MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Hej! NLO Jugoslavia!

The track of a "Neidentifikovani Leteći Objekat" from an investigation by the Academic Astronautical and Astronomical Club of Jugoslavia. The AAAK determined the object was an observational balloon. From the excellent UFO's From Behind the Iron Curtain by Ion Hobana and Julien Weverbergh, courtesy Bantam Books, 1974.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Build Your Basic UFO

A somewhat oblique schematic by one John E. Berry of Minneapolis. From Letters to the Air Force on UFOs, edited by Bill Adler. Courtesy Dell Publishing, 1967.

THE COMPLETE BOOK OF PALMISTRY by Joyce Wilson

A very practical guide to palm reading, in the 70s style of self improvement texts. Thorough and fully illustrated, even offers two sample hands at the end of the book to test your knowledge.

Bantam Books, 1982 (original pub. 1971)

ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY POST: This Baffling World of UFOs

Today is the one year anniversary of POTG, and how better to mark the time we've spent exploring the unknown than a spread of UFO headlines, taken from This Baffling World No. 1 by John Godwin. Courtesy Bantam Books, 1971 (original pub. 1968).

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Killer Bees

From The Killer Bees by Anthony Potter. Courtesy Grosset & Dunlap, 1977.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Build Your Own Kirlian Device

From an article by Henry Monteith, "Photographing the Life Field." His author blurb notes that Monteith was employed as a consultant by Mankind Research Unlimited, a psi research firm that had possible connections to the CIA's own esoteric projects:

All research was conducted on a “need to know” basis. No one seems able to make a coherent story of it, though rumors about connections of Director Schleicher to MK Ultra run rampant. What is known is he had ten active years of military service (1955-1966) for the Navy as a “war games expert,” and spy in Europe.

Featured in Fate, Volume 27 - Number 6, June 1974.

INTO THE STRANGE by Warren Smith

A well loved copy of an especially entertaining entry in Smith's line of Forteana. Sea serpents, ghosts, visions, and general weirdos make for a pleasant paranormal potpourri. UFO contactee Paul Villa Jr. is on hand to tell us the Saucer People don't particularly care if we blow ourselves to Kingdom Come with the Bomb! Dr. Robert Menzies hooks a mystery monster that bends his iron out right straight!

One of Paul Villa's "startlingly realistic" UFO photos

A 1978 issue of Boy's Life featuring Dr. Menzies' experience

Italian strongman Agostino Colli is a medical wonder, with two hearts and six fingers. Sadly there isn't much out there on the world wide web about Mr. Colli, besides this Getty stock photo and some archived news articles. Some more "computer minds" and savants are also sprinkled throughout.

Smith reuses the grisly ghost ship Marlborough from Steiger's The Unknown, which Steiger had taken from Frank Edwards. The Tunguska Blast, also previously written up by Edwards, is here, as is a Mystery Airship sighting from 1896 and more star jelly, sourced from Fate magazine.

Table of contents:

1. Haunted by a Dead Lover (5)

2. The Dream That Saved a Soldier's Life (7)

3. "They Buried Me Alive" (9)

4. The Reincarnated Hands of a Dead Doctor (11)

5. The Return of the Devil's Daughter (13)

6. The Voice From the Ancient Colossi of Memnon (16)

7. Who Buried the Strange Objects Centuries Ago in North America? (18)

8. The Duplicate People and Their Duplicate Thoughts (20)

9. The First Time I Died (22)

10. Flying Rocks and Bouncing Boulders (24)

11. The Man With Two Hearts and the Muscles of Superman (26)

12. The Day the Mississippi Flowed Backwards (28)

13. Did He Talk With Flying Saucer Occupants? (30)

14. He Weighed the Human Soul (32)

15. The Astral Guns Above Barisal (33)

16. Bizarre Giant Chase (35)

17. The Curse on Lincoln's Son (40)

18. Strange Sacrifice For a Dead Zulu Queen (42)

19. The Convict's Dream That Saved a King's Life (44)

20. Strange Shower of Sculpted Hailstones (46)

21. Enigma of the Ghost Blimp (47)

22. The Ghost Army of Crete (48)

23. England's Strange Flower Medium (49)

24. The Mysterious Thunder That Almost Sank a Fishing Boat (50)

25. Message From a Dead Father (51)

26. The Love That Conquered Death (52)

27. Strange Vision of the Silver Sword (54)

28. The Mysterious Ten-Day Curse (56)

29. The Living Skeleton (57)

30. The Disappearing Sailors (58)

31. Strange Luck of the Money Clip (59)

32. The Monster in Lake Washington (60)

33. Kashmir's Ghost Sergeant (62)

34. Hunza: Asia's Earthly Paradise (63)

35. Puzzling Psychic Photographs (65)

36. Strange Falling Food From the Skies (66)

37. Mystery of the Lost Pharaoh's Cave (68)

38. The Ghost in Buck Hill Caverns (70)

39. Strange Treasure Lights (72)

40. The Idiot Genius of Earleswood Asylum (73)

41. The Ghost Battle at Edge Hill (75)

42. India's Strange Murder Cult (78)

43. How It Feels to Die on the Gallows (81)

44. Calf With the Devil Brand (83)

45. People With Computer Minds (84)

46. The Mysterious Paralyzing Fog (85)

47. Strange Ghost of the Marble Mantelpiece (86)

48. The Prophecy About George Washington (87)

49. The Day Las Vegas Went Boom (89)

50. Mystery Ruins in Texas (91)

51. The Ghost Ghoul's Warning of Death (92)

52. The Englishman's Prophetic Song (95)

53. The Ocean's "Death Valley" (96)

54. Maritime Monster Madness (97)

55. Predictions of Our Future (100)

56. The Day Niagara Falls Disappeared (102)

57. Evangeline Adams - Astrology's Uncanny Prophet (103)

58. The Ghost Music That Floats Across Yellowstone Lake (106)

59. The Man Who Invented Life (108)

60. America's Strangest UFO Sighting (111)

61. Strange Bedroom Superstitions (113)

62. The Clairvoyant Who Caught Criminals (114)

63. Ship With the Grisly Skeleton Crew (115)

64. The Strange Phenomenon of the King's Healing Hands (117)

65. Arizona's Lost Viking Treasure Mines (120)

66. The Prophetic Phantom of Texas (121)

67. 80,000,000 Trees Are Burning (122)

68. The Ghost in the Library (124)

Popular Library, 1968

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Monuments of the Moon

From Fate's letters column, some lunar observations by Jack P. Swaney. Selenology Today #10, from June 2008, includes an article by Francis Graham (page 37) detailing the history and accuracy of purported moon megastructures such as Swaney's.

From Fate, Volume 34 - Number 4, April 1981.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Stuart Saturn, the Singing Astrologer

More information on Stuart Saturn is available at the sites Terrestrial Funk and Coolopolis. There are also two interviews with guitarists from Stuart's album by one Alex R. Archambault.

From Fate, Volume 33 - Number 4, April 1980.

STRANGE MONSTERS AND MADMEN by Warren Smith

Monsters of all kinds! Slimy, hairy, scaly, scary, and of the human variety as well. Many strange bigfoots and sea serpents, including several bogus Russian lake monsters, and some real space creeps too. 

Smith's lined up some heavy hitters here, including one of the earlier pop culture connections of Dracula to the historical figure Vlad Tepes (referred to here as Vlad III). Just a few years later Raymond T. McNally and Rudu Florescu would deliver their essential In Search of Dracula rendering quickie treatments like Smith's two page chapter moot. Serial killers H.H. Holmes, Belle Gunness, and the Bloody Bender Family are more examples of stories well trod nowadays. The Patterson-Gimlin film is also allotted a two page chapter which doesn't particularly stand out among the other sundry savage bigfoots and ape men. It's interesting to see which "monsters" here have endured in pop culture and which, like "Pennsylvania's Puzzling Purple Glob," have faded away. The famous Beast of Gevaudan gets a beefy chapter, and another chapter is a ritual for becoming a werewolf. 

Smith does his usual mixing and matching too, with those vicious hairy dwarfs of Venezuela popping up, Florida's dinosaur/penguin from 1948, and yet another variant of Smith and Steiger's story of the jungle sentry attacked by a hairy, "oily" monster. A creepy "black dwarf" who bedevils some medieval monks before tunneling away would later resurface in Steiger's Mysteries of Time and Space. Smith sources "Florida's Mysterious Sandman Monster" from Joan Whritenour, editor of the Saucer Scoop newsletter and also a collaborator with Steiger.

The final page is a wisp of an entry on that titan of terror, the Mothman - no mention of the Silver Bridge collapse or other peripheral weirdness later popularized by John Keel in his 1975 book.

Popular Library, 1969