About That Time I Slipped into Rabbit Hole

Gather ‘round friends. It’s story time. Did I ever tell you about the time I nearly fell into a rabbit hole?

In the mid to late nineties I got really into a late-night radio talk show hosted by a guy from Pahrump, Nevada named Art Bell. Some of you might remember the show. It was fun. Ghost stories, UFOs, and conspiracy theories.

It is the kind of thing that makes your imagination take flight. Like you are getting a glimpse into a hidden world. Like an information-expedition into the unknown.

Art Bell would have these hour-long interviews with guys like Whitley Strieber and Richard Hoagland where they would go off about moon landing hoaxes and remote viewing into the future. At one point they got into solar flares and polar reversals causing massive changes to the earth. For some odd reason, it landed.

Nothing else had really struck me. It was all just entertainment. But then one got me. It must have been a combination of how I was feeling that day, how much sleep I had (or didn’t have), what I had been reading earlier that day (probably things about very real climate crisis), and my general state of anxiety. For whatever reason, I got up and went over to my 25-pound computer made of thick beige plastic and started reading more. I found a map of what the world was soon going to look like.

I printed it off, convinced that more people needed to know about this. Our civilization was standing on the threshold of an imminent, massive catastrophe.

At the time I was on the executive of my Student’s Union at the University of Regina. I took the map to my office and showed it to my peers.

They, too, were shocked and horrified. One of my friends and mentors saw the map and assumed I wanted to talk about greenhouse emissions and the fossil fuel industry. She was really happy that somebody else on the executive shared her concerns about climate change.

But that was not at all what I was thinking. I was wrapped up in some delusional plot unfolding in a fiction writer’s mind. Marjorie was thinking about human beings on planet earth.

In that moment I saw through it. I realized that changes to the earth are very real — but that the reality of was that far-fetched fantasies about solar flares was just more exciting than the bleak reality that our entire way of life is destroying our planet.

I think I wanted something more poetic. More dramatic. More like an apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster. But my friend reached out her hand and I grabbed it. In that moment she pulled me out of that rabbit hole. She didn’t make fun of me. Shit. I don’t think she even realized I was slipping. She only saw the best in my and so just assumed I was talking about something rational.

All she did was say “yes.” She agreed that we have a problem and appreciated my concern. She wasn’t patronizing. She didn’t get me cancelled. She didn’t call me out. She just shared my concern and added her own, very grounded and thoughtful, commentary.

Looking for the take-aways from this story?

1. You are not immune to rabbit holes. Do not get so confident that what you believe is right and true. The world is a weird place and, my friends, human minds are strange and mysterious things.
2. Don’t assume that anyone sharing a conspiracy theory is a nefarious, nihilistic, basement-dwelling creep. Sometimes they just stepped through an unfortunate door.
3. Assuming the worst in people makes it much more likely that you will indeed get the worst.
4. Assuming the best in people can act like a shepherd’s crook and save a drowning friend.
5. We all love a good mystery. The supernormal is so much fun. Let’s not lose our sense of adventure and excitement just because we know most of it is not “true.” Santa Claus isn’t “true” either but I still love Christmas.

Art Bell passed away in 2017. His show, Coast to Coast AM, still airs every night with a new host. I stopped listening…but not only because I was really in it for Art Bell. I loved his voice and found that he knew how to speak into a microphone in a way that sounds like he is there with you, guiding you into some super freaky mysteries. It is a voice I aspire to. There is nothing wrong with sharing mysteries and telling stories. In fact, it is one of life’s great pleasures and I would hate to see a fear of rabbit holes start making people think we should stop.

Are you having fun with conspiracy theories? Cool.

Just know they are like soap operas, folk tales, and mindless gossip. They are not evil. They are not wrong or false or something we need to censor or cancel. They are something we need to handle with a light touch. We need to remember that while we may find entertainment, distraction, enjoyment, and potentially even some meaning or insight from stories — they are not to be taken literally.

Failure to make that distinction creates evangelism, fundamentalism, and ultimately terrorism.

Now go gently reach a hand out to a friend. With kindness and assuming the best, find common ground with somebody sharing conspiracy theories online. Help pull them out of that rabbit hole. It might not be your hand that they grab, but the more people we have reaching down there the more likely we are to get people back up here with human beings on planet earth.