Joshua Cutchin

Education and Career

Joshua Cutchin holds Master's degrees in both Music Literature and Journalism from the University of Georgia, where he previously served as the Public Affairs Director before transitioning to full-time paranormal research and writing in 2015. Based in Atlanta, Cutchin combines rigorous academic training with creative exploration, maintaining an active career as a published composer and performing musician specializing in jazz and rock tuba.

Research Focus and Methodology

Cutchin's distinctive contribution to UFO and paranormal research lies in his exploration of the permeable boundaries between UFO contact experiences and the mythic faerie realm. Rather than treating UFO phenomena as a discrete category, his work demonstrates deep connections between alien encounters, cryptid sightings, and encounters with beings from folklore. He employs narratology as an analytical framework, treating witness accounts not as raw data but as embodied narratives in which the boundary between fiction and reality becomes ambiguous and productive. His methodology bridges music theory, journalistic investigation, and speculative philosophy to examine how cultural mythology and personal experience of high strangeness overlap and reinforce each other.

Published Works

Cutchin's published output spans eight critically acclaimed books since 2015. His early work, A Trojan Feast: The Food and Drink Offerings of Aliens, Faeries, and Sasquatch (2015, later translated to Spanish), established his signature approach of comparative mythology. Subsequent volumes—The Brimstone Deceit (2016) on supernatural odors, Thieves in the Night (2018) examining child abductions across folklore and UFO narratives, and the two-volume Where the Footprints End (2020) co-authored with Timothy Renner on cryptid phenomena—extended this framework across multiple domains of high strangeness.

His 2022 masterwork Ecology of Souls: A New Mythology of Death & the Paranormal represents his most philosophically ambitious project, synthesizing decades of paranormal literature with phenomenological inquiry. More recent works—Fourth Wall Phantoms (2025) on paranormal narrative and reality, and The Inverted Path (2026) on supernatural disorientation in travel—demonstrate continued intellectual evolution. He has also published fiction (Them Old Ways Never Died, 2023) and curated essay collections (Fairy Films: Wee Folk on the Big Screen, 2023).

Media Presence and Recognition

Cutchin's research has achieved significant mainstream exposure. He appeared on the History Channel series Ancient Aliens in 2019 and was featured as a producer on Ryan Grulich's 2024 documentary Lady of the Lake. He appeared in the 2024 UFO documentary Cosmosis: UFOs & A New Reality, has been a regular guest on Coast to Coast AM, and maintains an extensive podcast presence with hundreds of appearances discussing paranormal phenomena. He regularly speaks at major paranormal conferences including Contact in the Desert (the largest UFO conference in the world) and was featured at Rice University's 2023 Archives of the Impossible conference, lending scholarly legitimacy to his interdisciplinary approach.