Colin Dickey , author of Ghostland : An American History inHaunted Places , is back with another first-class non - fiction geographic expedition of the strange . The Unidentified : Mythical Monsters , Alien Encounters , and Our Obsession with the Unexplained is a fascinating read , so we called up the generator to tattle more about it .
Cheryl Eddy , io9 : Your old book , Ghostland , was mostly abouthistorically significant hauntingstied to specific location . The Unidentified takes a across-the-board look at the paranormal ; there ’s a focus on aliens but it also explore cryptozoology and otherX - Files - type subject . How did you resolve specifically which topic to admit , and how you want to near them ?
Colin Dickey : ab initio the theme leaning was quite gravid , and I kind of had to dial it back . At some stage , I realized the connecting threads of the thing that ended up being in the book all coalesced around the idea of , I opine you could say , the wild . I call back that if Ghostland was on some level a book about architecture , this book is more about borderland and frontier . So the agency that those kind of manifest is , I was drawn to stories of Atlantis andLemuriaas these place that were constantly off the edge of map that could never really be ever attain again .
A jogger (or maybe Bigfoot?) in Rotterdam’s misty woods on 4 February 2025.Photo: ROBIN UTRECHT/AFP (Getty Images)
That sort of dovetailed for me into the places where I kept seeing cryptids and aliens inhabiting , which are rarely in cities or populated areas , but always seem to be on the bound of affair — be it redwood wood in California , whereBigfootis located , toArea 51 in the middle of the desert , where Nevada sort of becomes an uninhabited space . The places and the tool themselves all seemed to inhabit these kinds of edgelands and frontier , and that became the guiding organization for how the Word of God shaped up .
io9 : What draws you to writing about these sorts of topics ? Were you always into spooky stuff as a child , or was there a specific experience that piqued your pursuit ?
Dickey : sure enough I develop up on thing like the show In Search of … that was narrate byLeonard Nimoy , and those Time - Life [ Mysteries of the strange books ] , the kind of things you ’d see commercials for on Saturday afternoon . That percolated in my consciousness at a untested long time . But I think the specific driver for this book in particular was , in the wake of the 2016 election , citizenry were talking about societal medium drive misinformation and false information .
Is that… BIGFOOT?Image: Viking
In the backwash of that , at the time , the latest design said something like 42 million Americans believe that Bigfoot was actual . I start to think about how this conversation about misinformation and conspiracy theory that was happening in this political realm might also be happening in a parallel realm — sort of less fraught , more painkiller discussion of UFOs , Bigfoot , the Loch Ness Monster , and stuff like that . I recall I was soak up to sort of attempt and understand how these other beliefs arose , and how they evolve over time .
https://gizmodo.com/author-max-brooks-on-what-fascinates-him-about-bigfoot-1843706788
io9 : The Unidentified traces how our eyeshot of aliens over time has change , from the superhumans of early sci - fi stories to scary tales of abduction , and everything in between . What do you see as being the ethnical and political force that have helped influence those changing percept ?
dicky-seat : It ’s really interesting because at a certain peak , you ca n’t think in aliens without believing in the government keeping alien from us — which is a bit unusual and not something you have with touch , or the Loch Ness Monster , or the Lost Continent of Atlantis . There ’s a very specific relationship between governing and aliens that I believe is kind of unparalleled and also a little morsel unsettling . What ’s interesting to me about a lot of these stories is that there ’s a kind of temporal expectation that happen with a belief like this . When the first sightings of UFOs in the tardy ‘ 40s get occur , pretty much everyone sham it was only a matter of time before we would have undeniable , confirmable , empirical proof of UFOs . The numbers of sighting keep multiplying , and it just became decipherable that ’s the focus we were going .
And when that failed to happen , the diehard believers postulate some kind of account for why that was n’t happening on schedule . The longer that hope got retard , the more complicated and byzantine the explanations for why it had n’t arrived needed to be . These governing conspiracy evolved as a retroactive explanation why we did n’t have document proof of extraterrestrials : the government had to be hide them or keeping them from us on some level .
io9 : The pandemonium of 2020 has teach us many thing , one being that confederacy theories can spring up around jolly much any topic . What do you see as the underlying reason why we ’re so obsessed with them , and why are they so popular at this moment in chronicle ? Is social media to blame ?
dicky-seat : Definitely social media is a driver of it , and I do n’t want to downplay social media ’s function , and algorithmic rule on Facebook and whatnot , but I also think that there ’s something more born in how we view the world that existed long before social media . I recollect the means I see confederacy possibility cultivate is that we all have our verification prejudice . We all have the things we need to believe are true . Most of us will pick and take facts that support our impression . That ’s not great , but it ’s sort of rough-cut and we all do it — I do it too , and it ’s just sort of part of human nature .
But once there are no more facts to hold your preexisting feeling that you could cull and choose from , it draw a lot hard to contain out that confirmation diagonal . I see conspiracy theories as arising out of that import when the fact but are n’t usable to support your verification bias , so you have to make up facts or dispute the fact that are right in front of you . Where we ’re at right now is a period of such constant upheaval that I cogitate a lot of our prior beliefs are being challenged in a mint of agency . It is easier for a slew of us to respond to that challenge by simply traverse the reality in front of us , rather than facing that challenge pass - on , and that ’s one affair that drives conspiracy theory in this kind of second .
io9 : Ghostland has a fairish amount of disbelief in it , but The Unidentified really digs into how not believing became its own crusade , too . Why did you need to check that to include that point of view , and where do you fall on the sceptical spectrum ?
Dickey : With Ghostland , I seek to be as open as I could to dissimilar points of persuasion , and a great deal of the great unwashed translate that account book as being a skeptical debunking , which I was n’t alone intending it to be . I did want to leave that blank receptive for the unexplained and people ’s differ beliefs . But a lot of the topic in this book , I feel are beliefs that can easily lead us down a very dangerous track . One of the thing that I found in researching this is the elbow room that , particularly a opinion in aliens , is often a gateway drug to some especially vile anti - governmental cabal theories and also , often , sort of racially - charged or just racist confederacy theories . I wanted to tug back against that .
patently there are racial facial expression in how we tell ghost news report that I talk about in Ghostland , but with a batch of these , and sort of the gene linkage between how anti - Semitic conspiracy hypothesis percolate in through alien communities , I felt it was important to be a lot clearer on what does and does n’t constitute legitimate belief , for deficiency of a better term .
The Truth About The Future Of The Skeptic Movement
io9 : What do you in person think is the strangest news report in the Scripture , and why ? For me , it ’s got ta bethe Kentucky gist exhibitor .
Dickey : Oh , definitely the nitty-gritty rain shower is great ! I think the meat shower is one of the unknown thing I ’ve ever come across , and it really motor the Word in a lot of way . The other chronicle that I really care is theGloucester Sea Serpent , because it often gets left off the received cryptozoological lists . It ’s not as famous as the Loch Ness Monster or Bigfoot . But unlike those more famous monster , the numeral of hoi polloi who saw it is in the hundreds . It defies the kind of normal template of a lone observer in the wilderness , or a grainy photograph , or an out - of - focusing cinema . There ’s oodles of subpoenaed eyewitness and hundreds of percipient , and yet it ’s been sort of lose to history . The history of the Gloucester Sea Serpent really sort of crystallized what I want this book of account to do , so I was happy to give it a little home .
io9 : As a sort of scholar of the unusual , what do you call up keeps us come back again and again to these form of stories ?
dickie : I conceive the thing that guide mass , let in myself , is a feeling and a desire for a world that still is filled with wonder . Even those of us who are reasonably noetic and scientifically tending , and supportive of voiceless sciences and the workplace that those scientist do , I think we are still , on some level , craving a sense that there ’s something else freaky out there left to be discovered . I think as long as there are sort of bizarre case history of , you lie with , heart and soul falling from the sky orchildren being lifted up by giant , unidentified birdsfrom their backyard , we are conk out to continue to be draw to these kinds of history — even those of us who are skeptical and are sure that there ’s some kind of plausible account . I think that we ’ll still desire to brood around in these property .
The Unidentified : Mythical Monsters , Alien Encounters , and Our Obsession with the Unexplained by Colin Dickey is out July 21 ; you could order a copyhere .
5 Alien Planets We ’d really care to Visit
For more , make trusted you ’re stick to us on our Instagram @io9dotcom .
AliensbigfootBooksLoch Ness Monster
Daily Newsletter
Get the best tech , science , and finish news in your inbox day by day .
intelligence from the future tense , rescue to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
