T. Peter Park

Who is T. Peter Park?

T. Peter Park is an historian, a former librarian, and a prolific Fortean commentator on anomalous phenomena. According to Chris Perridas, Park is "a foremost Fortean authority on H. P. Lovecraft and the cultural impact his writing has had on our culture through folklore."

Born in Estonia, Park has lived most of his life in the United States. He received a Master's degree from the University of Virginia in 1965. His Master's thesis was a comparison of the racial views of John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle. In 1970, he received a PhD in Modern European history from the University of Virginia. His PhD dissertation, entitled "The European reaction to the execution of Francisco Ferrer," described and analyzed the protests to the execution of a Spanish anarchist educator. He has a strong interest in anomalous phenomena, philosophy, linguistics, social psychology, and the history of social and scientific world views. He currently lives on Long Island, New York.

In an email to a Fortean LISTSERV, Park described his approach towards anomalous phenomena as "basically 'open-minded hard science'".

I find cultural attitudes toward anomalous phenomena as intriguing as the phenomena themselves. I think many Fortean mysteries do involve genuine, fascinating scientific or even cosmological puzzles--but also reflect social and cultural attitudes, tensions, and conflicts, as well. I have a basically "open-minded hard science" approach to things like UFO's, abductions, "Hairy Hominids," and "Lake Monsters," tending to favor extraterrestrial and unknown-animals explanations for whatever defies a more mundane explanation--but I'm also still open to parapsychological, "paraphysical," or "metaphysical" explanations as well, for the more truly weird and bizarre cases. However, if "psychic" or "metaphysical" explanations don't seem to be really called for, but something rather unusual was still seen, I would still favor a "nuts and bolts" ETH ufology and a "flesh and blood, fur and feathers" cryptozoology in preference to occultist approaches. I think the modern "mainstream" scientific world-picture is mostly correct so far as it stands, but also quite incomplete--with paranormal and "Fortean" phenomena pointing to some of its gaps and omissions. In my own outlook and orientation, I personally very much straddle the "Two Cultures" of "mainstream" academic, scholarly, scientific, and literary "high culture" on the one hand, and of parapsychology and Forteanism on the other.