The Unidentified

Starred review from April 6, 2020
Dickey (Ghostland), a National University creative writing professor, leads readers on a fascinating expedition through fringe belief and theory. Conducting extensive research into cryptozoology, UFOlogy, and other pseudoscientific fields, he investigates myths throughout the U.S., from Northern California’s Mount Shasta, inside which the possibly extraterrestrial Lemurians are said to dwell, to the “southern New Jersey creature of note,” the Jersey Devil, a fusion between Lenape myth and Puritan folklore reborn in the early 20th century as a “money-making hoax” when a kangaroo was passed off to paying crowds as the captured Devil. Dickey posits various ideas about why unproven and outlandish stories exert such a hold on the imagination: conspiracy theories upset the divide between science and religion, while the concept of humanlike animals such as the Bigfoot “trouble the line between human and nonhuman” and “interrupts the categories we make to make sense of the world.” With a wry tone and incisive analysis, Dickey explores how these stories have developed alongside the country through scientific innovations, evolving frontiers, changing ideas about race, and more. Readers will find this to be a thought-provoking and deliciously unsettling guide into the stranger corners of American culture. Agent: Anna Sproul-Latimer, Neon Literary.

May 1, 2020

Dickey (Ghostland) continues to explore paranormal phenomena but branches out beyond ghosts and investigates cryptids, UFOs, and conspiracy theories. No matter how well our world is organized and compartmentalized by science and religion, people still gravitate toward and are fascinated with the unknown, searching to explain the inexplicable. Dickey explores reasons why human beings are drawn to mystical phenomena, whether it is in rebellion against the bureaucracies of civilization and government, a projection of collective social consciousness, or simply curiosity and the desire to solve the proverbial puzzles. Like Aaron Mahnke's The World of Lore, Dickey lays the historical foundations that help explain the supernatural tales, but unlike Mahnke he examines the entirety of a given culture, beyond local geographic boundaries. Dickey succeeds in informing and entertaining his audience with his sense of wonder, rather than frightening them. VERDICT As a fascinating blend of history and the strangeness of human nature, this book will appeal to readers interested in the sociological aspects of popular folklore.--Bonnie Parker, Clayton State Univ.

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2020
A cultural historian digs into the mystique of "fringe topics like Atlantis, or cryp-tids (Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other associated 'hidden' animals), or UFOs, or ancient aliens." Traditionally, there has been no limit to the amount of theory, conjecture, and speculation that awestruck authors have heaped onto aliens, Bigfoot, or the lost civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria. But not so with Dickey, whose book Ghostland explored haunted places. Here, the author allows his Fort-ean subjects no quarter, eschewing the paranormal in favor of a steadfast adherence to earthbound explanations of the unknown. In Dickey's eyes, Sasquatch and the Yeti may not be the strange hairy outliers they have always been considered, but that does not make them any less captivating. What the author finds alluring about these particular cryptids has to do with another kind of phenomena entirely--namely, how they have been used in the sublimation and appropriation of Native cultures. "Not unlike sports mascots with their racist caricatures, or hippie boutiques selling dream catchers and peace pipes," writes Dickey, "the Wild Man lore of the Chehalis and the Nepalese had become a way for white people to romanticize what they were destroying, and a way for disaffected members of the colonizers to find a kind of melancholic reflection in these endangered cultures." Turning to Betty and Barney Hill's harrowing tale of alien abduction on a dark New Hampshire road in 1961, Dickey quotes a UFO skeptic that the depiction of the otherworldly kidnappers as "gray" aliens was not fantastic but rather a "way out of the complicated racial politics of the 1960s." Any true sense of wonder that the author exhibits is aimed at often inscrutable characters like Tom Slick, Charles Fort, and Madam Blavatsky, some of the leading purveyors of extraordinary hokum through the decades. An intriguing mix of myths and monsters that lacks much of the inherent fun but should appeal to UFO and Bigfoot watchers.

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July 1, 2020
In Dickey's latest, he posits the question: Why are people so obsessed with the unknown? Opening at the base of Mount Shasta in Northern California, Dickey's second foray into the mysterious begins with an investigation into the rumors of an alien race living at the peak. As with Ghostland (2016), Dickey's investigation is not into the actual existence of this alien race, but of the human experience surrounding it. The book travels back and forth in time and location, examining well-known unidentified creatures including Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. But this book is so much more than a catalogue of the weird; Dickey positions these creatures against discussion of science and exploration, and, importantly, the role of colonization and the erasure or co-opting of native beliefs. He examines the physical and the metaphysical: What is the pattern for the existence of these creatures and what can we learn about ourselves because of it? Meticulously researched and written, this is the grown-up version of the mysteries of the unknown books that were cultishly popular with children in previous generations. Perfect for the skeptics and believers alike.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)