September Blog

This month was another long block of research, research, and more research. I swear, if next month doesn't change (which I know it will) I'll scream. I went through the rest of my digital files, looking for cases. I logged approximately 2,600 cases between this month and last month. I then organized the cases into the different categories that were relevant to my project. Some of the categories include various cryptids, Faeries, car troubles before and during the encounter, chases with or at the car, physical attacks from the cryptids and UFOs, electromagnetic effects on vehicles, haunted roads, phantom hitchhikers, spook lights, and road folklore. I also gave a lecture at the Mothman Festival in Point Pleasant, West Virginia on September 15th. There I worked a table where I sold copies of my book and discussed my research with other researchers and enthusiasts. I purchased several quite valuable books for my research concerning various haunted locations in different states in the midwest. My lecture went off extremely well at the event, and there were plenty of fantastic questions that helped with my research development. Finally, I did extensive research concerning highway hypnosis and if it could explain some of the road encounters. Highway hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness which is attributed to driving for extreme lengths of time. I felt this might explain some of the less complex cases I have collected. Unfortunately, there is no hallucination aspect of the hypnosis so the only thing that it explains is missing time cases with no other phenomenon.

I showed initiative this month by deciding to shift the focus of my project. I felt that I was overreaching with my original scope of the project. I don't think I could adequately assess car interaction cases and folklore and regular driving encounters without making the book woefully shallow or making the book 3,000 pages long. I decided to focus on the folklore behind many of these cases and discuss roads where the phenomena are common and that is what they are known for.

The highlight of my month was easily the Mothman Festival. This year was my fourth year attending and the second year speaking. I had a great time. I was surrounded by close friends, colleagues, and researchers many of whom I grew up learning from and watching on television. I received many fantastic insights concerning my project and just had such a great time overall.

I learned quite a bit of Crybaby Bridges because of one of the books I picked up at the Mothman Festival. I was titled Crybaby Bridges and was by my friend George Dudding. In it, George catalogs and discusses approximately 150 Crybaby Bridges around the country (about a third of which are here in Ohio). Crybaby Bridges are supposedly haunted bridges where an infant has died either due to motherly neglect or because of infanticide on the part of the mother. Many of the legends are rather brutal and dark. The bridges are all over and have become a fairly popular type of local urban legend, but there are some who claim to have actually encountered possible ghostly presences on the bridges. These could include infant apparitions, crying sounds from under the bridge, or even the shutting down of car engines. I had previously only had a passing knowledge of this phenomenon but I plan on including numerous cases of this in my book.

A challenge that I encountered this month had to do with what I should focus my book on. My original plan was to create a wide-ranging guide to various fortean road encounters, but this is not really feasible. There is simply too many cases and too many aspects to the phenomena for a single reasonably sized book to handle. So, after a long talk with my advisor Joshua Cutchin, I have decided to focus on "haunted roads" not just roads that are supposedly inhabited by ghosts and spirits, but also roads that are frequented by UFO visits and cryptid reports. This will have a focus on the folklore and history behind these roads and begin to ask why these roads and not others. I am happy about this because it allows me to explore some of my favorite aspects of the paranormal: phantom hitchhikers; cryptid habituation; spook lights, and folklore.

I am looking forward to doing more specific folkloric and historical research next month. I love doing that type of work over the more broad scope of my previous research for the month. I am really passionate about a lot of these topics and this avenue allows me to fully explore that.

The title slide of my lecture for the Mothman Festival.