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).

COSMIC DEBRIS: Chili, Dandruff, and Flying Saucers

Here's another couple of ads from the May, 1959 issue of Fate magazine, starting off with former editor Ray Palmer's offer for some delicious homemade chili and his new Flying Saucers magazine - he'd left Fate in 1953 and would found other publications like this and Mystic (which was eventually renamed Search). Palmer also pops up with an ad for some hair dye/dandruff reducer by one Guy L. Turner called, believe it or not, Turn-er's!

Ray Palmer and his luscious locks

I'm not sure what exactly Palmer's relationship was with Turner's outfit, but he claims to be a client, at least!

Elsewhere in the issue is an ad for Palmer's other magazine Mystic/Search. And right below that is a very interesting looking book, Flying Saucer Pilgrimage!

It's a road trip overview of the '50s contactees scene, covering all the big names. This tome is available to read and download at archive dot org along with issues of Mystic/Search and Flying Saucers. Below Pilgrimage is an ad for a real mystical blockbuster, Other Tongues, Other Flesh, by contactee gadfly and raconteur George Hunt Williamson. Williamson was introduced to the murky world of the '50s contactees by the fascist/antisemite William Dudley Pelley but would soon forge his own peculiar path as a chronicler of deep time and the secret plans of our space brothers. His book is free to read at sacred texts dot com.

That's three huge flying saucer sources in one little ad bar, with rat holes aplenty to get lost down! As linked before, this May, 1959 issue of Fate is available to read and download at archive dot org.

EDIT: anon commented below that Palmer was using Williams brand chili seasoning, as named in this ad from the May 1959 issue of his Flying Saucers magazine:

Williams has since been gobbled up by a faceless investment firm, but we still have the vintage designs to reflect on:

Playing cards!

And 5 pounds of seasoning! Wondering how much Palmer made off of
parcelling one of these babies out into foil packets?

The full May 1959 issue of Flying Saucers is available to read and download at the ever dependable archive dot org. Thanks, anon!

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Land of the Nude Lamas

ARE NUDE TIBETAN LAMAS THE MONSTROUS ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN OF THE HIMALAYAS? Holy cannoli, what a headline from the May, 1959 issue of Fate magazine! The story comes from one Father Franz Eichinger, a far east missionary who was visiting a tribe of "Shavrong nomads" on a medical mission in the mountains of Qinghai when he met a strange holy man. The mysterious man had set up camp next door in a "torn, ragged flax tent" ... and emerged the next morning almost totally nude, seeming to have no issue with the brutal subzero temps that had Eichinger and his local hosts shivering in thick furs! Eichinger's hosts told him the holy man normally went completely nude, but wore a thin cloth for modesty when visiting people. The fascinated Eichinger got a photo, with a caveat:

Eichinger's hosts explained further that there was a whole class of Nude Lamas who wandered the mountains, sleeping in caves and surviving without furs or shelters. Sometimes they would briefly visit nomad camps to perform healings. Eichinger theorized that sightings of the Nude Lamas may account for tales of Abominable Snowmen, with their long unkempt hair, tanned bodies, and sometimes shocking, sudden appearances in hostile terrain. He noted that the wandering holy men are fully human nonetheless, though possessed of uncanny powers of survival. Eichinger reached a bit when he claimed that the footprints of the Nude Lamas' might somehow melt and refreeze to appear larger than they originally were, accounting for Yeti footprints ... I don't know about that part, man!

Fate follows Eichinger's story with a 10 page excerpt from influential orientalist/explorer Alexandra David-Neel's book Magic and Mystery in Tibet (original pub 1932), explicating some of the mystical concepts behind the Nude Lamas' hardiness in subzero climes - it all boils down to an inner fire produced through the spiritual practice of tumo (or tummo).

Fate titled David-Neel's excerpt as a riposte to Eichinger's account, but it's really just a deeper exploration of the phenomenon and doesn't mention the Yeti at all. The full text of Magic and Mystery in Tibet is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Alexandra David-Neel (1868-1969)

Different editions of Magic and Mystery in Tibet

Later in the issue we get a two page spread for Magic and Mystery from the Mystic Arts Book Club:

Along with David-Neel's Magic and Mystery, the full May 1959 issue of Fate is also available to read and download at archive dot org. A look at the table of contents gives us a good time capsule of occult and paranormal thinking ... as does the cover price of 35 cents:

STRANGELY ENOUGH! by C.B. Colby

Author C.B. Colby delivers this collection of stories taken from his "Adventure Today" newspaper column. There's no pretense to "fully documented" facts in this one, as Colby cheerfully admits that these are campfire stories meant to be shared and enjoyed. There's a load of urban legends here with multiple vanishing hitchhikers, ghosts in graveyards, and specters like ol' Ocean Born Mary and the Shadmock! That missing Eskimo village is back again, along with that missing Chinese army. Colby also includes frequent flyers like Flight 19 and assorted saucers, plus the Devil's Footprints of Devon and the moving coffins of the Barbados Vault. All told, Colby packs in 99 bite sized entries in 125 pages, a rapid fire pace that rivals Smith and Steiger. 

Given their status as spooky campfire tales, Colby's not above a little fabrication here and there. For example, the story of the "Tragedy Atop the Glacier" which references a real plane crash of a C-46 cargo plane in the PNW. In Colby's telling, the bodies of the dead mysteriously disappear and are never found, an assertion not backed up by any documentation.  Most of the stories lack enough specifics to even necessitate any fakery on Colby's part, and he invites the reader to take it or leave it as part of the fun.

Other stories give a hearty dose of American culture in the 1940s, especially a trio that deal with Native Americans. These three tales reinforce the ontological identity of the "dead Indian" wherein Native Americans exist solely to die out, making room for white settlers. In "The Old Chief's Tomahawk" a dead Indian returns to save a white child from a hungry wolf, the young girl having previously shown him a kindness as he was dying. "The Indian Guide" is a similar tale of a girl saved from a blizzard by her old Indian friend, unaware that he's been dead for two days! "Outsmarting the Indians" is a more straightforward story of frontier conflict, as a pioneer woman outwits marauding Indians by rolling heavy cheese wheels down the stairs.

A reprint by Scholastic Books in 1963 cemented the title as a nostalgic memory for many, with multiple reviews and retrospectives available online, including this one which showcases some of Colby's illustrations, which are MIA from the 1959 Popular Library edition. Strangely Enough is available to read and download at archive dot org.

C.B. Colby: the name that guarantees cheap thrills!

Popular Library, 1959 (original pub. 1940)

STRANGE WOMEN OF THE OCCULT by Warren Smith

Furious Female Forteana! Warren Smith has collated a tidy little volume full of witches and widows, victims and villainesses, ghosts and visions and whatever other weird women-centric happenings Smith could dredge up! We start off strong with a disturbing tale of body swapping across time, sadly unsourced and almost cheerfully bogus in its high melodrama. Tracking the origins for all of Smith's entries is almost its own paranormal cross-time saga. The "Ape Woman of Patang" (who would turn up again in Smith's Strange Abominable Snowmen) seems to have sprung from the kernel of this story in Frank Edwards' 1959 volume Stranger Than Science, with a newly invented "Dr. Gordon Mueller" to authenticate the creature. That accursed biting Bug Eyed Monster also pops in on his whirlwind tour through the paranormal pulps, as writer Garth Haslam describes at his invaluable site for Anomaly Info.

One of the most intriguing tales is of poor (but pretty!) English schoolgirl Eileen Jane Welch, who is snatched up into the the air and then smashed to the earth by some unknown force! There really is a Hanson School in Yorkshire, but everything else about the story seems to be totally fabricated. For some reason this Spanish language horror site turns Eileen from a student to a teacher and pushes up the date to 1973. On and on it goes ...

A short chapter on Helena Blavatsky looks like the seed for what would become Smith's dependable cut and paste chapter on Theosophy featured in his 70s Zebra specials.

On a final note, I admit I'm smitten with the Witch Queen of Hell, who looks like a very gracious hostess inviting you to her blood sacrifice.

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

Popular Library, 1968

STRANGER THAN SCIENCE by Frank Edwards

Posthumous reissue of an Edwards collection of Forteana, with a Chariots-style facelift. This is an interesting mix of old and modern style mysteries. There are ghosts and savants and a fella named Edwin Drood, alongside UFOs, the Yeti, and the Tunguska Blast.

Part of the draw of these older volumes is seeing which entries have stood the test of time. Nobody remembers JOHN KEELY'S MYSTERY MOTOR or THE INVISIBLE FANGS nowadays, but THE FLATWOODS MONSTER for instance has been carried along into general UFO history. This title contains enough hidden gems that have been passed by to be of interest.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Bantam Books, 1973 (original pub. 1959 by Ace Books)