B.J. Hollars’s Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians, and the Weird in Flyover Country delicately bridges the gap between academic and non-academic texts in the approach taken to otherworldly phenomena. The book opens with a prologue that shares with the reader Hollars’s introduction to the topic. It began in the classroom, with a group of students challenging their instructor, Hollars, on the art of the persuasive essay. In rebuttal, Hollars agreed to write his own persuasive essay on Bigfoot’s existence. Hollars admits that the endeavor was more difficult than he anticipated, and that he found himself unintentionally including personal opinion in the essay. This project led him to question: “How are we to validate anything…while remaining hell-bent on invalidation?” (5). This question eventually led him to the approach for this text, one that he unknowingly aligned with a folkloristic approach. Rather than take on the strange from a disbelieving standpoint, he engages with it from a place of “curious inquiry” (5).
This vantage point, much like that of folklorists who complete fieldwork or research in the bizarre, allows him to work closely with the topics in this text without strong concern for the objective truth behind the phenomena. Instead, Hollars looks closely at the communities that experience these odd happenings and takes in their experiences as they are shared with him. Importantly, for some of phenomena he completes in-person fieldwork with investigators and witnesses, and includes robust personal description of the areas where sightings occurred (and photographs of them in some instances). This, unsurprisingly, is where the text is the strongest.
Hollars organizes the phenomena into nine case files, with three case files in each of the three sections: monsters, Martians, and the weird. The case files open with a header that includes the name, the scientific name, the location, description, field notes, witness testimony, and conclusion. For casual readers, this information serves as a good litmus test as to whether a particular chapter will be of interest.
The first section, Monsters, includes the Beast of Bray Road, Oscar the Turtle (also known as the Beast of Busco), and Mothman. The strongest of these three case files is the first, which includes fieldwork by Hollars and interviews with witnesses and researchers who have been living with and studying this phenomena for years. Much like the first case file, Oscar the Turtle includes details from Hollars’s fieldwork in Churubusco, Indiana. Unfortunately, once the reader gets to the chapter on Mothman, it becomes clear that the same style of fieldwork was not undertaken by the author for every chapter. Hollars defends the inclusion of the Mothman chapter as midwestern due to the proximity to the Ohio border (Point Pleasant, WV, sits on the Ohio River), but does not acknowledge or reference the number of sightings that took place in Ohio, too. Unlike the previous sections of the book, which include reflexive commentary on the area and interactions with researchers and witnesses, this chapter feels slightly underdone. One is left to wonder why one of the other robust midwestern creatures was not included in this section (Minerva Monster, Beast of Whitehall, Loveland Frogman, to name a few Ohioan creatures).
The second section, Martians, includes Joe Simonton’s Space Pancakes, the Minot Air Force Base Sighting, and the Val Johnson Incident. These chapters are strong representations of UFOlogical research in the ways that Hollars approaches the history of UFO research in the United States. From discussions of UFO experiencers to the history of Project Blue Book, a governmental effort to document and study UFOs in the mid-twentieth century, these case files are particularly fascinating to read.
The third and final section is a catchall of case files, labeled The Weird, and includes: The Hodag, Project ELF, and the Kensington Runestone. Fittingly labeled, this section of case files includes governmental low-frequency waves (Project ELF) and mysteriously buried stones that could alter the history of US colonization (Kensington Runestone). The Kensington Runestone, the last entry in the case files, is included last because it is not “nearly as sexy as a werewolf” (175), but it does feature an unexplainable find in the Nebraska fields. The addition of these weird, but not as tantalizing, chapters reminds the reader of the vast nature of the unexplainable—too often relegated to merely ghosts and monsters.
What will strike readers of this text about these case files is the way that Hollars applies different explanations to each of these strange phenomena. He tries different theories that suit the descriptions of witnesses and researchers like trying on new shoes—seeing which suit the testimony best—and then moving on to the next. He does not settle on a single theory, but instead leaves the case files open-ended, allowing readers to form their own conclusions about the origin of the phenomena.
Midwestern Strange is most engaging due to Hollars’s casual yet compelling writing style. He does not engage directly with academic theory or perspectives, yet this text does not have the same feel as other collections of the supernatural/bizarre. I believe this is in large part due to Hollars’s engaging with the places, witnesses, and researchers of the strange, rather than just using archival documentation or other published works—giving the text a more ethnographic feel. Likewise, the insertion of Hollars’s own commentary questioning both belief and disbelief with respect to these phenomena gives Midwestern Strange an inquisitive feel. Readers are encouraged to suspend their own beliefs and consider an array of explanations for the strange occurrences.
In conclusion, while this book is not strictly academic, I recommend it to folklorists and scholars in adjacent fields for the way that Hollars approaches the phenomena under consideration and also the believers in these phenomena. Although not engaging directly with folkloristic scholarship, the approach of the author feels folkloristic. I recommend chapters from this book for classes in need of case studies for discussion or further research, or for those in need of background information for their own research into the bizarre.
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[Review length: 991 words • Review posted on March 11, 2021]