SEA MONSTERS by Walter Buehr

A well done overview of sea monsters for young readers, with evocative illustrations by the author, also a painter by trade besides writing many children's books. Here Buehr covers all the old classics like the Kraken, Nessie, and many 19th century sightings including the Daedalus sea monster and the sundry sea serpents of old New England. Some wonderful old medieval sea serpents are copied from old maps, and Buehr also gives us some nice tableaus of prehistoric sea life. The highlight of this slim but dense little volume is the Moha Moha monster, a singular beastie sighted by one Shirley Lovell of Sandy Cape, Fraser Island (Woakoh), Australia. Lovell described the creature as like some gigantic, long necked turtle, and the Fraser Coast Library link above includes her very charming drawing of the beast:

Cute lil' guy! But fierce, too: Lovell claimed that not only did local Aborigines back up her story, they had even had a campsite attacked by the monster! Perhaps in deference to this, Buehr opts for a more naturalistic recreation in his illustration. Alas, the Moha Moha hasn't been sighted since its 1891 debut.

A note on style: Buehr isn't as slick as old monster hand Daniel Cohen, but he avoids talking down to his young readers and the text is smooth and readable. Pair this with the excellent vintage artwork and you have a welcome addition to any library, past present or future.

An Archway Paperback published by Pocket Books, 1971 (original pub. 1966)

THE DEVIL'S OWN by Peter Robson

After addressing author Peter Robson's Dialogue With the Dead last week, we turn now to his first occult reader. Robson is still writing like a slightly upmarket Brad Steiger, with beefier chapters that nonetheless are filled with dramatic recreations and invented details about some of The Devil's Own! Who else should lead us off but the Great Beast himself, Aleister Crowley? His chapter sets the tone for the rest of the book, being filled with nonsense about blood magic and death curses and very little in the way of actual biography.

Robson's next chapter covers Baron Ungern, the White Russian warlord of Mongolia. Robson calls him a Satanist but really he was an esoteric Buddhist, a psychotic nobleman drawn to the bloodthirsty corners of that sprawling and intricate tradition. He meant to return the Bogd Khan to the throne and rule Mongolia as an anti-communist, anti-Jewish bulwark. Robson invents lurid details such as Unger’s permanently bloodstained lips, the result of vampiric attacks on his victims, but there really wasn’t a need for such salacious fabrications. The real man was loathsome enough, slaughtering with impunity until the Bolsheviks closed in and he was suddenly alone. Deserted by his men, abandoned by his allies among the Mongolian nobility, Unger was captured, tried, and executed like so many on the losing side with equally bloody records, albeit less colorful personalities. His Mongolian fiefdom had lasted less than a year. The "Bloody Baron" is relatively well known nowadays, thanks to a popular biography by author James Palmer and numerous clickbait articles that borrow from Palmer. It’s interesting to look into this midcentury text on Ungern, concerning a subject as fraught as the Russian civil war and full of invented details and true facts selectively plucked as fodder for occult atrocity reading.

The Bloody Baron

A very basic account of the death of Rasputin follows, and we all know how that went: poisoned, shot, stabbed, and finally dumped into a freezing river. Up next, French serial killer Martin Dumollard was an unpleasant fellow, to be sure, killing young women with the help of his wife the Madame Lafayette in 1850s Lyons. Johann Georg Faust has a perfunctory chapter on his mythic devil dealings, while the intriguing historical character George Pickingill is said to be head of an Essex witch cult ... an idea which "has failed to receive any scholarly support," per wikipedia.

Robson's playing fast and loose now, throwing in whatever creepy crawly rumors he can. This includes some devil worshippers who may not have ever existed in the first place! The excellent occult book blog Nocturnal Revelries features a review of this title and notes that satanic killers Raoul Hannah, Raoul Plessy, and Gustav Labahn all seem to be fabrications on Robson's part. More's the pity, because these are three of the most in-depth and interesting chapters! Hannah's an Irishman who travels to Ethiopia as a missionary, only to succumb to the thrill of black magic and be reborn as a slaver witch! Plessy meanwhile is a mystery man who sets up shop in interwar Paris as a satanist most foul, his obscene black masses earning him the nickname of La Bete - the beast! He's exposed only to escape into the invading Nazi war machine, ending up as a death camp torturer, and then further still after WWII as an assistant to the grotesque Lavrentiy Beria, head of the NKVD! Labahn is another satanic priest, this time in 1890s Munich. He seduces and slaughters his way through the high society there until the devil comes for his due during a midnight mass. It truly does seem that Robson padded his book out with these made up characters.

Moving on to more documented tales, satanic panic grips the 17th century Swedish villages of Mohra and Elfdale, as children are whisked away by witches to a magic land called Blakolla. Also in the 1600s, Scottish Covenanter Thomas Weir can no longer hide the dark secret behind his standup life: he's pledged his soul to satan! He and his sister are executed for incest, bestiality, and black magic. 

Bringing us forward in time, two tales of witchcraft in modern 1960s Tanzania follow: the "devil's mother" Nyamseni is killed for her death curse crimes, while the hapless Mahalo Petikite is deemed rehabilitatable after eating his whole family! Heavy hitting historical fiend Gilles de Rai is put through his paces, as is John Dee, last seen in Robson's Dialogue With the Dead attempting to talk to the other side. His chapter here is fairly straightforward biography. Robson jumps to modern times again with Papa Doc Duvalier, the brutal dictator of Haiti. Robson singles him out as the only modern tyrant to rule through black magic threats. A modern apocalypse cult in Switzerland is called the Seekers of Mercy, led by one Joseph Stocker. They beat a young girl named Bernadette Hasler to death while attempting to exorcise the devil from her, though Robson blurs the lines between their extremist Christian cant and generic satanism.

The four bloody Valenzuela sisters are another group of modern killers, sex trafficking young girls and torturing them to death at their satanic ranch when they were no longer profitable. Robson spells their name "Valuencela."

We jump back to the 1890s for Joseph-Antoine Boullan and his black magic war against rival witch, Stanislas de Guaita. The Marquis de Guaita wins out against the ex-priest, though wikipedia notes that Boullan went to his grave proclaiming his unwavering fealty to Christ. Further back still takes us to the 1600s and the Court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, as Catherine Deshayes poisons her way around until she steps on too many royal toes and is executed. Next Robson tells us a wild tale of the Comte de St. Germain, that supposedly immortal raconteur - Robson has him disappearing into a snowstorm as two of his castle guards watch in shock, unaware that this is the last time they'll ever see their master. Robson would have us believe the Count was a werewolf and that the walls were closing in after one too many bloody killings. I don't know about that ...

A voodoo trial in 1880 Haiti, an Obeah curse in 1930s Jamaica attested by an author named Russell Wilson, and the story of Mamina the Zulu witch close out the book before the final, infernal chapter on Karl Haushofer, one of the marginal men on Hitler's periphery, and - if Robson's to be believed - the source of occultist Nazism.

But wait just a minute. Before we barrel on to the finale, one final note. When I was trying to dredge up any corroboration at all for that Haitian voodoo case, I found an intriguing footnote which led to an in-depth appraisal of the trial - which took place in 1864, not 1880, by the way. It seems the case might have been a frame up, as another footnote quotes:

"The prisoners were bullied, cajoled... (...) I can never forget the manner in which the youngest female prisoner, Roseide Sumera turned to the public prosecutor and said, 'Yes, I did confess what you assert, but remember how cruelly I was beaten before I said a word' – Spenser St John, British minister to Haiti who witnessed the trial."

And author Mike Dash delivers background on the supposed bloodbath that was Haiti in the grip of voodoo:

Close reading, though, shows that there are only two other “firsthand” accounts of vodou ceremonies involving cannibalism: one from a French priest during the 1870s, and the other from a white Dominican a decade later. Both are unsupported; both are suspect, not least for the claim that both supposed eyewitnesses penetrated a secret religious ceremony undetected, wearing blackface. Unfortunately, both were also widely disseminated.

In our rush to believe in the supernatural, must we also suspend our critical faculties with regards to the plain material world around us, and hold heresy, gossip, and rumor as fast as truth? For Robson and Steiger and Smith, it seems a good story triumphs.

Above, another Ace edition. The final verdict? Reading through the 25 accounts herein of satanic evil becomes numbing, making this an exhausting ride in just 158 pages. Mercy, Robson.

Ace Books, 1969

ATLANTIS FIRE by Gary Goshgarian

After Wednesday's disappointing plague thriller, it feels good to dive into some gritty Grecian action courtesy Gary Goshgarian and his debut novel, ATLANTIS FIRE! Goshgarian later adopted a pen name, Gary Braver, under which he wrote a series of successful commercial technothillers, but it's this early, rough hewn work that we're interested in today. It's about a team of broken down wreck divers and dirty dreamers, searching for the impossible off the shores of Santorini ... but what they find will be more than any of them can handle!

Goshgarian writes with feeling, never overburdening the reader but always giving us the perfect glimpse into his characters' inner selves as they work, in this case as archaeological divers looking for the remains of amphora cargo from ancient Grecian freighters. Of course somebody on the team has bigger dreams, involving theories of sunken cities: we're talking Atlantis, baby! The remnants of the Colonels' reign are trying to shake them down, and the semi-legal avenues the team pursues to keep at their quest make up much of the plot's grist, as does the devil's bargain they strike with local bigwig Bouboulis: some of their specialized diving equipment in exchange for free reign over the islands. Maybe they should have wondered why the millionaire Bouboulius needs their dinky little wunderwaffen, but by then it's too late: Santorini's about to blow its top!

Goshgarian threads the needle, raising tensions to nerve wracking heights while keeping the story tight, even as he threatens to blow an entire regional unit off the map. This is sublime thriller territory, with an engrossing cast of flotsam characters, washed up on the shores of destiny: Sarkis, Deke, Bernardo, Jessie, all finely drawn with their hopes, fears, pushed beyond their limits by the wracking tides of infinity. Bravo to Goshgarian for this delicious piece of vintage mayhem! Atlantis Fire earns a full four sunken amphora out of four!

Avon Books, 1980

 

QUARANTINE by Josh Webster

It's the ultimate biological warfare: a manmade strain of rabies that kills in hours, circulates in the water supply ... and the CIA has just lost control! Now a small island off the coast of Washington is facing death, madness, and the final QUARANTINE!

First impressions count. The gorgeous cover art of '70s plague thrillers like The Nightmare Factor and The Black Death set the stage for the intricate machinations within, the casts of characters adrift in new worlds of terror, the mad visions of our own world ripped apart by disaster. Quarantine's cover art, unfortunately, is all too typical of the dregs of the late '80s horror boom. Goofy ass skeleton arms hold up an idyllic forest scene, dripping with blood ... it's just plain dumb! It looks dumb and it prejudices readers like yours truly against what might be an effective thriller. Sad to say, the novel within doesn't rise above the cheesy cover.

Jaded CIA man Stone has a plan to cash out of his career: sell the manmade rabies strain to Saddam Hussein! The former dictator of Iraq is unnamed, but the novel gives enough context of a secular ruler facing down the Ayatollah in a grueling war of attrition. Stone himself enjoys the idea of Khomeini in the final throes of madness, barking out orders to lackeys as his brain is devoured by the rabies strain. Author Webster is most effective with his nastier characters like Stone and his lackeys, while his good guys deliver overdoses of treacle with their sob stories and cutesy family lives. Our hero Dr. Lockton has a dead wife and a kid with cystic fibrosis, leaving him vulnerable to Stone's offer of paid medical for life if he helps design the ultimate killer. Stone sets him up with a beautiful cabin and a high tech lab on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound, and of course through Stone's double dealings the virus gets loose and the island's inhabitants become grist for the cheap horror mill. That's how it all feels: like a slasher film setup, as the virus drives its victims into a murderous rage that sees them biting, bashing, and slashing the uninfected. There's no sense of reality, of life beyond the narrative, and as soon as characters are introduced they get instantly slotted into roles as victims, villains, and set dressing. The novel also lacks the medical/scientific power of The Nightmare Factor and The Black Death: there's a little bit about the virus gripping people's brain with madness but it all feels pretty rote, as do the various gory ways people die. Webster strings it all together competently enough, but the final product just isn't worth it.

For a limp, unsatisfying attempt at horror, Quarantine earns one rabies virus out of four:

Worldwide Books, 1988

DIALOGUE WITH THE DEAD by Peter Robson

Check out that skull, very cool! It's a new year, but the same old ghosts and ghouls (plus or minus some fresh faces) in Peter Robson's Dialogue With The Dead! Robson delivers a mincemeat volume with some beefy chapters, albeit organized like your usual scattershot psychic reader from Steiger or Smith - there's no real structure other than one chapter after another, and the book comes to a dead stop after the last chapter. Throughout Robson gives us credulous summaries of various spiritualists and mediums, with some interesting spikes here and there. Let's join hands and try not to tip the table as we start our dialogue with the dead!

Robson plays hardball with us bloggers in 2023, filling his 1970 text with personalities who often lack even the barest wisp of a wikipedia page. Mediums like Jordan Gill, Florence Derbyshire, Marjorie Staves, and Eileen Blaschke of the Spiritualist Association of the United Kingdom don't have a digital footprint nowadays, beyond some scattered artifacts like an ad for Blaschke's appearance at a spiritualist meeting:

The ad's from the December 12th, 1940 issue of Light, a journal of spiritualism, psychical, occult, and mystical research founded in 1881! More fleshed out titans like Eileen Garrett, Hester Dowden, Harry Price, and Geraldine Cummins crop up, as do other unknown characters like Estelle Roberts, Mrs. Murphy Lydy, and John McShayne. McShayne channels an old coot miner to find a lost gold strike in California! Robson claims a skeptical, hard nosed attitude, but it's easy to see he's posing. He pretty much lays out every medium story and then says, pretty wild, huh? An interesting detail is how many of the spiritualists rely on spirit guides who are supposed Native Americans with names like Red Cloud, Sunflower, Creeping Bear, and the like. A cheap cardboard cutout of indigenous culture is raised to support settler fantasies.

Like Steiger and Smith, Robson isn't above filling out page counts with what seem to be totally bogus stories. A high ranking Nazi flees to Nepal and spends decades meditating on his sins in a monastery until Finnish diplomat's wife Birgitte Valvanne come knocking. Suddenly, the big shot Nazi - could be Bormann, could be Mengele - feels the souls of all his victims crying out and, overcome with guilt, flees into the mountains to be devoured by snow leopards! We know today that Bormann died in Berlin and Mengele lived out his days in South America, but I doubt there was any real Hitlerite at the core of the tale to begin with. This chapter also has a brief mention of "snow devils," also known as the yeti.

Another intriguing ghost story, also totally unsupported, is about OGPU agent Leon Ravik, an honest workin' man of the people who performs mediumship on the side. His probings lead him to the tiny village of Ponow, some 90 miles south of Moscow, where an enclave of Old Believers are living with a dark past - a secret massacre of fellow believers that goes back to a Tzarist (note the odd/old style spelling) census/religious admonition way back in 1890 ... let's just say, the village decided to repent their schism from the mother Church with some good old fashioned decimation! Ravik sets things right and the victims are reburied with full rites and honor. Ravik later defects to the west via Latvia, but unfortunately the internet has nothing on him. It's likely the whole story is bunkum!

Medium Marjorie Staves turns up in this old news piece ...

... and this book review from the Australian Bulletin, from 1973.

Another goofy ass chapter deals with Francisco Candido Xavier, a Brazilian spiritualist who channeled new books and poetry from famous dead authors. Robson gives Xavier entirely too much credit, wondering how an "illiterate peasant" could possibly achieve such wonders ...  that's an old song, saying that so-and-so is just too rock stupid or low class to do such-and-such hoax. Says Robson, describing Xavier's motivations, “His interests became those of primitive people everywhere: for comfort and culture, his thoughts turned to religion and spiritualism.” At least we get a glimpse into Portuguese literature, as Xavier mostly ghostwrote from that canon.

The tragic case of inventor Edgar Vandy leads to one of the better chapters. Vandy drowns in a pool and his brothers George and Harold enlist multiple mediums to try to suss out his final moments and the secret of his last, unfinished invention: the Lectroline! It's some kind of printing contraption, best we can tell. Robson excerpts large chunks of their medium sessions, complete with the brothers' canny, critical, but scrupulously fair notes. Of one leading probe offered by a medium, Harold says, "This question is framed in such a way that a shrewd person might think of something electrical at once." Nice work Harold! George and Harold note when mediums achieved "hits" and when they miss the mark by a country mile, which is often. Robson can't avoid concluding that all the mediums employed failed to reconstruct the Lectroline, though George and Harold did achieve some closure with their brother's passing. 

Other bits involve Elizabethan era polymath John Dee, Air Chief Marshall Hugh Dowding and his quest for his fallen airmen, Arthur Conan Doyle's meeting with Lenin's ghost, Nandor Fodor investigating a poltergeist in Sussex, and a phony medium named Frank Hartley who accidentally ends up channeling a real spirit! The final chapter is on the 1844 occurrence of some creepy moving coffins in Ahrensburg, on the island of Oesel in the Baltic Sea. Moving coffin stories must have been popular in the 1800s, as the Chase Vault in Barbados is also mentioned by Robson. Once this chapter is done, the book just ends!

The ads in the back include Robson's other occult book The Devil's Own and a John Macklin volume.

Ace Books, 1970