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, again clipped from an unknown paper and unknown year. Brad recycles 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!"

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.