Follow me along 'The Inverted Path'

I am pleased to let everyone know that I've got a new book coming out on June 8, 2026. It's called The Inverted Path: Supernatural Disorientation and Interruptions in Travel.

It's hard to believe I've got something else coming out so close to last year's release of Fourth Wall Phantoms. But the truth is that I've been collecting bits for The Inverted Path for years now. Just filing things away as they appeared while researching other projects. That, plus a healthy dose of 14 hour days, and, well... yeah, I suppose it does seem possible!

As you might have guessed, The Inverted Path focuses around how various paranormal entities interfere with travel. The jumping-off point is the phenomenon known as being pixie-led, once a common risk in southwestern England. As you might expect, though, the pixies are not the only creatures who delight in leading human beings astray. To my surprise, everything seems to engage in this behavior: anomalous lights, ghosts, UFOs and their occupants, and (as always) even cryptids.

Not only that, but the more and more I looked into this aspect of supernatural encounters, the more and more I became convinced that it was only half of the story. My exploration of that, as well as all the implications it presents, is what formed The Inverted Path.

That's Sam Shearon's glorious cover art, of course. I really wanted to work with him—not only is his work consistently marvelous, but he's a good friend. On top of that, The Inverted Path can be thought of as a loose sequel to 2018's Thieves in the Night, so it made perfect sense to have him return for this project!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1lVy2jFODk

Here's the synopsis:

It’s an old belief: fairies leading us astray, altering our surroundings until we find ourselves profoundly lost. In the centuries since, this experience has evolved, appearing in firsthand testimony involving ghosts, UFOs, and cryptids. Join acclaimed author Joshua Cutchin as he follows the trail of these reports to their logical conclusion, revealing connections to the modern phenomenon of vehicles arrested by supernatural forces. Despite endless variations over the centuries, the motivation remains the same, the belief ancient and unchanged.

"Reader, beware: to follow Joshua Cutchin down The Inverted Path is to discover that paths vanish, time distorts, landmarks shift, vehicles fail, direction collapses, and causality begins behaving strangely. These revelations do not arrive as declarations. They gather as recognitions. At first: interesting parallels. Then: curious recurrence. Then: why does this pattern keep appearing? Then, finally: what if familiar categories themselves are the illusion?

Cutchin’s achievement is to show, with extraordinary range and mischievous seriousness, that the anomalous does not merely interrupt reality. It may disclose reality’s hidden architecture. His subject is supernatural disorientation, but his deeper theme is the price of genuine encounter. Insurance protects continuity. Revelation interrupts it.

Here, getting lost restores perception. Disorientation becomes initiation. The wrong turn becomes the hidden road. We enter these experiences assuming we are navigating the world. Instead, we discover the world has been navigating us. Strange as its territory becomes, The Inverted Path is ultimately a work of uncommon clarity and wonder.

- Keith Thompson, author of Anomalous Phenomena, Angels and Aliens, and The UFO Paradox

“To read Cutchin is, in some sense, to be pixie-led. He draws you off the well-worn path and into the fog-shrouded territory where folklore, ufology, mysticism, and high strangeness converge. He leads you to the rupture itself—to the place where something ancient and uncanny bleeds through the cracks of consensus reality.

Yet Cutchin never leaves us wandering in the dark. With rigor, wit, and startling originality, he maps the dizzying terrain and wrestles the absurd into coherence. Few people have done more in such a short time to expand the horizons of Fortean scholarship. The Inverted Path is the work of a writer and thinker at the height of his powers.”

- Kelly Chase, host of Inquiry