STARTLING NEW RESEARCH FROM THE MAN WHO "TALKS" TO PLANTS, by Janice and Charles Robbins

Here's another piece from National Wildlife magazine, about former CIA interrogation specialist and polygraph innovator Cleve Backster. Backster was a pioneer in the movement to explore plant consciousness and ESP, and the authors mention previous coverage by National Wildlife from 1968. Backster would also feature in the smash hit 1973 book The Secret Life of Plants, by Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird (themselves also former OSS/CIA men).

In this article, Janice and Charles Robbins describe some testing by Backster including plants recoiling at a murderer - a murderer of plants, that is, as Backster has a volunteer destroys one unlucky plant and then records the reactions of other plants to this person's presence. At the end of the article Backster describes another attempt at unmasking a real murderer via plant ESP that didn't pan out. Chicken eggs are also hooked up to the polygraph electrodes. Backster and the Robbins assure us that this is all very scientific and thorough.

More than fifty years later, sadly, lie detectors and plant ESP are looking a little less reliable than Backster's "slam dunk" claims. A recent New Age scam podcast with some mainstream cachet has featured plant ESP in an episode, but the subject is mostly confined to the New Age ghetto and the "human potential" hopes of yesteryear, when it seemed like all it would take is a breakthrough here or there to unleash all the power of the universe.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

From National Wildlife magazine, Vol. 9 - No. 6, Oct/Nov 1971.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Pyramid Water Bed

"We make no claims that our bed could make you live to be a thousand. That all remains to be seen. However, if our bed helps you to live a healthy life cycle of 115 years it is well worth the investment." And if you don't live to 115, how are you going to complain? The price tag alone is enough to give you a heart attack though ...

It's all backed by pyramid monger Dr. Patrick Flanagan, a man with a lot of experience in, well, let's call it "innovative" ways of unleashing pyramid power .

From Probe the Unknown magazine, Vol. 4 - No. 6, November 1976.

ON THE TRAIL OF BIGFOOT by George H. Harrison

From National Wildlife magazine and editor George Harrison (no, not that one) comes a shocking update on the hunt for Bigfoot! It's not the big man himself who provides the scares though, but rather the colorful antics of expedition leader Robert W. Morgan, who poses for paramilitary pics and says he plans to use drugged bait on Bigfoot and then track him with, specifically, a specially trained Labrador. Harrison ends things with the classic Warren Smith-style line "What do you, the reader, think?" and ponders if federal funding might not aid in the hunt. This article also references an older piece on the Patterson-Gimlin film and claims that Roger Patterson passed a polygraph test over the PGF's authenticity in the course of being interviewed by this magazine!

"Quit scarin' the neighbors, Bob!"

Nowadays George Harrison keeps us posted on how to understand bird plumage and mating habits, marking this vintage article as just one small piece of a long career in wildlife writing.

George H. Harrison, in an undated photo.

Robert W. Morgan meanwhile is quite the character, with a filmmaking career that includes the documentary Big Foot: Man or Beast? and the Bigfoot/hicksploitation horror flick Blood Stalkers and a stint as (he claims) an informant/two-fisted vigilante against mob drug running! Morgan's still alive and kicking today at 90 years old ... way to go, Bob!

Newspaper ad for Big Foot (1972)

Blood Stalkers (1976), which was never banned anywhere.

And a tip of the ol' hippo to Stef for the lead here ...
this book's a trip!

"On the Trail of Bigfoot" is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

From National Wildlife magazine, Vol. 8 - No. 6, Oct/Nov 1970.

STRANGE WORLD: Monsters Along the Mississippi

Click to embiggen

Monsters along the Mississippi ... and in Minnesota and Washington, too! It's another edition of Brad Steiger's "Strange World" column, with Brad recycling the Fremont, WI monster from his pseudonymous 1969 title The Abominable Snowmen, though he's off by one year on when it occurred according to his own original telling. Meanwhile, Warren Smith also used this anecdote in his own Strange Abominable Snowmen from 1970, and correctly dates it to 1968.

Everyone and their mother has written about the Minnesota Iceman, of course, and here Brad relays some of exhibitor Frank Hansen's evolving excuses/explanations for the creature. We're at the point where Hansen was claiming to have shot the monster dead himself in the Minnesota woods, which makes for a convenient cover story on why he's so reluctant to let the supposed corpse be properly analyzed. Nice sideshow zigzagging, Frank!

Brad finishes up with a 1970 Bigfoot expedition by National Wildlife magazine, headed by editor George Harrison. Harrison wrote his own account of this trip as "On the Trail of Bigfoot," for the October-November 1970 issue.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Clipped from the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, June 5th, 1972.

A SCHOOLMASTER STALKS THE UNKNOWN by Stewart McCulloch

This article by Stewart McCulloch details schoolmaster Alan Wilkins' series of Nessie sightings on July 18th, 1975. Originally from the London Sunday Express, it was reprinted in Nessie and Other Aquatic Monsters: Secrets of Loch Ness, a single issue magazine which lasted exactly one issue in 1977. More information about witness Alan Wilkins and his understated role in Nessie-dom is available at the Loch Ness Mystery Blog.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

SASQUATCH: MYSTERY AND LEGEND by Richard Smedley

Did a prospector's shovel expose the secret of Bigfoot's tomb? Writer Richard Smedley combines two classic "lost giant" hoaxes, the 1895 Martindale Mummies and the Calaveras Skull of 1866, with modern Bigfoot in this article for Probe the Unknown magazine. The 1800s hoaxes are marshaled as evidence for an ancient race of Sasquatch people, the timid remnants of which may still stalk the woods, in an interesting blend of lost giant/lost white race pseudoarchaeology and modern pseudoscience Bigfootery. If you've noticed people talking about Bigfoot and the Nephilim online nowadays, it just goes to show that everything old is new again in the paranormal.

The Patterson-Gimlin Film and Bigfoot hunter Robert Morgan are also name checked. Tom Mattison, the "discoverer" of the Calaveras Skull, also has his name spelled as Matteson in some accounts.

Full artwork spread

Tom Wright's artwork for Smedley's article is yet another example of a Bigfoot/Yeti traced from Frank Frazetta's piece titled Neanderthals, from 1966.

This article is available to read and download at archive dot org, and the entire March, 1975 issue of Probe the Unknown magazine is also available at the Luminist Archives.

Dare you probe the other mysteries within?

STRANGE & MIRACULOUS CURES by Warren Smith

In between churning out his slapdash Strange volumes for Popular Library, Warren Smith took the time to put together this pretty sturdy volume about faith healing and alternative medicine for Ace Books. The difference in quality is clear when compared to, for example, his buddy Brad's Strange Powers of Healing on the same subject from the year before. Smith balances some intermittent skepticism with the usual mystery mongering and "who knows?" copouts, and presents a pretty good overview of historical faith healers, movements like Christian Science, and subjects like the healing waters of Lourdes, with some "gee whiz" super-science medical advancement sprinkled on top. He even includes the AMA's guidelines on recognizing quackery:

Frequent Smith subject Doc Anderson pops up here, and you also might be surprised at his attitude towards faith healing: Doc says that NOBODY has powers of healing except for God himself, and trained doctors! People write Doc asking for healing miracles (or so he claims) and he has to let them down easy saying all he can do is pray to the Lord. It's either very honest or very canny marketing on Anderson's part.

Another intriguing bit is Smith's description of an anonymous Filipino faith healer fraud, and the planeload of North American health tourists who left his Luzon compound feeling used and abused, but not cured. News items from the time point to this healer being the infamous Tony Agpaoa:

Brad Steiger wrote up "Dr. Tony" as a genuine miracle man in 1967's Strange Men and Women, of course. 

Heavy hitters like Edgar Cayce are profiled next to forgotten pioneers/men of letters/weirdos like Phineas Quimby and candidates for sainthood like Teresa Demjanovich aka Sister Miriam Teresa of Bayonne, NJ, and there's just enough of a structure to the text to prevent this from falling into the Strange style of anecdote after anecdote. Smith ends with a short roundup of psychic predictions for medical advances, featuring Doc Anderson again along with John Pendragon, Malva Dee, and Eckankar founder Paul Twitchell. Doc predicts a cure for cancer is coming soon ... 

Psychic housewife Louise Proctor agrees, and also sees the FDA cracking down on bad medicine and quackery. Proctor, as the text informs us, also supposedly saw the Richard Speck murders in a vision, and she's the very same woman mentioned in the facing ad for Smith's Strange Powers of the Mind!

The backpage ads are jam packed with paranormal/Fortean goodness, including the big man himself, Charles Fort! Rupert Furneaux, John Macklin, and Hans Holzer also provide titles, alongside The Occult World of John Pendragon, featuring you-know-who and edited by Brad Steiger.

Strange & Miraculous Cures is available to read and download, absolutely free, at archive dot org! This volume is recommended as a surprise highpoint in Smith's canon.

P'raps an alchemical encryption?

Ace Books, 1969

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE ENCOUNTERS WITH GHOSTS & WEIRD UNSOLVED MYSTERIES

Two more by Brad Steiger are now available to read and download: Weird Unsolved Mysteries (as Eric Norman) and Strange Encounters With Ghosts, from Award Books and Popular Library, respectively. These are two of Brad's better books, with juicy stories and good organization, so check 'em out!

Original reviews are here and here.

COVER UPDATES: STRANGELY ENOUGH, PART TWO!

Another edition of C.B. Colby's influential Forteana title Strangely Enough!, this time from Popular Library using their uncredited house style of cameo illustrations.

Courtesy those scalawags at (of course) the Popular Library, 1959 (original pub. 1940).