I admit I have been a consumer of mystery-industry products, especially in their radio format. The amenable manner in which they were presented on La Rosa de los Vientos, and the distance its host kept from the things being told there, made the programme an inviting way-station for the curious. Nothing like the sensationalist unease radiated by products such as Iker Jiménez’s Milenio shows — I was never able to listen to a single one of those all the way through. Since those days, and thanks to the convenience of the podcast, mystery journalists have sprung up everywhere: shrewd investigators who claim to reveal what the secret cabals running the world don’t want you to know. Setting aside such inquisitorial pretensions, the topics of mystery are no more than a media construct that recycles the old materials of folklore — tales of fear and ghosts, of demons, gossip, and legends. Such things have always been told, and many have always made a business of them: specialists in the future and the occult, faith healers, tarot readers, spiritualists, astrologers, and magicians of every kind and station. The vastness of the unknown moves us; everyone wants to know, and that is easy to exploit. But credulity has a broad range, and fortunately suspicion and good sense have made their way, at least in part, towards more precise forms of investigation, less prone to fantasy.
Beyond any critical discussion of the topics the mysteriologists handle, there is one central dynamic to their product: the mysteries are never solved. Whatever explanations may be offered, the enigmas are always left open to a “perhaps.” No one shuts their mines while the seam is still productive. So, with their look of feigned perplexity, the journalists of the trade always find some crack through which to slip away from clear answers; they prefer the confusion of a mind that closes no door to itself, one that, under the cover of supposedly rational curiosity, ends up swallowing everything. As long as we do not know for certain how the pyramids were built, why couldn’t “non-human entities” have had a hand in it? As long as we have not discovered what all those things some people see in the skies really are, why shouldn’t they be extraterrestrials? As long as we have no irrefutable proof of what lies in the beyond, why shouldn’t ghosts exist, or other energy-entelechies wandering through haunted houses? The trouble is that nearly all these subjects are unresolvable, since they refer to realities that are either beyond the reach of scientific investigation — being either pure inventions, or scattered phenomena capriciously linked together — or, if within reach, do not yet offer enough material for a definitive answer. And it is always easy to add new cases to the repertoire. Ghosts and UFOs are inexhaustible; faces can appear on walls anywhere; conspiracies that no one can verify will occur to anyone; revealed books can be written by anyone; the opacity of the psychics is a shield against the absurdity of their art; and so on.
Mysteriologists are, moreover, invulnerable to all criticism. What deluded creatures, those so-called sceptics who have tried to fling in their faces the evidence that unmasks so many impostures. It makes no difference. The question is not whether or not there are extraterrestrials, ghosts, miracles, or supernatural forces. The point is to win audiences, sell books, give lectures, and rake in money by whatever means. What needs explaining is why so many people believe these things and consume their products, lining the pockets of the Iker Jiménezes, J. J. Benítezes, Javier Sierras, and so many others. Another striking feature is the ease with which they present themselves as inhabitants of a marginal, subversive world, poking their noses into corners that others would rather keep hidden. Never mind that they appear constantly on shows belonging to the great media conglomerates, or that they publish with the most monopolistic of houses. They tell you what no one else will tell you, what only they know because they have super-secret sources. They constantly fall into that journalistic fallacy so beloved of the sports and celebrity-gossip press — sources very close to the matter have told me that… — which authorises them to make up whatever suits them. Another of their bulwarks is the attack on the academics, those insidious figures who refuse to accept their nonsense. To dodge such rejection, they put forward a caricature of scientific work and ignore the vast network of academic exchange that compels researchers to expose themselves to the criticism of all their competitors, and not to give credit to anything outside a methodical and rational reconstruction.
Lastly, as a matter of personal style, these figures cultivate a magnetic presence, at once familiar and aloof. The master of them all is J. J. Benítez, who speaks with the serenity and wisdom of a man who has just had tea with Jesus Christ, who lends credence to the most preposterous revealed books and tells you all about it without batting an eyelid — though, of course, never once facing an actual critic. Others fall short of such magnetism. Iker Jiménez, for all his earnest performance of listening with deep attention, is possessed by the unmistakable aura of a snake-oil salesman — an aura that, far from dissipating, only grows with each furrowing of his brow and each dramatic pause as he tells you that spectres go strolling through the cemeteries.