Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained

Times are tough and when there’s turmoil in the world, penchants for fantasy to rise. In a world where scientific, rational explanation is available to the average person more than ever before, beliefs in the irrational, fringe rise. Conspiracies like Flat Earth, political forum religions, and the like proliferate in people’s headspace. The author, a cultural historian, looks at what fringe beliefs and believers have in common: people trying to find wonder and unknown in a world that’s been stripped it. The author Colin Dickey chronicles his visits to notable American epicenters of fringe beliefs — from Mount Shasta, where ancient extraterrestrials are said to roam, to the museum that has complained the evidence of the Great Kentucky Meat Shower. He investigates these theories, how they take hold, and how they reinvent themselves — decade after decade.

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