Joshua Cutchin has written seven books. If you find yourself beside him on an airplane and ask what he writes about, he’ll say, “Speculative non-fiction.” If he warms up, he’ll explain that he writes about supernatural mysteries—UFOs, Bigfoot, ghosts, etc.—all through the lens of folklore. A suspicion that all these phenomena are connected undergirds his writing. In addition to his books, Joshua regularly contributes to essay collections and, in 2019, appeared on the hit History Channel series Ancient Aliens. Joshua has appeared on countless paranormal programs, including Coast to Coast AM. He regularly speaks at events nationwide, most recently Rice University’s 2023 Archives of the Impossible conference.
I wrote
Thieves in the Night: A Brief History of Supernatural Child Abductions
Contemporary thought surrounding the supernatural has become rigid, mired in demands for “proof” like photographs and video recordings.
These phenomena rarely offer anything so compelling. Their genesis lies more in imagination than the material world, straddling the line between both. To better understand what might be going on, this rigid thinking must be broken.
Few books do that as elegantly as Patrick Harpur’s Daimonic Reality. Drawing upon Classical philosophy and Jungian psychology, Harpur obliterates the usual traps of distinction we rely upon: internal versus external, objective versus subjective.
While Harpur’s interpretation remains speculative, anyone with an open mind will find themselves liberated by the ideas he proposes. Daimonic Reality offers supernatural phenomena a foothold into the realm of the possible simply by acknowledging their impossibility.
Lake monsters, Yetis, UFOs, crop circles, guardian angels and visions of the Virgin Mary can all be described as apparitions, and this book weaves together an account of them. It argues that only in the last three centuries or so, and only in Western culture, they're as lively as ever. But, the author suggests, they can be made intelligible again by appealing to a different world-view. Three of the chief models for understanding mind and world are Jung's "Collective World", which is used to illuminate the links between the apparently disparate experiences being dealt with.
Dr. Jacques Vallee has always approached the UFO topic with academic rigor and intellectual honesty.
Faced with undeniable correspondences between older folklore and contemporary sightings, he penned Passport to Magonia in 1969. It was among the first books to acknowledge similarities between UFO contact and older, sometimes even ancient, interactions with supernatural beings, especially Western European fairies.
Within, Vallee argues that UFOs might not come from the stars but rather from right here—an unseen, ephemeral place inches from your nose as you read this. Whether residing in some mystical Otherworld or another dimension is immaterial.
The salient point is that we have interacted with nonhuman intelligences for millennia—and that our outdated interpretations may be closer to the truth than modern concepts like extraterrestrials.
Our age has generated, and continues to generate, mythical material almost unparalleled in quantity and quality in the rich records of human imagination. More precisely, people have very frequently reported the observation of wonderful aerial objects, variously designated as flying saucers, unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and so on. But investigators have neglected to recognize one important perspective of the phenomenon: the fact that beliefs identical to those held today have recurred throughout recorded history and under forms best adapted to the believer's country, race, and social regime.
Emissaries from these supernatural abodes come to earth, sometimes under human form and…
Paranormal literature contains both entry-level texts and advanced reading.
George P. Hansen’s The Trickster and the Paranormal firmly occupies the latter category; it is best digested a paragraph at a time. Anyone taking the plunge is rewarded with an erudite argument for understanding the paranormal, one yielding ever-increasing dividends the more it is applied: everything supernatural, from the phenomenon itself to those who study it, is subject to the influence of a subversive Jungian archetype known as The Trickster.
This is not an entity but rather a set of pervasive characteristics manifesting independently: transgressive, self-negating, liminal, playful, and, dare it be said, dangerous. Hansen’s speculation makes a little more sense of the insensible, including why irrefutable evidence of the paranormal yet eludes the scientific establishment.
1987’s Communion made Whitley Strieber the world’s most famous alien abductee. Since then, many have derided him as a fantasist or even a charlatan.
Most attacks stem from his critics’ insistence on viewing Strieber’s experiences literally. Few stop to consider whether or not that approach may be misguided. In this collaboration with Rice University professor Dr. Jeffrey Kripal, Strieber’s firsthand accounts are placed in dialogue with religious scholarship, providing a useful framework for navigating the treacherous waters between the objective and subjective.
The Super Natural acknowledges that these things are—at least partially—"real" in a sense that modern culture would recognize. Their meaning, however, may well be something else entirely, best apprehended through our never-ending attempt to make sense of our place in the cosmos.
Two of today's maverick authors on anomalous experience present a perception-altering and intellectually thrilling analysis of why the paranormal is real, but radically different from what is conventionally understood.
Whitley Strieber (Communion) and Jeffrey J. Kripal (J. Newton Rayzor professor of religion at Rice University) team up on this unprecedented and intellectually vibrant new framing of inexplicable events and experiences.
Rather than merely document the anomalous, these authors--one the man who popularized alien abduction and the other a renowned scholar and "renegade advocate for including the paranormal in religious studies" (The New York Times)--deliver a fast-paced and exhilarating study of…
If the paranormal is somewhat interiorized and subject to the fluid expectations of culture—as many of the above books argue—then can fiction further our understanding?
Enter King of Morning, Queen of Day, perhaps the best fictional representation of fairies ever written. Ian McDonald follows three generations interacting with these intelligences, who are just as slippery and ineffable as their real-life counterparts. Slight misgivings regarding the third act notwithstanding, McDonald’s execution is practically flawless, weaving together actual folklore with contemporary speculation.
Yet the core of his book is decidedly human, reminding us that—no matter how much we talk of UFOs from outer space or fairies at the bottom of the garden—their importance derives entirely from what their existence says about us.
Three generations of Irish women--Emily, Jessica, and Enye--struggle to tame the ancient magical powers that imbue the countryside and themselves, each with varying degrees of success
In Thieves in the Night, Joshua Cutchin explores the resonances between modern UFO contact and ancient beliefs surrounding "the fairy folk." While relegated to fantasy in the modern mind, fairies share a number of correspondences with our newer fringe mythologies, particularly an interest in adolescents. Both fairies and modern "extraterrestrials"—if that is indeed what they are—prey upon our most vulnerable population.
Whether or not this phenomenon is real, human beings have long believed it to be real, and some continue to live in this fear today. From straightforward abductions to tales of changelings—inhuman "others" substituting human victims—Thieves in the Night traces the influence of supernatural kidnappers from antiquity through the modern era, using a scholarly approach combining folklore, medicine, science, and spirituality.
"a fresh narrative whose scale, ambition, and pathos elevate" -Pacific Book Review
"The December Issue warms up the soul from its first chapter to the last." -Chanticleer Book Reviews, 5 Stars
The joys of retirement feel imminent to columnist Paul Scrivensby, a native of the Great Lakes' very own St. Catherine's Cove, but when his penultimate column stirs controversy, the writer soon finds easing into carefree days of leisure a luxury growing more elusive. Embroiled in the unexpected pursuits presented before him while on the verge of retirement, Paul discovers what he and others are capable of and searches for…
The joys of retirement feel imminent to columnist Paul Scrivensby, a native of the Great Lakes' very own St. Catherine's Cove, but when his penultimate column stirs controversy, the writer soon finds easing into carefree days of leisure a luxury growing more elusive. Embroiled in the unexpected pursuits presented before him while on the verge of retirement, Paul discovers what he and others are capable of and searches for understanding of what is truly expected of him at this pivotal point in his life.
A story of discernment amid the challenges and blessings of work, retirement, family, community, and past…
