Wednesday, January 29, 2020

A Few Monsters, Martians, and Weird Things in Flyover Country

Hollars, B. J.  Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover
         Country.  Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska Press, 2019.  ISBN: 978-1-4962-1560-4

Do you enjoy hunting for "The Truth [that] is out there?"  Or maybe you watched Haunted Indiana on PBS like I did in the 1980s.  Or maybe you read Chariots of the Gods and others of that ilk growing up.  If so, you would likely be interested in Midwestern Strange where beasts roam, saucers fly, and the "weird" wanders about.

B. J. Hollars, an English professor at a Midwestern university, took a year to explore his childhood desire to understand Bigfoot and other creatures of myths and wonders.  As a result of his odyssey around the Midwest, he compiled this  book of nine cases divided in "Monsters," Martians," and "The Weird."  Monsters include The Beast of Bray Road (Elkhorn, WI), Oscar the Turtle (Churubusco, IN), and The Mothman (Point Plesant, WV).  Martians include Joe Simonton's Space Pancakes (Eagle River, WI), The Minot Air Force Base Sightings (Minot, ND), and The Val Johnson Incident (Marshall County, MN).  The Weird includes The Hodag (Rhinelander, WI), Project ELF (Clam Lake, WI), and The Kensington Runestone (Kensington, MN).

B.J. Hollars makes no claims on solving any of these mysteries, instead he seeks to document each case to the best of his ability with the sources (interviews, documents, radar images, etc.) he has.  And he is willing to live with the fact that these mysteries are unsolved, are you?  Read Midwestern Strange and decide for your self.