Reviews of Borderlands

‘Enthralling’
The Guardian

‘The book of the decade... a dazzling work of brilliance. You are not likely to read another book that is so balanced, well-reasoned and clear-thinking. Dash has encyclopaedic knowledge and a razor-sharp intellect. His act is close to impeccable’
Strange Magazine

‘Superbly researched’
The Times

‘A splendid piece of work’
Daily Telegraph

‘Few dare to take on the whole world of strange phenomena in a single volume and most of those who do fail miserably, presenting us with nothing but a hodgepodge of cases with little thought brought to bear on what it all means. Not so with Mike Dash's Borderlands. Dash, who is publisher of Fortean Times, takes on religious visions, spirit communications, UFOs and abductions, fairies, crop circles, cryptozoology, earth mysteries, and more ,but he does not let any subject get away easily. In the end, Dash grapples with the psycho-social explanation as the best way to understand these phenomena, and tries his best to make it work. “In short,” he asks early on, “to what extent are we, ourselves, the phenomenon?”’
The Anomalist

‘An amazing treasure-trove’
New Scientist

‘Funny... frightening... objective... inspiring... The broad scope leaves few stones unturned [but] Dash’s thoughtful approach leaves readers with their sense of mystery firmly intact. A fascinating map of the strange world we inhabit.’
Catholic Herald

‘Deeply satisfying’
The Independent

‘A substantial work in every sense.’
Magonia

‘Exhaustive, erudite and superb... Dash deals with a wide range of phenomena with wit, style and aplomb. Borderlands cannot be recommended highly enough.’
Animals & Men

‘Dash is constructive, interested, open-minded and rational.’
Glasgow Herald

‘Dash is well-placed to write the definitive book on the paranormal’
The Observer

‘Fascinating and crammed with information which provides a comprehensive examination of the grotesque world of the strange and the inexplicable’
Western Mail

‘Writing with great brio, Dash engages both familiar and more obscure material with a very healthy dose of scepticism and examines individual cases in great detail. His triumph lies in the way he conveys a sense that some phenomena may exist that science and rationality cannot explain away, while systematically destroying the vast majority of the dafter supernatural myths of the world.’
Good Book Guide

[FIVE STARS] A scholarly yet enjoyable study of strange phenomena, August 19, 2001
Reviewer: Hermester Barrington ( Malibu Lake, California)

Most compendia of strange phenomena are heavy on accounts, but light on theory, and usually try too hard to force the data into extant schools of thought. Mike Dash's book is refreshing in that it looks at such phenomena with a theory in mind, but without declaring that any one theory can explain all such occurrences and experiences. Dash proposes that they may be born of a combination of psychological forces and external event. On the way to testing this hypothesis, Mike Dash examines large array of phenomena from the "borderlands" of ordinary reality and those stranger worlds which may lie all around us or just outside our ken. These phenomena include, among others, UFOs, cryptozoological entities and phantom dogs, rains of fish and frogs, spontaneous human combustion, phone calls from the dead, and ghost ships.

Dash looks at accounts of such phenomena critically, suggesting that the majority of them were hallucinations, hoaxes, and misperceptions, but without assuming that no such event could occur or that all such experiences are false. Indeed, his intent in looking critically at such occurrences is to find those few such accounts that might tell us more about these intrusions from the borderlands. To this end, he examines the psychological source hypothesis, which asserts the possibility that such phenomena might be the result of hallucinations, created by fantasy prone individuals, or born out of altered states of consciousness, or some combination of these three. He cites several psychological studies and theories to support this idea, such as the experience of the hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleep, the effect of magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes, and the fact that memory is, at best, a faulty tool. Dash points out the flaws in the use of these theories as explanations for borderland phenomena, but, assuming that internal rather than external forces might be responsible for at least some of the UFOs, lake monsters, and ghosts seen, he points out that such an assumption begs the question: why do these phenomena follow trends and fashions? Why are alien abductions common only in Europe and the United States, and not elsewhere? Why are the ghosts of the dead we see today so different from those of the medieval period?

Dash answers these questions by putting forth the cultural source hypothesis, which states that perhaps each culture creates a repository of symbols such as monsters, ghosts, UFOs, abductions, and so forth, which provide forms for those experiences from the borderlands. When the internal forces that create such phenomena strike, then, there are available numerous entities to which the phenomena might be ascribed: such an event might appear as a UFO, an abduction, or a Sasquatch, depending on the circumstances and needs of the percipient. In short, as Dash states, "neither the psychological source hypothesis nor the cultural source hypothesis can stand alone, because culture influences psychology and psychology, culture."

Dash states clearly that in no wise has he provided an answer to all such phenomena, but his suggestion that the psychological and cultural source hypotheses provide answers to some of these events is a step in the right direction to providing answers to questions about the origins of these mysteries. The extensive footnotes and the index make this an easy book to use for further research, and it is recommended to any interested in Fortean phenomena and the paranormal, whether the student be a serious investigator or merely looking for an enjoyable read on the topic.
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