The Unexplained

Citation:  McGinnis, Shelley E. Dallas, Roswell, Area 51: A Social History of American "Conspiracy Tourism. " ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2010. Key Terms and Concepts: Counterknowledge as uncovering hidden information, tearing down and rebuilding events and narratives in a cohesive way to present one’s own interpretation as fact. The rise of conspiracy theories in society led to people visiting relevant locations of said theories, which local governments and people seized as an opportunity to drive the tourist economy in the location.           The first chapter focuses on how conspiracy theories have helped shape the tourism of many locations in the U.S. Chapter 2 is about the tourism of the Grassy Knoll where JFK was assassinated, and how the conspiracy theories surrounding drew in tourists. Chapter 3 looks at the alleged 1947 UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico in the frame of the other UFO sightings in the U.S. in the same timeframe, and the ma...

Working Title: The Rising Industry of Paranormal Tourism Description:        I plan on looking into paranormal tourism, and why people are drawn towards it. This will most likely follow the ideas of human curiosity and commercialization in relation to paranormal encounters. I would likely focus on the commercialization of the Mothman as well as the Extraterrestrial Highway in Nevada as a reference point for my discussion. Research Question:   Why are people drawn towards paranormal tourism, and how has the commercialization of the paranormal affects its study? Theoretical Frame: In the article, Morbid Curiosity, Popular Media, and Thanatourism by Emily D. Edwards, the author brings up the ideas of perceptual, epistemic, normal, and morbid curiosity as well as media priming as reasons for why people engage in dark tourism. These tourist trips serve to bolster the interest in these attractions among other people and also build up the density and mystery of wha...

  Citation: Edwards, Emily D. “Morbid Curiosity, Popular Media, and Thanatourism.” Australian Journal of Parapsychology, vol. 20, no. 2, Dec. 2020, pp. 113–138. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=147786411&site=ehost-live. Key Terms: Perceptual Curiosity is the fascination around one’s own environment as well as the desire to experience things in one’s own life. Epistemic Curiosity is the fascination around knowledge one can’t learn directly through their experiences or sensing one’s environment. Normal Curiosity is the natural desire to intentionally seek out new knowledge and experiences. Morbid Curiosity is an abnormally strong desire in violent and gruesome knowledge and experiences that are irrelevant to one’s own life.      In the article, Morbid Curiosity, Popular Media, and Thanatourism, the author, Emily D. Edwards, talks about how perceptual and epistemic curiosity work with normal and morbid curiosity to generate ...

       After looking into Mothman and the Mothman Festival some more, or at least attempting to, I decided to revise my focus from that to a more broad look into dark/paranormal tourism, also sometimes called thanatourism. I plan on looking into why people are drawn towards these more recent forms of tourism, though I still might focus on the Mothman as a reference point for the paper. Image Source: Mothman Museum's website.     Listed below are some of the sources I think I'll be eventually referencing in my paper. The first of these I actually haven't had a chance to review yet, as it is in Russian, but the English abstract talked about how it looks into the social and economic draw of dark tourism.  Александрова, А. Ю. “Изменение Туристского Геопространства В Эпоху Всеобщей Мобильности.” Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta, Seriya-5: Geografiya , no. 2, Mar. 2020, pp. 3–12. EBSCOhost , search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=14316...

     Since my first blog post, I have now decided to firmly stick with looking into the Mothman, though for now, I haven’t settled on what specific aspect of this phenomenon I want to focus on. When looking for more info, I found the best key terms were the rather obvious ones: “Mothman” and “point pleasant, West Virginia”. Using these searches, I mostly turned up various articles on supposed sightings, a page for the Mothman Museum , the Mothman Festival , and several Wikipedia pages relating to it. Wikipedia gave a lot of good preliminary information on Mothman that could help guide me into a more specific lens to look into. According to Wikipedia, the Mothman was reportedly seen from November 15, 1966, to December 15, 1967, in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Mothman was popularized by John Keel’s book, The Mothman Prophecies, released in 1975, which was later adapted into a movie of the same name, released in 2002. Also in 2002, Point Pleasant held its first Mothman Fes...