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The Time Was Now: Paranormal Non-fiction and Hauntological Metalepsis in Nick Redfern's The Man-Monkey: The Search for the British Bigfoot
Journal article   Peer reviewed

The Time Was Now: Paranormal Non-fiction and Hauntological Metalepsis in Nick Redfern's The Man-Monkey: The Search for the British Bigfoot

Nicholas K. Mohlmann
Life writing, Vol.online ahead of print
10/18/2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14484528.2025.2572713
Web of Science ID: WOS:001595762500001

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Abstract

Nick Redfern is one of the world's most prominent and prolific writers of paranormal non-fiction with a bibliography that runs the gamut from cryptozoology to ufology to conspiracy theory. In addition to writing several memoirs, Redfern employs autobiographical writing throughout his oeuvre, inflecting his accounts of the paranormal with personal reminiscences, first-person investigatory narratives, and anecdotes drawn from his colourful and storied life. This article examines the hauntological effects of Redfern's use of autobiographical metalepsis in his 2007 Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot, a text that is as much about Redfern's reconciliation of memories of the past's foreclosed futures with a disembodied, digital present as it is about rooting out the titular apparition. The article brings life writing scholarship into conversation with hauntology in an examination of Redfern's depictions of time, space, and materiality to argue that autobiographical metalepsis can function as an antidote to the millennial culture of immediacy. By foregrounding the mediating effects of writing, autobiographical metalepsis resists immediacy by calling attention to our uncanny relationship to the past.

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