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Full Description
Midwestern Strange chronicles B.J. Hollars's exploration of the mythic, lesser-known oddities of flyover country. The mysteries, ranging from bipedal wolf sightings to run-ins with pancake-flipping space aliens to a lumberjack-inspired "Hodag hoax," make this book a little bit X-Files, a little bit Ghostbusters, and a whole lot of Sherlock Holmes. Hollars's quest is not to confirm or debunk these mysteries but rather to seek out these unexplained phenomena to understand how they complicate our worldview and to discover what truths might be gleaned by reexamining the facts in our "post-truth" era.
Part memoir and part journalism, Midwestern Strange offers a fascinating, funny, and quirky account of flyover folklore that also contends with the ways such oddities retain cultural footholds. Hollars shows how grappling with such subjects might fortify us against the glut of misinformation now inundating our lives. By confronting monsters, Martians, and a cabinet of curiosities, we challenge ourselves to look beyond our presumptions and acknowledge that just because something is weird, doesn't mean it is wrong.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Author's Note
Prologue: My Year of Living Strangely
Part 1. Monsters
Case File #1. The Beast of Bray Road: 1936-Present
Case File #2. Oscar the Turtle: March 1949
Case File #3. Mothman: November 15, 1966-Present
Part 2. Martians
Case File #4. Joe Simonton's Space Pancakes: April 18, 1961
Case File #5. The Minot Air Force Base Sighting: October 24, 1968
Case File #6. The Val Johnson Incident: August 27, 1979
Part 3. The Weird
Case File #7. The Hodag: 1893-Present
Case File #8. Project ELF: 1968-2005
Case File #9. The Kensington Runestone: 1362(?)-Present
Epilogue: And So Concludes My Year of Living Strangely
Sources
Selected Bibliography
