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The open files

The homepage names the territory. This page opens the drawer: eight standing files, the method they answer to, and the fieldwork that feeds them. Every file states its question, where it stands, and the evidence that would move it. A settled file leaves the drawer. So far, none have.

The protocol

How a file works

Wonder gets a question into the drawer. These two rules keep it honest once it is there. They are the same rules the book runs on, and the same ones I would want from anyone asking me to take a claim seriously.

Evidence Experience Interpretation Unknown
  • Rule 01

    Every claim carries one of four labels: evidence, experience, interpretation, or unknown. I will always tell you which is which.

  • Rule 02

    Every file ends with the evidence that would move it. A question I cannot say that about is not an investigation. It is a belief.

Where each question stands

The numbers are a route, not a ranking. File 01 is the instrument every other file depends on. File 08 is the machine handing the question back.

File 00 On the record

The personal file

What happened to me, and what does it prove?

A series of experiences my worldview had no room for. They are why this drawer exists, and they are told in full in the book, where there is room to tell them honestly. What matters here is the response: not belief, not denial, an investigation. Every file below is downstream of this one.

Filed under · Experience, not evidence Read the record in Glimpses
File 01 Open

Consciousness

Why is there something it is like to be you?

The one thing every person verifies firsthand is the thing science finds hardest to explain. Neuroscience keeps mapping which brain activity travels with which experience, and the map is genuinely useful. The jump from activity to awareness, the felt part, remains unexplained, and pretending otherwise helps no one.

What would move it

A demonstrated mechanism that gets from matter to felt experience, or a rigorous, repeatable result showing awareness doing what matter alone cannot.

File 02 Open

Ancient Civilizations

How much of the deep past is still missing from the record?

Göbekli Tepe put monumental construction thousands of years earlier than anyone expected, and that is a documented site, not a fringe claim. Most lost‑civilization stories still outrun their evidence, Atlantis first among them. Between those two facts sits a real question about what else the ground has not surrendered.

What would move it

Datable material in context: a site, a stratum, or an artifact that puts capability where the accepted timeline says it cannot be.

File 03 Open

Human Origins

Why does our own timeline keep getting older?

The story of our species has been revised repeatedly within my working lifetime: older fossils, earlier migrations, whole populations recovered from ancient DNA. Each revision was resisted, then absorbed. This file has moved more than any other in the drawer, which is exactly why it stays open.

What would move it

The next well‑dated fossil or genome. This file moves on publication, and it has before.

File 04 Open

UFOs & Disclosure

What is left after the noise is removed?

Most reports dissolve on inspection into aircraft, balloons, sensor artifacts, and bad video, and saying so out loud is part of the job. A residue involves trained observers and multiple independent sensors, and it has earned congressional hearings. Testimony opened this file. Testimony cannot close it.

What would move it

Physical material, or raw sensor data released for independent analysis.

File 05 Open

Bigfoot & Cryptids

Why do careful people keep reporting animals that should not exist?

Years of field surveys taught me two things at once: large animals are better at staying unfound than people assume, and honest observers misread the woods constantly. Thousands of sincere reports, some from experienced outdoorsmen, and still no body, no bones, no DNA that survives scrutiny. Both halves of that sentence matter.

What would move it

A specimen. A body, a bone, or a sequence independent labs can verify. Biology settles for nothing less.

File 06 Open

The Paranormal

What are experiences that resist explanation evidence of?

Reports of high strangeness run through every culture and century, often from people with nothing to gain by making them. Most yield to sleep states, grief, suggestion, or coincidence when examined carefully and kindly. The remainder is small, stubborn, and owed more honesty than either side usually gives it.

What would move it

An effect that registers on an instrument, or repeats under conditions the experiencer does not control.

File 07 Open

Spiritual Awakening

What actually happens when a worldview breaks open?

People separated by oceans and centuries describe this territory in strikingly similar terms, and my own account is in the book. The experience is real to the person having it; that much I can attest. What it means is where honest people divide, and I hold my interpretation loosely.

What would move it

Long‑term study of the people this happens to, tracked carefully, without a script to confirm or debunk.

File 08 Open

Artificial Intelligence

Is intelligence the same thing as awareness?

I build with AI in my technology company and in media production, so the question is not abstract for me. The systems grow more capable by the month while showing no sign anyone is home, which sharpens File 01 rather than settling it. Whatever these machines turn out to be, they are forcing better questions about what we are.

What would move it

A test both sides accept in advance, able to tell performing awareness apart from having it.

Fieldwork

Some files require boots

When a question has a location, I go stand in it. Lately that has meant Egypt: Giza, Saqqara, Karnak, Dendera, and the temple of Hatshepsut, sites several of these files keep pointing back to.

The day job travels with me. Handheld LiDAR and Gaussian splats can capture a monument as it stands, and a measurement has a way of shortening arguments about what is actually there.

Sites walked Giza · Saqqara · Karnak · Dendera · Hatshepsut
Tools carried Handheld LiDAR · Gaussian splats · a paper notebook
Dispatches Published in the Journal as the work happens
Read the field notes
Matt P. Alexander at the Great Pyramid of Giza
Photograph · 3:4

Keep watch

Files move. Be there when one does.

When a file moves, the write‑up lands in the Journal and the list hears about it first. Between moves, quiet. No noise is part of the method.

Follow the Journey