NEW TAG: Ephemeral Notes

A new tag on the blog: ephemera! For all those notes, scribbles, names, stickers, bookstore stamps, and whatever else that's made its mark on all of our PAPERBACKS OF THE GODS!

Don't forget the makeshift bookmarks and news clippings too!

And important dates!

The tag will continue to be updated as I sort through the archives, and until then ...

Keep smilin'!

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE MONSTERS AND MADMEN

Warren Smith's Strange Monsters and Madmen is now available to read and download at archive dot org!

Courtesy Popular Library, 1969.

THE HUNTING SHACK by Gunnard Landers

I'm reading last year's papers

Although I don't know why

Assassins, cons, and rapists

Might as well die

Man of action Gunnard Landers (1944-) delivers one mean corker of a thriller here, from the very first page as the unknown killer picks his target - the group of men have come to this wilderness for a hunting trip, and of course one of them has a different sort of prey in mind. Our killer won't remain nameless for long, and we'll come to know him and all his friends very well in Landers' easy, piercing style.

The hardcover

Protagonist Norm suspects there's something wrong with one of them; something more than the usual midcentury neuroses, I mean, something even more dangerous than the domestic problems and work struggles and homosocial minefield that the men navigate. But then, Norm's a little off himself, and maybe his buddies don't want to put too much stock in any random thing he says ...

And our author

The Paperback Warrior blog reviewed this title back in 2022 and on the strength of their recommendation I had to search out a copy for myself. I'm glad I did! The characters live, breathe, and die with shocking emotion, and Landers writes so vividly that you can easily see the story happening here and now - this could your town! The killer isn't some slasher film maniac or wannabe Hannibal Lecter, he's the same guy you've seen a million times before on the news, and how could anyone know? He was such a family man ...

And his prey? His camouflage? His hunting buddies, all jeering and jockeying to release some pressure, to escape the rat race if just for a weekend, to prove something, to do something ... with a gun. They don't know they're playing for keeps now, though.

The Hunting Shack ranks 4/4 - very recommended! This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1979

JESUS CHRIST, HEIR TO THE ASTRONAUTS by Gerhard R. Steinhäuser

I was staying at the Marriott

With Jesus and John Wayne

I was waiting for a chariot

They were waiting for a train

My ride's here ... though it's more of a metaphysical passage, more Morning of the Magicians than Chariots of the Gods?, and even though Steinhäuser's book postdates von Daniken, he's much more in tune with the esoteric authors like Pauwels, Bergier, and others that Erich was ripping off. In fact, reading through this volume, one is reminded of just how shabby, how lazy, how slapdash von Daniken's work was in comparison to his predecessors. For better of for worse, writers like Steinhäuser make you work for it!

Steinhäuser starts off with the basic question, was God an astronaut? We get the usual ancient art and architecture, the electric Ark of the Covenant, the "white" god Quetzalcoatl, and so on. But he goes a step further ... could it be that all of our major religions are outright massive cons, not simply garbled interpretations of gods from outer space but deliberate frauds perpetuated by priestly PR men simply borrowing aspects of the true alien visitors? Was Jesus simply a dime-a-dozen would-be prophet with the good (posthumous) luck of Peter and Paul shoring up his legacy with borrowed themes? 

It's the idea behind Christian/pagan/esoteric syncretism, but cast out further: Von Daniken used his science fiction gloss to try to shore up the Bible, while Steinhäuser aims to shred it to bits - though his introduction denies antagonism, saying the Churches are doing a good enough job of discrediting themselves!

Churches and temples are our own feeble attempt to replicate the wormhole gates that enabled the gods to travel across the universe without even needing spaceships - ritual doorways and gateways and arches are the key here, in Steinhäuser's view.

Steinhäuser tracks other potential alien influence through the ages and around the globe, asserting on page 123 that "the nearer the subsequent religious centres (e.g. in Egypt, Asia Minor, China and South America) were to the former "residences" of the gods, the clearer and more distinct is their tradition; the further away they were, and the less frequently they had contact with the gods (e.g. in northern Europe and North America) the more obscure and unintelligible are their traditions." 

One might also wonder if he simply has better access to sources to mine for those areas "closer" to the gods ...

Part of Steinhäuser's bibliography

Steinhäuser (1920-1989) wrote a handful of Ancient Astronaut texts, though this appears to be the only one ever translated into English.

Hardcover edition

I was staying at the Westin

I was playing to a draw

When in walked Charlton Heston

With the Tablets of the Law

He said "It's still the greatest story,"

I said, "Man, I'd like to stay

But I'm bound for glory,

I'm on my way."

My ride's here ... This title was translated into English by Susanne Flatauer and is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Coronet Books, 1976 (original pub. 1973)

THE AMERICAN INDIAN AND THE OCCULT by Christopher Dane

This purported guide to Amerindian occultism merely collects 35 quick hit chapters with no real analysis or through-line, making this another big pile of slop from bad, bad Brad Steiger working under his Christopher Dane pseudonym. Popular Library gave us a beautiful cover but slacks on the interior: we have typos here and there including chapter titles, and they even accidentally left Brad's true name on the inside cover!

What did readers make of this slip-up back then?

Steiger kicks things off with the Hartford Circus Fire of 1944. One Robert Segee confessed to arson in the case, and Steiger writes of vengeful Indian spirits compelling him to set the fire that killed 167 people and injured over 700. Segee would later recant his confession, but Steiger is content to finger him as the culprit and not get too involved in details about whether the fire was even really arson at all ...

Segee was supposedly of Native descent, by the way, which merits his inclusion here.

Moving on, there's no real structure as Steiger darts from outdated mystery mongering over sites like the Big Medicine Wheel in Wyoming and the Palenque ruins in Mexico, from peoples as varied as the Incas, Aztecs, Apache, and Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), with no attempts at delineation across two continents, countless cultures, and thousands of years of history.

Chapter 23, "The Sailors Who Came Before Columbus," discusses the Metcalf Stone of Georgia which purportedly illustrates pre-Columbian contact between Greece and the New World, while chapter 29, "The Moon of Flowers," touches on Ancient Astronaut ideas around the Maya, in line with the Umlands' Mystery of the Ancients. Chapter 23 also mentions those famous Olmec heads and the Piri Reis Map - not by name though! Steiger is strangely subdued with his usual Fortean name checking.

Besides this de rigueur pseudoarchaeological mystery mongering, Steiger pads out his pages with the spectral threat of werewolf cults, vengeful ghosts, visions, killings and so on. These are in the classic Fortean maybe-fiction style of C.B. Colby and Frank Edwards, with nothing in the way of authentication or sourcing but plenty of invented dialogue and cheeseball scene setting:

Chapter 8 deals with the chindi or chʼįį́dii spirit, a malevolent force from Diné (Navajo) culture, of which Brad would later write a whole horror novel.

Two covers for this undoubtedly authentic chiller

Another real life horror is uncovered in chapter 19, "The Manitou Grand Cavern Mummy," as miscreant Tom O'Neel (or "Jackknife Tom") is killed in a fight and then experimentally preserved by one Dr. Isaac A. Davis. Eventually Tom's corpse goes on the road as an "Indian mummy" ... yech!

Various just-so stories of uncertain provenance and bits of garbled history fill out the rest: chapter 9 is an abbreviated account of Running Eagle, a warrior woman of the Blackfeet Tribe, here referred to as Weasel Woman. Steiger's version features dialogue like "Hooo, Ah," from rival Flathead fighters, go figure. Other chapters cover leaders like Wovoka, Handsome Lake, and Wabokieshiek. Sourcing is always thin regardless the subject.

Running Eagle, aka Pi'tamaka, aka Brown Weasel Woman

In style and content this volume straddles the classic "Dead Indian" era of frontier tales that was fading out by C.B Colby's time and the emerging New Age fascination with subjects like Hopi prophecy and general indigenous mysticism. Steiger was no stranger to this, whether here in the Americas, in "the Orient," or with the fraudulent Kahuna magic of Max Freedom Long. Nowadays we just have to seek out one of a thousand online "creepypasta" stories to find Amerindian concepts like skin-walker witches and the wendigo appropriated, sometimes mangled beyond recognition - reinterpreted from distinct cultural forms to generic oogy-boogy monsters.

True to form for Steiger's meatloaf volumes released as "Dane," the chapters are very uneven. Some are wisps that barely merit inclusion, some go on far too long for basic stories, some are obvious piffle and some are interesting enough. Chapter 32, "Many Scalps Has Laughing Wolf," surprises with a very measured history of scalping among Amerindians and settlers, analyzing the spread of the practice through bounties offered by settlers, and the difference between these bounty scalps, tit-for-tat atrocity scalping, and ritualistic scalping as practiced by a small number of tribes. Steiger was capable of decent writing when he put the effort in, and it's disappointing that the rest of this volume doesn't measure up.

Per usual, Popular Library doesn't bother with a table of contents or index.

Table of contents:

1.  Spirit Councils in the Forest of Fiery Death (5)

2.  Massau's Great Star: The Hopi Book of Genesis (11)

3.  A Wheel Older Than Memory (17)

4.  The Pyramid at Palenque (23)

5.  Where Are the Sheepeaters Now? (29)

6.  The Knife of the Arikaras (35)

7.  Death to the Apache Witch (41)

8.  Run From the Devil (47)

9.  Death Comes to the Woman Warrior of Two Medicine Lodge (55)

10. To Walk Among Rattlesnakes (63)

11. Roaring Thunder Returns From the Dead (69)

12. In Quest of the Medicine Arrows (75)

13. The Invincible One (83)

14. The Werewolf of Eagle Creek (91)

15. An Apache Head in Search of a Body (97)

16. Who Will Dance for Wovoka? (103)

17. Lake for Sale: Inquire of the Devil (109)

18. The Sign of Ubabeneli (115)

19. The Manitou Grand Cavern Mummy (121)

20. The Aztec God Demand's a Woman (127)

21. Tell Two Bears I Am Coming (135)

22. The Mysterious Hand of Gray Robe (141)

23. The Sailors Who Came Before Columbus (147)

24. The Rain Gods of Mesa Ecantantada (153)

25. The Secret of the Soul Eaters (159)

26. The Strange Dreams of Prince Viracocha (167)

27. Makers of Great Medicine (175)

28. The Amazing Empire of the Sun (181)

29. The Moon of Flowers (189)

30. The Good Gentle Words of Handsome Lake (195)

31. A Prophet of Another Sort (199)

32. Many Scalps Has Laughing Wolf (205)

33. The Search for Fons Juventutis (209)

34. Wabokieshiek Knows the Future (215)

35. To See the Spirit Home (219)

The American Indian and the Occult is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Popular Library, 1973