GALLERY OF GHOSTS by James Reynolds

Some ghostly deja vu here as the Paperback Library recycles a cover photo originally used by Dell Publishing for Susy Smith's Reincarnation For the Millions. Hey, it's a good pic! And these are good stories, a cut above the tripe peddled by Steiger and Smith in so many of their "strange" collections. All the ghost stories here are true, in as much as they're actual existing legends as opposed to random nonsense made up to fill page counts. Some are especially bloody history, like the sad tale of Inês de Castro, and some are unearthed folklore like the Norwegian Saga of the Seven Spruce Trees, but what they all have in common is a focus on fear that stems from human darkness, rather than rattling chains and similar spectral cliches. 

Here's a contemporary review by author and poet Dorothy Quick, taken from an archival copy of the New Castle Tribune of NY:

(Click to embiggen)

Paperback Library, 1970 (original pub. 1949)

LIVING WITH THE LAMA by T. Lobsang Rampa

"Translated from the Siamese Cat language by T. Lobsang Rampa," and what a neat trick that must have been. I have reasons to doubt Rampa's fidelity in translation though, as somehow Mrs. Fifi Greywhiskers speaks with the same syrupy style as Rampa himself, not to mention hundreds of dreadful children's book authors through the years. And that's pretty much what this book is, a silly children's story of a cat's life. This cat just happens to live with a celebrity Lama, and she gives us plenty of examples of his benevolent wisdom interspersed through her animal adventures. It's all delivered with a forced, dreary sort of whimsy that comes across as pure cynicism on the author's part, a common tell for writers who feel like children's book are beneath them but will pay the bills. Rampa was nothing if not cynical in his output, churning out book after book on the mystic secrets, so why not dip a toe into a new genre?

Mrs. Fifi Greywhiskers

A few charming illustrations are provided by Sheelagh M. Rouse, described as "Lobsang Rampa's devoted secretary, companion and friend for the entire span of his writing career. Referring to her by the nickname 'Buttercup', Rampa considered Sheelagh to be his adopted daughter." Rouse would go on to write two books on her life with Rampa.

Rouse then and now

The back page ad is for Rampa's Tranquiliser Touch-Stones, rocks blessed by the Lama and paired with a 12'' recording of instructions on use. Rampa's stones are still available for purchase as resin reproductions at the official Lobsang Rampa website maintained by Rouse and others.

Rampa wraps up his story with a rather testy note to readers demanding they provide return postage for any correspondence, as you see the Lama is a very busy man. It's typical haughtiness from a man claiming supreme humbleness, and does not read as at all flattering looking back across the years.

Above, another Corgi edition from 1968, which elides the central concept of the book!

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Corgi Books, 1977 (original pub. 1964)

WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS by T. Lobsang Rampa

Another occult dictionary, this one by the fakir of fakers, Tuesday Lobsang Rampa! Rampa was in a class of his own for occult scam artists. This purported Tibetan monk who had traveled the astral plane and seen wonders beyond imagining was really a lifelong resident of Devon, UK, and was unmasked not long at all after his smash hit "biography" The Third Eye:

Rampa’s wild claims – not to mention his West Country burr – led Tibetologist Heinrich Harrer to hire a private detective. What this gumshoe uncovered surprised even his employer. Not only had Rampa never been to Tibet, he didn’t even own a passport. He was a former plumber from Devon called Cyril Hoskin who damaged his back by falling out of a tree while owl-spotting. During convalescence he had, it seems, settled on a drastic career change.

The media was scandalised; Hoskin was unrepentant. Cheerfully admitting that he’d never been to Tibet, he now claimed that as he lay semi-conscious at the bottom of a tree that fateful afternoon, half-strangled by his binoculars, an elderly lama (monk) had floated by on the astral plane and the pair had agreed to swap bodies. (Whether, in 1950s Tibet, an elderly lama ever claimed to be a West Country plumber remains unverified.)

Rampa's later books contain many peevish snipes at the media and the "press campaign" out to smear him for bringing enlightenment to the Western masses. Even here he gets some licks in with his dedication to his loyal readers who know better than to believe the lying press, and his entry for "proof" which claims that Tibetan culture is above such shallow Western things. Ironic indeed that the fake lama falls back on some moth-eaten Orientalism to defend his counterfeit mysticism. Rampa could be shameless when wriggling out of his lies:

On a subsequent occasion, Warburg greeted the lama with a foreign phrase, only to receive a blank look in return. When informed that he had been addressed with the Tibetan for “Did you have a pleasant journey?” Rampa fell to the floor in apparent agony, rising to explain that during the war, in order to prevent himself from divulging secrets to the Japanese, he had hypnotically blocked his own knowledge of Eastern languages. To that day, the sound of his native tongue was enough to reinflict their tortures. When Warburg confronted Rampa with the scholars’ objections, offering him the option of publishing the book as a work of fiction, Rampa continued to insist that it was entirely factual. Secker & Warburg then issued the book with a preface that began, “The autobiographical account of the experiences of a Tibetan lama is such an exceptional document that it is difficult to establish its authenticity”

It's astonishing now that readers believed in Rampa's authenticity in the first place, as his prose is laden with classic English treacle, forced whimsy that curdles to condescension. The startling secret knowledge he promises consists of moldy old standards like the Akashic records and astral traveling, making it clear that so much of our psychic seeking resolves into navel gazing, and that what we grasp for in the great outside is nothing more than our own reflection.

Someone at Award Books may have been feeling cheeky, as the book ends with an ad for The Talbott Agreement, a novel about an American spy who undergoes irreversible plastic surgery to look Chinese!

Above, a Corgi Books edition from 1975 and a Bantam Books edition from 1978.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Award Books, 1970

REINCARNATION FOR THE MILLIONS by Susy Smith

Susy Smith delivers another dependable primer on the supernatural, again for the millions! This isn't an exhaustive cultural dive like Hans Stefan Santesson's Reincarnation volume, but a swift survey across the reincarnation scene as it stands in 1967 with appropriate historical context. Susy Smith specialized in merging solid info with a breezy, accessible style. It's hard to make it look as easy as she does.

Spiritism founder Allan Kardec, polymath Emanuel Swedenborg, and author Aldous Huxley are only a few of the historical persons Smith quotes on reincarnation. Evangelical superstar Billy Graham gives the proper Christian perspective, that our souls are indeed immortal but that we pass after one life and one death straight to the eternal Kingdom of God. Of course other faiths have other ideas, and folk traditions of every culture are heedless to doctrine as we already learned from Santesson. Edgar Cayce for one merged his Christian faith with his deep breadth of occult reading for a very humanistic interpretation of reincarnation and our duty to our souls and ourselves. Cayce biographer Gina Cerminara struggles with the idea of karmic justice and the social inequity of India's caste system, concluding that no matter the ultimate spiritual truth, we owe it to each other to be kind.

There's a lot more inside, from Oahspe and Blavatsky to past life regression. Having talked up Smith thus far, perhaps it's best we let her have the last word:

Dell Publishing, 1967

LOST CITIES OF THE ANCIENTS - UNEARTHED! by Warren Smith

A tome for the ages, Warren Smith's ultimate Zebra special clocks in at a whopping 395 pages, over twice as long as his other entries. There's a dirty little secret at the dark heart of his jungle escapade though: he only wrote the half of it! Smith's pulled a neat trick by excerpting huge passages from "ancient scribes" etc, amounting to 143 pages of 395 being quoted text. The final line of the book encapsulates his approach to these quotations: "I leave it to you, the reader. What do you think?" There's little in the way of analysis and absolutely zero fact checking or research going on beyond presenting these strange tales in bulk, but it's strangely hypnotic.

Smith's scribes and their contributions:

- Hiram Bingham, "The Discovery of Machu Picchu" article from Harper's, 1913 (approx. 4,000 words quoted)

- William Montgomery McGovern, Jungle Paths and Inca Ruins, 1927 (approx. 11,000 words)

- John T. Short, The North Americans of Antiquity, 1880 (approx. 6,300 words)

- Willard Barbrooke Grubb, An Unknown People in an Unknown Land, 1911 (approx. 12,000 words)

- E. G. Squier, Peru: Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Inca, 1877 (approx. 990 words)

Smith also uses heavy quotations from Dr. A.M. Renwick's Wanderings in the Peruvian Andes from 1937, and reprints an interview with Morris K. Jessup from his inaugural Zebra special Secret Forces of the Pyramids. Ivan T. Sanderson and Gordon Creighton are cited for musings on UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle. 

It's effective mystery mongering and a tribute to Smith's talent how far he can spin a yarn off of some anecdote from a dusty archive. Newspaper articles also contribute some weird monster tales, with Patagonian plesiosaurs, the tongue ripping terror of the mapinguari, and the brutal El Sisemite making sketchy appearances. It wouldn't be a Smith special without another appearance by that goddamn Venezuelan vicious hairy dwarf, either! Some monsters are only too human, as the Wrath of God himself Lope de Aguirre proves.

Another ripping tale: Erich von Daniken's Ecuadorean caves of wonder, which supposedly housed impossible ancient tech and records. Smith runs with von Daniken's story for a whole chapter on secret tunnel systems and lost precursor civilizations. The simple fact that von Daniken fabricated these caves from whole cloth is no matter to Smith, even when von Daniken admitted as such in a 1974 interview for Playboy, two whole years before this book's 1976 publication. Smith brings in a story from Ray Palmer's Search magazine for some Shaver Mystery tinge too.

Smith's thesis, such as it is, follows the basic ancient astronauts/lost civilization template of "White gods" bringing civilization to the savages, with special focus on Quetzacoatl, the plumed serpent who's been interpreted as a white European man on down since the conquistadores. These racial/colonial frameworks obviously have resonance to this day, as far flung as doctrine for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the inspiration for a modern million dollar TV boom.

True to penny-pinching form, Zebra's proud proclamation of FULLY ILLUSTRATED amounts to 11 grainy black and white photos interspersed through the text.

Table of contents:

Preface: South America, Mystery Land of the Ancients  (i)

1.  The Lost Cities of the Ancients (5)

2.  The Lost World of El Gran Paytite (22)

3.  The Marauding Monsters of South America (36)

4.  The Patagonian Plesiosaur and Other Mysterious Monsters (57)

5.  Mysteries of the Incan Builders (75)

6.  The Mysterious City of the Clouds (92)

7.  An Ancient History Carved in Stone (110)

8.  The Enigma of Pre-Columbian Explorers (148)

9.  Witchcraft, Wizards and Indian Magic (171)

10. Mummies, Tomb Robbers and Ancient Cities (211)

11. Mystery of South America's Subterranean Tunnels (246)

12. Amazon Warriors of Ancient America (264)

13. The Riddle of History in Stone (289)

14. Machu Picchu: City of Mysteries (309)

15. Mysteries of the Megalithic Monuments (321)

16. The Tantalizing Enigma of Tiahuanaco (339)

17. Incredible UFO Activity in South America (354)

18. Space Gods and Miracle Workers (372)

Zebra Books, 1976