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by Mike Dash 
A scholarly yet enjoyable study of strange phenomena
Most compendia of strange phenomena are heavy on accounts, but light on theory, and usually try too hard to force the data into extant schools of thought. Mike Dash's book is refreshing in that it looks at such phenomena with a theory in mind, but without declaring that any one theory can explain all such occurrences and experiences. Dash proposes that they may be born of a combination of psychological forces and external event. On the way to testing this hypothesis, Mike Dash examines large array of phenomena from the "borderlands" of ordinary reality and those stranger worlds which may lie all around us or just outside our ken. These phenomena include, among others, UFOs, cryptozoological entities and phantom dogs, rains of fish and frogs, spontaneous human combustion, phone calls from the dead, and ghost ships. Dash looks at accounts of such phenomena critically, suggesting that the majority of them were hallucinations, hoaxes, and misperceptions, but without assuming that no such event could occur or that all such experiences are false. Indeed, his intent in looking critically at such occurrences is to find those few such accounts that might tell us more about these intrusions from the borderlands. To this end, he examines the psychological source hypothesis, which asserts the possibility that such phenomena might be the result of hallucinations, created by fantasy prone individuals, or born out of altered states of consciousness, or some combination of these three. He cites several psychological studies and theories to support this idea, such as the experience of the hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleep, the effect of magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes, and the fact that memory is, at best, a faulty tool. Dash points out the flaws in the use of these theories as explanations for borderland phenomena, but, assuming that internal rather than external forces might be responsible for at least some of the UFOs, lake monsters, and ghosts seen, he points out that such an assumption begs the question: why do these phenomena follow trends and fashions? Why are alien abductions common only in Europe and the United States, and not elsewhere? Why are the ghosts of the dead we see today so different from those of the medieval period? Dash answers these questions by putting forth the cultural source hypothesis, which states that perhaps each culture creates a repository of symbols such as monsters, ghosts, UFOs, abductions, and so forth, which provide forms for those experiences from the borderlands. When the internal forces that create such phenomena strike, then, there are available numerous entities to which the phenomena might be ascribed: such an event might appear as a UFO, an abduction, or a Sasquatch, depending on the circumstances and needs of the percipient. In short, as Dash states, "neither the psychological source hypothesis nor the cultural source hypothesis can stand alone, because culture influences psychology and psychology, culture." Dash states clearly that in no wise has he provided an answer to all such phenomena, but his suggestion that the psychological and cultural source hypotheses provide answers to some of these events is a step in the right direction to providing answers to questions about the origins of these mysteries. The extensive footnotes and the index make this an easy book to use for further research, and it is recommended to any interested in Fortean phenomena and the paranormal, whether the student be a serious investigator or merely looking for an enjoyable read on the topic. |
