Anomaly-THEN! FLASHBACK: UNT “Folklore in the Archives” 2021

SMiles Lewis has had a lifelong interest in all things anomalous. An early age proclivity at recalling his nightly dreams as well as several personal experiences with ESP, precognition and dream switching bolstered his interest in the paranormal. Shortly after high-school he joined the local MUFON chapter in Austin, Texas. He would later become a MUFON State Section Director for that group as well as leader of the local UFO Experiencer Support and Study Group. A lover of books, SMiles collected over 1000 titles before founding the non-profit Anomaly Archives that serves as the lending library of the Scientific Anomaly Institute (501c3). For over twenty years he has worked with digital audio, video and other bleeding edge internet technologies. He has published his own print journal (E.L.F. Infested Spaces), edited a local paranormal newspaper (Austin Para Times), maintained a large network of websites (ELFIS.net), organized a national UFO conference (NUFOC-38), spoken to anthropologists about UFOs and parapsychology (Encounters with the Fantastic), hosted (and been a guest on) both terrestrial and webradio talk shows and has been podcasting since before the phrase existed. All these efforts and more have led radio talk show host Robert Larson to describe Miles as a “Gonzo Alt-Media Proprietor and Informationalist.” He was also the LOWFI-Texas State Bureau Chief of The League of Western Fortean Intermediatists. In 2015 he was one of several people in the Roswell Slides Research Group (RSRG) that solved the mystery surrounding claims of an alleged alien in an old photo slide promoted by unscrupulous UFO community profiteers. In 2017 he contributed an essay (“TrUFO vs UFaux: Planetary Poltergeists & Weapons of Mass Enchantment“) to the UFO anthology, UFOs: Reframing the Debate, which has received much praise. SMiles’ currently hosts the weekly news-roundup vodcast of the Anomaly Archives, called “Anomaly NOW!” and in 2020 hosted over 40 hours of live-streaming lectures, music and more as part of the Anomaly Archives’ 2020 Streamathon Emergency Fundraiser. In his day job with the Texas State Library and Archives Commission's Talking Book Program he manages a Volunteer Recording Studio (and formerly, the audio duplication department) and has been a consultant on two digital audio development documents for the Library of Congress' National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled.