Here’s the thing: I’ve always been fascinated by the weird, the strange, the paranormal, the odd, the unusual, and the bizarre.
I guess that’s common enough these days. After all, modern science has neatly categorized and classified the entire world, dispelling a great deal of its mystery and leaving very little to the imagination. Everything is orderly and conveniently quantifiable, and there aren’t really any more surprises waiting in the wings.
At least that’s what we’re told to believe.
I don’t know that I do entirely believe it, however, and I’m guessing you agree—otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this. So that’s why I’ve decided to create this Substack newsletter; I’ve an insatiable curiosity, an incurable fondness for mystery and weirdnesses of all kinds, I love lists and list-making, and so the prospect of creating a catalogue of strange and paranormal happenings in the American West was just too much to resist.
From UFOs to Bigfoot, from lost races to furtive cryptids, from mysterious civilizations and mythical beings to terrifying encounters with the Unknown—the West has got it all. We’ve all heard of Roswell and Area 51…but have you heard of what lies beneath Blanca Peak, or about the relics of a time-traveling civilization in New Mexico?
Well, you’ve come to the right place—we’ll be discussing all that and much more.
Actually, I’m surprised someone hasn’t done this already. Maybe they have; I’m still getting the hang of navigating this Substack site, and there’s a good chance something’s eluded me. The point is, I thought a newsletter about paranormal occurrences in the West sounded like a great idea, and I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t find one.
So here I am, creating one myself. And you’re going to love it. I say that with all due modesty—it’s going to be a thrilling ride, and I can’t wait to get started.
The American West is like no other place on earth; certainly it’s like nowhere else in the country.
The landscapes are enormous and forbidding, to say nothing of their primordial, ancient beauty. But anyone who’s visited Yellowstone National Park, or the Tetons in Wyoming, or just about anywhere in New Mexico or Colorado, can tell you that; hell, anyone who’s watched a decent Western can tell you that as well.
But there’s more to it than that.
The American West is ancient, and there’s no escaping the weight of those crowded, prehistoric ages when you’re out there. And there’s something inhuman about the West, too—by which I mean that although humans live in these beautiful landscapes, they’ll always be aliens…unwelcome interlopers. The American West has nothing to do with human life, and it’ll remind you of that fact the first chance it gets.
So it makes sense, I think, that the West is home to some of the most truly frightening, weird, and unnatural paranormal phenomena in the entire country—maybe even the world, although that’s a tall order, and I sound like a damned Texan for even mentioning it.
What else can I say? Spend a night amid the hoary crags of the Rocky Mountains, or upon the high desert plains, and you’ll understand my point. Everything is weirder out west, and I mean to show you why.
A brief note about geographical terminology: there’s a lot of debate and wrangling and general back-and-forth about just what is the American West, and I don’t know the first thing about any of it. So I’m going to ignore all that nonsense, and just come up with my own definition. As far as this newsletter is concerned, I’m going to take “the West” to comprehend everything from about the Rocky Mountains in the east to the Sierras and Cascades in the west.
So that means pretty much New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and parts of eastern Washington, Oregon, and California. That means the west coast of the United States is out; those places are weird enough without me having to write a newsletter about them. Alaska, naturally, deserves a newsletter all to itself, and Hawaii is so far west it’s really in the east.
Of course I won’t rule out extending my boundaries a little eastward to encompass parts of the Great Plains, including the Dakotas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and even parts of—God forbid!—west Texas.
But I’d like to focus on the Intermountain West, which is what most people think of anyhow when you conjure “the West”—that loaded, almost mystical name.
So saddle up, you weird and woolly cowboys—it’s going to be a wild ride!