Visual Aspect

 

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.

Comments

  1. Michael GoellerMarch 23, 2021 at 8:15 AM

    It would be really great to see some figures (maybe represented visually) of how much money these festivals bring into these tiny towns, and (if possible) how it compares with the rest of the year. Sort of like the way shore towns make almost all of their tourism dollars in the summer,,,,

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael GoellerMarch 23, 2021 at 8:16 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

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  3. Michael GoellerMarch 27, 2021 at 10:43 AM

    Found a great source for you:

    Houran, James, et al. “Paranormal Tourism: Market Study of a Novel and Interactive Approach to Space Activation and Monetization.” Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 3, SAGE Publications, 2020, pp. 287–311, doi:10.1177/1938965520909094.
    https://bit.ly/2PcJal9
    https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.libraries.rutgers.edu/doi/10.1177/1938965520909094

    ReplyDelete
  4. Michael GoellerMarch 27, 2021 at 10:46 AM

    Do a search on "paranormal tourism" at the Rutgers libraries site and you will turn up over 20 sources.

    ReplyDelete

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Literature Review #4

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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
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