Steiger burns some pages detailing the mysterious end of Ambrose Bierce and retelling some of Bierce's classic mysterious tales before launching into one of his patented paranormal potpourris, weaving together everything from interdimensional Bigfoots to UFO kidnappers to hoary old tales like missing Chinese and British armies. Steiger freely offers up his sources in fellow paranormal writers such as Harold T. Wilkins, John Keel, Frank Edwards, and Brinsley Le Poer Trench, even as he recycles some previously unsourced stories from his own prior work with the ghost ships Marlborough and Iron Mountain. The good ship Joyita also makes a reappearance. Such is the incestuous ouroboros that was the classic paranormal genre!
The case of missing child Donald Lee Baker (among others) would be resurrected decades later by modern day mystery monger David Paulides and his Missing 411 series. Steiger's original telling is just as thin as Paulides' modern takes, with an obvious forced incredulity at missing children in the forest that borders on insulting.
Lancer Books, 1972
Where'd he go?
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