MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Santorini Part III

Lost Atlantis, reconstructed as Santorini. Previously mapped in Atlantis Fire and Atlantis: The New Evidence. From The End of Atlantis by J.V. Luce, courtesy Bantam Books, 1978 (original pub. 1969).

ASTROLOGY ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS by Edward Lyndoe

Self help before it got so slick, originally published in 1949 as Plan With the Planets. Celebrity astrologer Edward Lyndoe gives some BS straight talk in the introduction, promising that this book isn't for those seeking "empty flattery" or "amusing half-truths." Indeed, this volume is for those brave searchers who seek only the highest universal truths, such as ... their "special foods?" Yes, it turns out that "Capricorns are in greater need of meat diets than any other group!" Locations are covered as well: "It must be taken, too, that the capitals of the Indian states now incorporated as Hindustan have a Capricornian rulership." Lyndoe assures us that no calculations or charting are required on our part. Just read on, and file away the foods, locations, days, colors, and so on associated with your sign! Learn your high and low attributes as well, along with health afflictions common to your sign. Even just an hour of reading will elucidate, Lyndoe promises.

The author's portrait by Howard Coster

Some famous folk are listed by sign, de rigueur for this genre. Stalin was a celebrated Capricorn! Speaking of communism, Lyndoe once analyzed Karl Marx's chart for Prediction magazine, and British socialist Harry Young took some offense at his sloppy science:

What Mr. Lyndoe is completely ignorant of, and what he must do, to write about Marx for intelligent people is get some idea of what it was that Marx was advocating. Significant for the ideas of Marx is not that he was born in the conjunction of Uranus— Neptune, but in the early stages of a new kind of social order—Capitalism.

Incidentally Mr. Lyndoe cannot have it both ways. If the actions of individuals are not their own, but predestined by their "charts" or "stars," what is Mr. Lyndoe complaining about —fraud, hypocrite, spy or not, Marx was merely fulfilling his destiny—he couldn't have been anything else. But the critic makes these actions the grounds for moral strictures and homilies. He complains that "Marxian Communism is the religion which not only glorifies the ends regardless of the means, but glorifies the means themselves. We should not be too sanctimonious about some of the methods used in our part of the globe—but, at least we do not feel disposed to trumpet them abroad as a new morality." What all this has to do with Marx and his stars nobody will ever know!

November 1958 issue of Prediction

For shame, Mr. Lyndoe. The promise of transcendental knowledge crashes against the rocks of history. Marx was a Taurus, by the way.

Original title

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1969 (original pub. 1949)

COSMIC DEBRIS: Acupuncture Meridians

A comprehensive guide to acupuncture meridian points. Beware the forbidden points! From Chinese Medicine by Georges Beau. Courtesy Avon Books, 1972 (original pub. 1965).

CHINESE ASTROLOGY by Paula Delsol

The snake, the rat, the cat, the dog

How you gon' see him if you living in the fog?

French New Wave filmmaker (!) and author Paula Delsol presents the ancient arts of the Asiatic necromancers in this handy guide to CHINESE ASTROLOGY! It's translated from the French by Peter and Tanya Leslie, with the English text retaining a lovely blend of the French and Chinese origins. The very charming drawings are by Michel Brunet:

For us younger readers, the Tiger's caption is a take on the midcentury Exxon slogan "put a tiger in your tank!" This guide features the Cat instead of the Rabbit: nowadays the Chinese lunar calendar uses the Rabbit, while the Vietnamese uses the Cat. Delsol says the Japanese favor the Rabbit as well. Ins and outs, odds and evens, swings and roundabouts! 2023 is the year of the Cat/Rabbit, by the way, even though this book didn't project its years out far enough to see - the far flung year of 1996 is as far as we go.

The Dog is a worrier, neurotic and introverted, but also presents "the noblest traits of human nature." Delsol's example is Brigitte Bardot's (born in 1934) campaigns for animal rights. The Pig is chivalrous, scrupulous, a pacifist - but not a weakling! He's often a sensualist. Beware: the Goat will take advantage of him.

Every old astrology guide needed a section on famous people and their signs. The Cat is represented with some heavy hitters in Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, Queen Victoria, and Confucius! Would you believe that Jesus Christ was a Dragon? Chinese astrology comes across as very practical, with Delsol outlining its applications in business, relationships, and career choice. It's an attractive system that lends itself to the self help genre, no doubt! Delsol also includes a guide to interpreting how your traditional western sign affects your Chinese sign. For example, if the Cat is a Scorpio? "They're a witch's cat. Watch out for sorcery and spells!" If the Dog is an Aries? "Dog-of-war! Launches himself into the unknown."

This title is available to borrow at archive dot org. Bestselling posthumous prophet Edgar Cayce gets a full back page ad, for more self help at $3.95 a pop.

What are you lookin' at?

Warner Books, 1976 (original pub. 1969)

POSSESSION by Christopher Dane

Hot on the release of The Exorcist, here's a walloping load of pure bollocks from Brad Steiger (under his Christopher Dane pseudonym) as he drags us through 16 chapters featuring totally true cases of demonic POSSESSION!

There's no intro, no outro, just one terror after another: the first chapter sees Lady Monica Stewart decapitated by her chauffeur Henry Ferguson on her way home to Stewart Manor one rainy night in 1929. The Lady recently bought some antique jewels, and it seems that they originally belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots - when Ferguson sees them, the spirit of Mary's executioner Gavin Bulle possesses him to do the deed! Ferguson is committed to an asylum. Next is a very slim story of a dead sailor possessed by a preacher's spirit - before his burial at sea, he temporarily revives to plead with the rest of the crew to repent their salty ways. This takes place onboard the HMS Wellington but Steiger assures us that this was not the ship's true name ... are these guys in the witness protection program, Brad? Next, Bill and Mona Adams of Omaha, NE face a demonic entity that possesses Mona and tries to turn her against husband Bill. He perseveres, but Mona ends up in an asylum like ol' Ferguson. after this, we travel to Dhaka, Bangladesh, as youth Yusef Pundit stays out drinking all night with some bad kids and winds up possessed by a dead girl's wandering soul for his troubles! His mom and dad are not happy, to say the least, and Steiger wags about "a girl in a boy's body. Oh, the very idea of it!" There's plenty of cornball dialogue through all of these stories, by the way, and Steiger pads some of them pretty egregiously. The prominent Dr. Mueller recommends a witch for Yusef, and she's able to exorcize the girl's spirit. Yusef remembers nothing and says, "Father forgive me, but I did not intend to go out drinking!"

After this we're back in the USA for the case of Teri Vruche and her uncle's dybbuk. Poor Teri spends some 30 years possessed by her dead uncle's restless soul, until Rabbi Salamon Friedlander exorcizes Uncle Sandor and his soul is granted eternal rest. There's lots of italicized Judaisms in this chapter like shofar, minyan, and Zidduk Ha-Din. Indiana farm girl Charlotte Werner is tortured between two opposing forces when two spirits invade her! We learn that the evil one was a lecherous monk and the good spirit his nun victim, seduced into damnation! Charlotte's family demolish their farmhouse and the monk's "cache" is discovered in a well in the basement, banishing him. What's in the stash, exactly? Steiger never says! He follows this with a short chapter on Socrates and his daimon, which Steiger posits was his "extraordinarily heightened subconscious self" that aided Socrates with hunches. After this comes a LONG chapter about poor little Davey Demaray, possessed by an evil spirit from a haunted sofa! This chapter is overlong and underwritten, with Davey's parents finally burning the couch at the town dump and freeing Davey. Yeesh!

Warren Foley of Salem, OR is murdered by friends who stage his body as a suicide. His spirit possesses teen Janice McMillan and exposes them. This story seems like it should be ripe for corroboration from the archives, with names, a date (1942), and a US locale that should yield records. But would you believe that not a one of any of these stories have any corroborating information online today? Not a one! Names, dates, places lead nowhere. There's a Castle Stuart near Inverness, but the real Lady Augusta Mary Monica Crichton-Stuart lived to 1947 and was not brutally murdered by her chauffeur. Other distinct names like Yusef Pundit and Rebecca Eliaphas yield not a single clue through the great god google. I know Steiger sometimes liked to source from Fate magazine, so I checked my (admittedly anemic) collection of '60s Fate issues and didn't score any hits either. We're more than halfway through, so let's carry on!

Jonathan Rundquist, aged 6, hits his head on the sidewalk and becomes a doorway for the recently deceased! Dr. Holten recommends a medium, who convinces the spirits to move on and leave Jonathan be. It's a happy ending and the medium even says that young Jonathan could be a crackin' psychic one day! The next tale is a more somber one: young Kelly Markham is hit and killed by a car. Her spirit sticks around to commune with her 3 year old sister Stacy, but soon other, more sinister forces gather about them. Her parents hire an exorcist and the day is saved with some cheesy dialogue when Stacy wakes from her possession to see the exorcist in front of her: "Did you come to play with me, mister?" "You might say so, Stacy. You might say so ..." More goofiness, this time from Stacy's dad: "Of course, Judith. Philadelphia might very well be the city of brotherly love, but nobody has bothered to tell the crooks that yet. Everything is locked up.” We zip back in time to 1871 in Schleppendorf, Germany, where young Jewish girl Rebecca Eliaphas is trysting with gentile army officer Franz Dornbach. Her shame manifests as another dybbuk, this one identified as a local ne'er-do-well named Jacob Levi. The rabbi beats the dybbuk out of her, huzzah! When she comes around, she tells her parents she's had the strangest dream. Oddly, Jacob's soul is described as being barred from Hell - Jewish Hell? It's a tricky question, turns out!

We're in the home stretch now, with another tale of a corpse possessed to speak. This time it's Josie Peterson, 17, late of Eau Claire, WI. Firstly, she gives her family a vision of her own passing. Then, she dies, and her body is possessed by multiple spirits who all talk with the family. Finally they leave, and poor Josie is at rest, for good. Next is a too-good-to-be-true story of a Russian woman, Victoria Blok, who has her soul ripped through time and swaps bodies with an Italian countess from 1356! Poor Victoria goes mad in the late medieval era, winding up in a nunnery, while the Countess lives it up in her hot new body! "My original husband was old and flabby," she says, unlike her young new beau! Steiger says she becomes a social butterfly and moves to the Russian colony in China, where she thrives until passing away in 1927. I swear Steiger has used a similar Russian tale before, about a male peasant who has an uncomfortable trip through time, but I'll be damned if I can remember where I read it! Another tale of psycho-horror follows with orphan Susannah Nolan of Sarasota FL, who gets molested by would-be sweetheart Bobby Carson in lover's lane. She fights back and he almost slits her throat with his switchblade before a passing car interrupts. Afterwards, Susannah's guilt manifests as an entity that attacks her! Her body bloats horribly and her family and Dr. Cargill are all at a loss ... until they move her to an aunt's place upstate. You see, paranormal investigator Stephan Boyd determines that her guilt is tied to her home in Sarasota and her brother-in-law Nathan's strict household, and the entity dissipates when she moves away. Sweet Susannah is revived and declares her intentions to live and love to the fullest. Now, the final chapter: dateline Minneapolis, 1967! Sharon Larson has come to stay with her sister Cindy, whose husband has been captured by the North Vietnamese! Having her sister around is good for Cindy, but both ladies become intrigued by the mysterious Mrs. Hastings, an old lady who is possessed! Dr. Thorenson says she's just schizo, but then the sisters are bizarrely possessed themselves, by an urge to act out a meditation ritual over the course of three days. When they finish, they learn that Mrs. Hastings has been freed from her madness! And then, the book ends!

It's possible Steiger borrowed these tales from another paperback writer like Susy Smith or Hans Holzer, but I'm betting that each and every one of them was 100% fabricated! As such, this title stands as a perfect example of Steiger's forte, the genre of "maybe-fiction" as described by author Tanner F. Boyle in his essential survey of The Fortean Influence on Science Fiction. Quoting from The Fortean Influence:

1. Maybe-fiction contains fantastic or SF-esque stories and events.

2. Maybe-fiction involves often contentious subject matter.

3. The authors claim the stories to be true and/or the resulting hypotheses to be entirely possible.

4. Maybe-fiction creates a vast web of intertextuality between the various texts.

We're assured the stories are "100% proven true" but this is merely a device for our immersion into the narratives - no real evidence is ever proffered and Steiger gives no analysis of any of the tales. The "true story" is simply a framework, identical to the modern online creepypasta, with the dramatic events and thrilling reveals in each story giving us a frisson of fear from every demonic visage and on-the-nose piece of dialogue - says Mrs. Hastings to the sisters, "why, it was just about 11 o'clock in the morning when it happened!" It's fitting, then, that the back page ads are for more horror fiction.

In a final insult, none of the back cover teasers ("Egyptian witch," "suicide victim,") are actually included. And as usual, Popular Library gives no table of contents:

1.  Possessed by a Killer (5)

2.  Spectral Preacher Who Invaded a Corpse (17)

3.  I Lost My Wife to a Demon (21)

4.  The Marauding Spirit Who Stole a Teenager's Body (35)

5.  Possessed by Her Uncle for Thirty Years (45)

6.  Tortured Possession Between Two Opposing Forces (53)

7.  Socrates Was Possessed (65)

8.  The Possession of Davey Demaray (71)

9.  Possessed by a Dead Man (99)

10. The Little Boy Who Was Possessed (111)

11. A Three-Year-Old's Terror (121)

12. The Possession of Rebecca Eliaphas (133)

13. Possession of a Corpse (141)

14. Time Travel and Possession (147)

15. "I Will Kill You" (153)

16. They Fought a Demon (167)

Popular Library, 1973

THE NIGHT MANHATTAN BURNED by Basil Jackson

They baked the Big Apple! It had to happen ... like every disaster thriller! New York City, the busiest port in the world, handling the new supergiant liquid natural gas (LNG) tankers ... riding the razor's edge day in and day out, one minuscule mistake or oversight away from the spark that will ignite the all-consuming conflagration. Hard nosed reporter Vincent Ryder and his publisher friend Amura - shanghaied after wining and dining about a planned LNG protest by perturbed yachties - are headed for the heart of the inferno. A contemporary Kirkus Reviews entry notes "no human interest," and they're not wrong ... Jackson writes cleanly but without any particular concern for character, and the real intrigue is over the very realistic scenario of a LNG disaster, a timely threat that Jackson underscores in fine thriller fashion with quotes and excerpts from authorities.

Another edition ...

... with pictures stolen from ebay

That Kirkus review also mentions another LNG thriller titled The Deadly Frost, and how funny that dual disaster blockbusters have been with us since the '70s? Of course, the tanker blows, and NYC is inundated with a killing frost. Ryder and Amura make their way cross town, witness mass hysteria, find solace in a dive bar (striking a weird note as Jackson waxes poetic over an old black bartender who "isn't bitter over injustice,") and finally rescue a puppy from an abandoned car before running into some French tourists and learning that the entire NYC subway system has just exploded! Then the Army shows up, and ... "They're dumping corpses," he said in a cracked voice. Ryder gets his big scoop, but at what cost?

This is preformed disaster loaf from Welshman Basil Jackson, perfect for passing time on your train to Brighton or your flight to Majorca. Jackson cut his teeth on disaster thrillers like this and Supersonic (1975) before eventually settling into a series of "air detective" thrillers about crash investigations and espionage. We can see the seams holding everything together, and the personal melodrama is slack, but nonetheless the story moves and the tension rises before Jackson wraps it all up in a satisfying manner. If this was the bare minimum for disaster thrillers, that'd be okay by me!

This review wouldn't be complete without a reference to Justin Marriott's Paperback Fanatic Issue 44, focused on vintage disaster novels. The Night Manhattan Burned and many, many other titles are represented, and Marriott's work elicits the illicit dual thrills of recognizing an obscure title and also having your interest sparked by unknown works:

The Paperback Fanatic: get it now!

I just have to protest that I'd already read The Night Manhattan Burned when I found Marriott's series, but nonetheless I've added at least a dozen titles to my reading list thanks to his invaluable project!

The Night Manhattan Burned earns 3/4, for solid reliable thrills.

Sphere Books, 1983 (original pub. 1979)