COSMIC DEBRIS: Tapes to Explore the Unknown!

In sync with Brad Steiger's article on Dick and Trenna Sutphen, here's an ad in Fate magazine for some of the Sutphens' self-hypnosis tapes. The ad also features upcoming seminar dates, with Brad Steiger as a guest speaker at the Scottsdale, AZ conference, and an offer of a free subscription to Dick's Self Help Update magazine (just pay S+H)!

The Sutphen Family channel on youtube has archived many, many recordings and home movies of the Sutphens, including some vintage tapes. Check 'em out!

From Fate magazine, Volume 32 - Number 4, April 1979.

YOUR PAST LIFE CAN SET YOU FREE by Brad Steiger

Article in Fate magazine by Steiger on hypnotist and professional past life regressor Dick Sutphen, who aims to help people recover their past life memories. Steiger opens with the cheeky claim recycled from his volume Psychic Travel (written as Christopher Dane) that real life convict and prison reform crusader Edward H. Morrell was astrally projecting during the tortures he endured while incarcerated - of course, Steiger is taking the fictionalized aspects that Jack London added for his novel The Star Rover and pretending London got them straight from Morrell, who he interviewed as part of the background research on prisons for his story!

All this by Steiger is to claim that Sutphen may be a reincarnation of Morrell!

Steiger and his then-wife Francie were living the New Age crystal cowboy life down in Arizona at this time, and he describes attending a seminar by Sutphen and his wife Trenna in Scottsdale. Learning their past lives can, according to Sutphen, help people deal with problems in their current lives such as impotence and alcoholism. People also report Atlantean and extraterrestrial heritage through their regressions, which must have been of interest to Steiger per his Starseed theories, though he's careful to point out that Sutphen personally doesn't ascribe to any one interpretation.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 32 - Number 4, April 1979.

WITCHCRAFT IN THE WORLD TODAY by C.H. Wallace

Crowley misspent his lifetime trying to prove himself a magician and leader of a black magic cult. Time has proved him to have been a mere amoral charlatan, a debauchee, and, in all mystic connotations, a failure.

Author C.H. Wallace comes out swinging! But right off the bat, we should know that "Wallace" is actually writer Rosaylmer Burger, using a pseudonym for this dense witchcraft reader.

Par for the course for midcentury witchcraft books, Burger takes the "witch cult" hypothesis as read. And like Today's Witches by Susy Smith this is a globetrotting affair, with highlights around Papa Doc's Haiti, merc wars in the Congo, and a swatch of European witchery through the UK, France, Germany, and Italy! New York and the West Coast are also represented, of course, with Anton Lavey receiving mercifully brief coverage. Regarding another black magic superstar as quoted above, Crowley deservedly gets his licks. Some of the theorizing is definitely of the time:

Is there a connection between this form of German witchcraft and the murky Nazi mentality? Psychiatric experts firmly believe so; the link is said to be the deeply hidden but firmly embedded homosexual nature of those who follow either the devil sex cult or the Nazi political philosophy. This links them to the witch-hunters of yore, who also displayed manifestations of suppressed homosexuality. Yes. The links are there without a doubt.

While other portions are surprisingly levelheaded: as mentioned, there's a beefy chapter on black magic's role in the '60s Congo wars, and Burger impresses with her measured appraisal of how both Simba rebels and white mercs utilize juju to gain an edge in their bloody battles. Here's where Burger's background as a Men's Adventure writer shines - oh yeah, it turns out she also wrote a series of hard men action thrillers, including 1965's Crashlanding in the Congo!

Oh bingo bango bongo, I GOTTA leave the Congo ...

The website for Spy Guys and Gals lists the Steve Ramsay spy fiction written by Burger, which were also released under her Wallace pseud.

More intriguing nonfiction titles, oddly 
described as novels ...

Wallace ends things with digressions into ESP and alternative healing, her own personal views on magic, and a few more anecdotes, including some spectral revenge for the gruesome "Handkerchief Lady" murder case. Lest we think she's pulling a fast one a la Brad Steiger on a slow day, this was a real murder and a "real" (at least, claimed and documented at the time) revenge from beyond the grave on the killer of Elsie Litt:

From the Cincinnati Post, 1967

That "B-girl" trick mentioned on the inside cover, by the way? Filing your nails into a guy's drink! It's sure to drive him off, especially if he catches you in the act! What other wonders lurk in these pages? Find out for yourself: Witchcraft in the World Today is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Award Books, 1967

CAN ASTROLOGY SOLVE "THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE" MYSTERY? by M.A. Smollin

The readers were clamoring for answers! Writer M.A. Smollin starts off with disclaimers about the Triangle's per capita spookiness and the responsibility of relevant authorities to investigate accidents and disappearances ... and with that out of the way, we're ready to interrogate how Uranus, Mercury, and the rest might influence us towards evil, self destructive ends! This is on top of more earthly issues such as instrument failure, which Smollin says can aggregate alongside the heavenly alignments to cultivate a sense of impending doom. Smollin picks out the Cyclops and Flight 19 as the most important Triangle mysteries requiring this astrological analysis.

Smollin also says that theories of Atlantean atomic piles under the Triangle are unsupported.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

From Dell's Horoscope magazine, Volume 41 - Number 11, November 1975. If this article put you on edge, you could always try to relax with the same issue's astro-word puzzle!

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: OUT OF THIS WORLD

As our inaugural entry for 2026, John Macklin's classic Forteana collection Out of This World is now available to read and download at archive dot org! Here's a teaser chapter on "The Maltese Monster!"

Macklin was a bit of a mystery himself, as this article by cryptozoologist Karl Shuker attests: Loch Watten's Missing Monster - Whatever Happened to Wattie? 

Shuker attempts to fact check a random lake monster from a book by Peter Haining and falls down a rat hole of fabricated monsters and pseudonymous Fortean recycling which leads to Macklin! The saga continues in a series of updates to the article:

UPDATE #4
On 8 May 2010, I received a fourth response to my enquiry for Wattie information. This time it was a highly illuminating email from none other than [Fortean Time’s] own Paul Sieveking, who informed me that John Macklin was indeed a pseudonym – but not of Peter Haining! Instead, it was one of many pen-names used by another author of popular-format writings on mysteries – Tony James. The plot thickens! So did Tony James originate the storyline for the Wattie tale, or is there an even earlier version out there somewhere that he had read? If anyone has current contact information for James, I’d like to hear from you!

This twisting lake monster mystery is a suitable end to the Year of the Snake, and Macklin's Out of This World is a suitable reminder of where we've come from on the blog. Here's to more, worse, and better in the new year!

Courtesy Ace Books, 1972.

THE SNAKE by John Godey

The rivers are full of crocodile nasties 

And he who made kittens, put snakes in the grass

The urban jungle's about to meet the real thing, when a fully grown black mamba escapes into Central Park! Author John Godey was hot off his smash hit novel The Taking of Pelham 123, and a gritty horror thriller about a killer snake in NYC must have seemed like another surefire success.

All the pieces are there, including a charming herpetologist lead who understands all too well how the rest of humanity views his charges. And Godey unfolds the opening action with admirable ease, giving us that wonderful frisson of impending doom as everyone is one step behind our newly escaped snake ... but just as with Maryk and Monahan's Death Bite, the pacing turns sluggish, like a snake resting up between meals, and we find ourselves yearning for a bit more of the ol' blood and guts. Godey is too reserved, too realistic at times, whereas Maryk and Monahan at least went delightfully overboard with their giant Island Taipan and its bloodcurdling bite. Godey's attempt at colorful drama, the Jesus People freakshow cult that shows up near the end, feels underbaked. And the rather obvious twist at the end is hardly "the ultimate in horror," as the San Francisco Examiner claims. All in all, we could have used a touch of Mr. Brown and friends' sociopathy from Godey's much celebrated heist novel.

Hardcover edition

That's not to say it's all bad - just not as great as it could have been. Godey delivers the requisite city politics and panic just fine, and his characters are all finely drawn and relatably sad sack in that wonderful '70s way. Too, his use of Central Park is masterful (we're given those maps for a reason). There's just something missing in the final tally, and it feels like a letdown coming from Godey.

Dramatic NEL edition

He's a lover of life but a player of pawns

Yes, the King on His sunset lies waiting for dawn 

To light up His Jungle as play is resumed 

The monkeys seem willing to strike up the tune

This game that we animals play is a winner, but The Snake struggles with a 2/4 rating! For a second opinion, Will Errickson over at Too Much Horror Fiction offers a more positive appraisal.

As we finish 2025, man is STILL the prey!

A Berkeley Book, 1979 (original pub. 1978)

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Krakatoa, West of Java

Some maps and diagrams concerning Krakatoa's 1883 eruption, relevant to author J.V. Luce's discussion of the destruction of Thera in his excellent book The End of Atlantis. Krakatoa was famously misplaced in the 1968 Hollywood disaster flick titled Krakatoa, East of Java, but the fourth image of the Sunda Strait illustrates its true westerly position relative to Java ... glad that's settled!

Ash fall from the eruption
(Click to embiggen these horizontal images)

The Sunda Strait, flood zones, and the volcano west of Java 

Courtesy Bantam Books, 1978 (original pub. 1969).