20 SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020ON A SPRING DAY IN 1876 —as reported by
national newspapers in lurid detail — a
Kentucky farm wife was caught in a sudden
shower of meat, gristly shreds tumbling
from the clear sky above. The “carnal rain,”
as The New York Herald called it, spattered
across the yard for several minutes,
prompting the woman, who had been mak-
ing soap, to abandon the project and flee
into the house.
The Kentucky Meat Shower (suspected
to be vulture vomit) might have stayed a
passing oddity. But a conspiracy-minded
American writer, Charles Fort, highlighted
it in his 1919 publication, “The Book of the
Damned,” along with accounts of frogs fall-
ing from clouds in Ireland, rancid butter
tumbling from the sky in Missouri and fish
dropped by storms in India. More than 100
years later, Fort’s screed remains a still-in-
print cult classic, one that Colin Dickey ar-
gues helped solidify the idea that inexplica-
ble mysteries of the world are as important
as the tangible evidence of science — and
maybe more so.
As becomes clear in his book, “The Un-
identified,” Dickey is not a Fort enthusiast.
He describes Fort as a crank, “a rogue his-
torian of the early 20th century” and as a
depressingly effective cultivator of para-
noid conspiracy theories. The phrase “the
damned” in Fort’s book is not a reference to
cursed denizens of the underworld. It
refers to events and experiences — like
meat showers — that science has damned
or excluded as untrustworthy. Fort, in fact,
bitterly referred to members of the scientif-
ic establishment as “the exclusionists.”
But in Dickey’s fascinating, troubling,
compassionate and — in the end — deeply
thoughtful narrative, he also makes the
case for why people like Fort wield so much
influence. Dickey has explored occult terri-
tory before, in books like “Ghostland”
(2016), but this time he sets himself the
goal of trying to explain why so many find
paranormal events and ideas so persua-
sively real. Surveys show that, between
2015 and 2018, belief in Bigfoot grew from 11
percent of the American population to 21
percent, and acceptance of alien visitations
rose from 20 percent to 41 percent. “We are
more and more ignoring ‘experts’ and em-
bracing the kinds of beliefs that were once
relegated to cults,” Dickey writes.
To understand why, he carefully traces
lines of influence between early flame-fan-
ners like Fort and the earnest believers of
today. Dickey’s story emphasizes the po-
tency of the 19th century, a time when
lovers of myth and mystery, alienated by
the rise of Darwinian science, proposed
possibilities of vanished civilizations like
Atlantis or lost landscapes of large aliens
and small lemurs, like Lemuria. Many of us
may not have considered, or even heard of,
Lemurian possibilities. But Dickey details
the history of the idea, following it from a
19th-century glimmer of a thought to its
still faithful followers in Northern Califor-
nia, who hold tight to the belief that Le-
murians shelter in caverns under Mount
Shasta.
This is natural territory, of course, for cu-
riosities. I also had no idea that, until the
1860s, reputable scientists considered pan-
das a ridiculous myth. Or that the Ameri-
can government was hunting Yeti through
the Himalayas in the 1950s, spooking the
Soviets into accusations that our monster
hunt was all about espionage. Or even that
New York’s old, acclaimed, alternative
weekly, The Village Voice, once fostered
the idea of alien abductions.
Dickey uses such incidents not merely to
tell good campfire stories but to illustrate
their shared darker themes — a deep dis-
trust of science and government, amplified
both by self-promoters and by conspiracy
lovers. And he notes that scientific arro-
gance and excessive government secrecy
have fueled these fires. The military’s
heavy-handed classification of U.F.O. infor-
mation, for instance, was a treasured gift to
those weaving tales of federal cover-ups
and hidden spacecraft.
There’s nothing startlingly new or trans-
formative in these conclusions. But Dick-
ey’s sense of history reminds us of the com-
plex reasons our odder beliefs endure. It’s
not that we necessarily want weirdness, he
suggests, but we do want wonder, we want
the freedom of possibility. So there’s beauty
and even comfort in the idea of “a world be-
yond our understanding, a world we can
glimpse here and there but never fully
see.” 0Beyond Science
Why odd beliefs endure and why cults develop around them.
By DEBORAH BLUM
DEBORAH BLUMis the author of “Ghost Hunt-
ers: William James and the Search for Scien-
tific Proof.” Her latest book, “The Poison
Squad,” concerns the invention of food safety
in the United States.
THE UNIDENTIFIED
Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and
Our Obsession With the Unexplained
By Colin Dickey
320 pp. Viking. $27.
THE HEADS OF STATENOW THAT BOOKScompete with Netflix and
other binge-watching streaming services,
tangled plots, flawed characters and unre-
liable narrators have become essential in-
gredients of the modern crime novel.
Alice Feeney’s latest fast-moving
thriller, “His & Hers,” has plenty of these
elements for readers willing to suspend
disbelief to delve into the murderous pri-
vate life of a BBC News anchor.
“There are two sides to every story,”
Feeney’s mysterious villain soliloquizes.
“Yours and mine. Ours and theirs. His and
hers. Which means someone is always ly-
ing.”The “her” of the title is Anna Andrews,
an understudy BBC News anchor with a
brittle personality and a drinking problem
so chronic that she keeps miniature bottles
of liquor in her purse, swilling from them at
any opportunity. She also takes a last-
minute slug of white wine before leaving
for work in the morning — never red be-
cause it leaves a telltale stain on her teeth.
Anna’s frailties are exposed through in-
ternal musings that chip away at her seem-
ingly unflappable persona. The smile she
flashes at the end of each broadcast never
hints at her dark past. Inside, Anna is an
emotional wreck — partly from a recent
tragedy and partly from the festering of a
dark secret from her teens when she was
befriended by a cliquey group of mean
girls. (“I’ve spent so many years trying to
forget these girls and now, once again, they
are all that I can think about.”)
Anna’s alcoholism doesn’t help either, al-
though she covers it well with a ready sup-
ply of breath mints and an enviable ability
to bounce back from binges: “It’s nothing
some prescription eye drops and a cup of
coffee can’t rectify.”
The “his” of the title is Detective Chief
Inspector Jack Harper, a middle-aged de-
tective who gave up on the London rat race
for low-key policing in Blackdown. A bur-
glary is the worst crime that Detective
Harper handles in this quaint village sur-
rounded by forests. “The truth is,” he says,
“since I left London, my job has been as
dull as a nun’s underwear drawer.”
This changes when the first victim turns
up. Her silky blouse is soaked red from
knife wounds to her chest. Written in red
varnish on the victim’s fingernails are the
words “Two Faced.” Tied around her
tongue is a red-and-white friendshipbracelet.
With the regular news anchor unexpect-
edly back from maternity leave, Anna is
demoted to the role of reporter and sent to
cover the murder in Blackdown. This is her
old stomping ground, where she grew up
as the daughter of the village cleaning lady
— and where she made a secret visit on the
night of the murder. Suddenly, Anna is be-
neath a cloud of suspicion, at least in the
mind of the reader.
Meanwhile, Jack is suffering the afteref-
fects of a late-night assignation with a
beautiful woman in a car. Lo and behold,
when he arrives at the crime scene, he dis-
covers that the murder victim is the wom-
an from the night before. “This is bad,” he
thinks. “If anyone ever finds out, they’re
going to think it was me.” And Jack’s scarf,the one he wears around his neck like “a
cozy personalized noose”? Turns out, it
was a gift from his ex, who is none other
than the television reporter assigned to
cover this homicide investigation. That
would be Anna Andrews.
As animosity crackles between the exes,
more mutilated bodies turn up in what ap-
pears to be a serial killing rampage.
Mounting evidence points to the possibil-
ity that either Anna or Jack could be the
killer, depending on which narrator is to be
believed. These are not random killings;
each murdered woman has a friendship
bracelet tied around her tongue. And, dec-
ades earlier, all of the victims attended An-
na’s Sweet 16 birthday party — which was-
n’t so sweet at all (in spite of the friendship
bracelets distributed to guests). There’s a
reference to a bullying incident.
The actual crime is far more heinous,
though there’s little time to dwell as the
story propels toward a climax that reveals
not just the killer but the reliability, or oth-
erwise, of the narrators. Sympathetic char-
acters are thin on the ground in a twisty
tale that tests the limits of plausibility even
as it entertains. 0Tongue Tied
In this detective story, a rash of murders share an unusual clue.
By MEGAN GOLDINMEGAN GOLDINis the author of “The Escape
Room.” Her new novel, “The Night Swim,” will
come out next month.HIS & HERS
By Alice Feeney
320 pp. Flatiron Books. $27.99.Alice FeeneyPHOTOGRAPH VIA ALICE FEENEY