The Unexplained

Source Citation: Terry, Neil et al. "Bikers, Aliens, And Movie Stars: Comparing The Economic Impact Of Special Events". Journal Of Business & Economics Research (JBER) , vol 7, no. 11, 2011. Clute Institute , doi:10.19030/jber.v7i11.2356. The article explains the history of three towns in brief detail as well as the origins of each town’s respective festival, though my main interest was in the UFO Festival of Roswell, New Mexico. In the section following these backgrounds, the authors compared some economics from the residents as well as the average economic stats of each festival, and then discussed some potential reasons behind the size and profit of each festival. The biggest draw of the article was the data on the profit of the UFO Festival, which I needed to help prove that paranormal tourism is a viable economic option. All three authors are professors in Economics/Finance at the West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas. Dr. Neil Terry is also a dean at the un...

  NOTE: The original image found on the Mothman Festival website was pretty blurry, so I did take the liberty of sharpening the image somewhat. Otherwise, I did no other edits. In the image above, the camera has captured a view of the large crowd that is flooding the streets of Point Pleasent, West Virginia during one of their annual Mothman Festivals. Lining the sides of the streets are temporary stands for vendors that set up shop for the festival with a variety of festival and or Mothman-related paraphernalia. While I couldn't find any hard numbers about the number of visitors during the festival, estimates have placed at least around a thousand attendees during the festival, which is believable when looking at an image like this. This helps illustrate just how powerful and important paranormal tourism is and can be for a local economy.

     My current research question is to look at why people are drawn to dark or paranormal tourism, and how this form of tourism affects the general interest in the paranormal. I will likely have a focus on the Mothman Museum and Festival, with other cases used as support.     Listed below are some of the sources I think I'll be eventually referencing in my paper.  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=143163641&site=ehost-live. Beats, Relentless. "Phoenix Lights -12/31 Tickets". Phoenix Lights 1969 - - & 31, 1969 , 2021, https://phoenixlightsfest.com/. Dixon, Deborah. “A benevolent and skeptical inquiry: exploring ‘Fortean Geographies’ with the Mothman.” Cultural Geographies , 2007 (14), pp. 189–210. Edwards, Emily D. “Morbid Curiosity, Popul...

Citation: Timothy, Dallen J., and Daniel H. Olsen. Tourism, Religion and Spiritual Journeys . Routledge, 2006.      The book focuses on the connection between religion and tourism, with the first part of the book handling more of the conceptual matters and implications, and the second part looks into the religion-tourism connection from the viewpoint of several different religions. However, the book also has an introductory chapter that introduces several key concepts which were more relevant to my research as it stands.      Dallen J. Timothy is a professor in Arizona State University’s School of Community Resources and Development and has a B.Sc., M.A., and Ph.D. in geography. Daniel H. Olsen is an associate professor at the Department of Geography at Brigham Young University, and has a B.ES., M.Ed., and Ph.D. in Geography and other topics related to tourism. Their research in tourism includes focuses on heritage and culture, religious and spiritual touri...