The Joshua Files

So here’s the thing – everyone thinks I’m crazy.

Well, it’s weird. When people reckon you’re going a bit barmy, they don’t actually use words like ‘barmy’, ‘crazy’, or even ‘psycho’. They say things like ‘normal grief response’ and ‘therapy’.

What’s really baffling my Mum and her friends is that I’m not even getting ‘barmy’ right. Maybe she’d prefer it if I were crying loads, or just sitting staring into space. But it’s like there’s a sign taped to my forehead: Does not fit the textbooks.

All I’m doing is looking at the circumstances of this plane crash and asking a few questions that don’t seem to interest anyone else.

1. Dad told Mum and me that he was going to Cancuen, in Guatamela. Some Mayan king was murdered there, hundreds of years ago. So…why was Dad’s plane found hundreds of miles from where he’d rented it and hundreds of miles from Cancuen?

2. Why did the local newspaper not have a single witness who saw the plane come down?

3. Why did that same local newspaper carry eyewitness reports of a major UFO sighting close to where they said his plane had come down?

Seems to me, you get some information like that, you should ask some serious questions. Maybe wonder about the truth of statements like ‘Dr. Andres Garcia crashed his Cessna in the jungle of Southern Mexico and suffered fatal injuries on impact.’

Why am I the only one wondering about this? Seems totally normal to me. But the more I go on the more Mum thinks I’m losing it.

What is it with UFOs anyway? Why are you automtically a headcase just because you say you’ve seen a UFO? So many people nowadays have - it’s not hundreds of people, it’s hundreds of thousands. From all backgrounds, all ages, all types of braininess. UFO sightings are rampant; you can’t ignore something that so many people see.

I took those three facts about my Dad’s plane crash and I put them together like this:

What if that body belongs to someone else? What if Dad wasn’t in the crash at all? What if he was abducted by the UFOs? What if he isn’t dead, just missing?

Mum’s first reaction, I have to say, was very reasonable. She said “Okay. Let’s assume that there really was a UFO. What about the body in the plane? What about the luggage? No-one else was reported missing, just your father.”

Then she gave me a big hug and said “I understand sweetheart, you don’t want this to be true. Neither do I. It’s unthinkable, unbearable.”

Then she began slowly to cry, and it was me who had to comfort her.

Which I can do, because now I’m not so sure that he’s dead.