/
https://icomefromcircusfolk.blogspot.com/
https://thecinfluenceblog.blogspot.com/
https://x.com/orangeorb23
https://www.ufodigest.com/article/author/regan-lee
****
“So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.
For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.
Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we’ll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.”
