LAPIS 2011 Conference Review

Early on the morning of Saturday 11th June 2011 I and my friend Chris set off from Birmingham on our journey to Blackpool for the yearly LAPIS paranormal conference. It was a fantastic sunny day and the roads were nice and clear. This year the conference took place at the Carousel Hotel right on the seafront, just a short distance along the main promenade from Blackpool Pleasure Beach. As we arrived around 9.30am, both Blackpool Tower and “The Big One” rollercoaster were in plain sight.

The conference took place inside the main bar room of the hotel. This was really nicely furnished and well lit, a comfortable location for two days of lectures. There was also another side room where a number of merchandise stalls had been laid out.

We almost immediately bumped into Paul Vella, who was billed to speak first at the conference, and a friend of mine, Mike Rutter from Rapport contactee support group and magazine. After socialising a while with them over a coffee, we then caught up with some of the other speakers including Malcolm Robinson (who had spoken at BUFOG only two weeks before), Mike Hallowell and Rob Whitehead. Prior to kick off I also had a good look round the merchandise room, where I was pleased to once again meet up with contactee Mike Oram, who was also on the speaker line up.

After claiming some nice comfy seats towards the back of the room, we settled down to listen to Paul Vella, who gave a fascinating first talk on the “Minnesota Ice Man”. This was a sideshow attraction which was put on display around the USA in the late 1960s, and appeared to be a caveman/bigfoot like creature encased in a block of ice. Many people believed it was real and was the missing link. Over the years various people claimed to have been involved with the discovery or death of the ice man, and Paul went over their claims in detail. He personally believed it to be a clever hoax made by a special effects studio rather than an actual creature, however scientists were never given the chance to