TRUE EXPERIENCES IN EXOTIC ESP edited by Martin Ebon

Editor Martin Ebon returns with another roundup of paranormal writings. This time, the theme is "exotic ESP," which basically means anything outside the good old USA and Europe - Ebon says as much in his introduction, while also making the point that it's all relative who's "exotic" to whom. By learning about these "exotic" (different) peoples and sharing their experiences, Ebon hopes we can find common ground in humanity while also working to pierce the veil of the unknown.

Ebon also name drops psychic surgeon fraud Tony Agpaoa, last seen here getting a (mercifully anonymized) excoriation from Warren Smith ... Ebon claims that it's "too soon" to tell whether the Americans flocking to the Philippines for Agpaoa's cures will get results, which is a bit odd since Smith was able to say "No," quite firmly just the next year of 1969, and the newspapers had records of Agpaoa's fraud in 1967!

This credulous reference by Ebon sets the tone for part of this volume, typical of midcentury paranormal work: "Proof of all these amazing feats is just around the corner!" Some chapters are straightforward descriptions of cultural practices, some detail parapsychological work happening right now with "exotic" peoples, and some recount supposed amazing events the authors themselves experienced, like the phantom pig of Montego Bay. 

We get another Aboriginal death curse, this time written up by one Nicholas Wainwright, as well as a Maori death curse, a Tahitian death curse, and several hair raising adventures such as walking on coals and dealing with the devil dancers of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The phantom pig is joined by a chained donkey and a haunted terrier.

One of the most interesting chapters is titled "China's Psychic Heritage" by Chung Yu Wang (Wang Chongyou in the modern style), being a far ranging history of various beliefs and events. Wang was also a pioneer in Chinese geology and metallurgy, with a page at the Northern Mine Research Society. His wikipedia page doesn't mention his essay from this volume, which seems to be his only published work on the paranormal. True to Martin Ebon's cold warrior status, he introduces Wang's chapter by saying "below the tyrannic-materialistic veneer of today's Communist China lies an ancient tradition of supernatural experience, study, and philosophy" ... that's nice, Martin.

Wang cites a few ancient Chinese texts on the paranormal, explains feng shui among other traditions, and lists off various phenomena including phantom "mongooses" in northern China which he explicitly ties to that famous wag, Jef the talking mongoose. I put "mongoose" in quotes because some online have speculated that the true identity of these animals would be Siberian weasels, which are reportedly thick on the ground, albeit elusive, in northern China.

This is a pretty slim volume, under 130 pages, and Ebon's introduction doesn't quite tie it all together. Still, there are some interesting chapters here, and Ebon gives a blurb about every contributor at the end of the book.

See for yourself: this title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1968

PASSPORT TO THE UNKNOWN by John Macklin

When a man of such practical outlook and training as the doctor - a man who had once been as skeptical as any about occult matters thus becomes convinced ... it must surely mean something ...

So sayeth John Macklin! The man: Frederick Wood. The occult matters at hand: his past life regression that reveals his prior turn as a general in Pharaoh's armies, some 2,000 years ago! That dating puts him in a pretty rough time for the Ptolemaic dynasty, so it's probably just as well that it's all in the past.

The lovely crystalline cover welcomes us into another reliable roundup of Forteana, courtesy the indefatigable (and pseudonymous) John Macklin. The weakest story in the volume is the very first one, about a ghost who wakes up, and some people see him. Yeah. But we're off to the races after that, with a cursed train, a cursed orchid, a cursed diamond, a cursed u-boat, deathly foxes, an Apartheid assassination attempt, and much much more! Macklin's generous this time around, and we end up with 55 chapters of rapid fire thrills.

We even get a chapter on Betty and Barney Hill's UFO abduction, plus George King's contact with Venus. King founded the Aetherius Society, a UFO religion. These bits of UFO history are packed between haunted cellars and phantom footsteps, stories alternately either long forgotten or just totally made up by Macklin. Cursed train engine D326, for example, really existed and really did have a reputation for being jinxed!

The death train D326, looking not-so-threatening in North Wales

The deadly blue orchid of the very next chapter, though? Well, the internet has only a fragment of the true breadth of human knowledge out there in the world, but I'm drawing a blank trying to verify "Christofo Martena" and "Dr. Andermart" of the "Institute for Tropical Illnesses" of Rio de Janeiro ...

Macklin takes some liberties with the true stories as well, to spice them up. Like D326, German U-boat UB-65 had a real life reputation as a jinxed vessel - but comparing Macklin's version to a 1990 write-up by Commander Richard Compton-Hall of the Royal Navy (retired) hosted at the U.S. Naval Institute shows Macklin gilding the lily a fair bit compared to the possible true fate of UB-65. Macklin's version has UB-65 adrift as a sitting duck off the southern coast of Ireland, but mysteriously exploding before an America sub can fire upon it. The ghostly figure of the dead first-lieutenant appears on deck as the submarine sinks. Comptom-Hall's version plays out as realistic submarine warfare, with the American sub not even sure if it's in battle with one U-boat or two, and unsure which if either has sank. 

Complicating things further, wikipedia describes UB-65's fate using the "sitting duck" narrative (minus a ghost) but does not cite any sources for this! The wiki article does go on to finger one Hector Charles Bywater, British journalist, spy, and military writer, for promoting the haunted ship narrative. Further reading leads to Lost at Sea: Ghost Ships and Other Mysteries by Michael Goss and George Behe, which has a chapter on the legend of UB-65 that, while not mentioning Macklin, does trace the evolution of the "hoodoo curse" from Bywater down to writers like Raymond Lamont Brown publishing in Fate magazine during the '70s.

In analyzing UB-65's legend, Goss and Behe consider the fatalism of German submariners as WWI dragged on, as well as the propaganda value of a "cursed ship" as utilized by Britishers like Bywater.

As for Macklin, one can imagine him thumbing through the same archives trawled by Brad Steiger and co., selecting true tales to titillate and adding his own perfect little touch to each one, to titillate even further - or simply adapting a previously juiced up version of a once-true tale. It doesn't end there, though, as even the copy writers for this book got in on the action: the child's doll that "becomes a killer" on the back cover conjures up images of Chucky, but the actual story is about a family barely escaping certain death due to a premonition not to touch the doll, which lies next to unexploded ordinance on a beach! Keep your wits about you, anyways.

Macklin's tale of newspaperman Ed Sampson's premonition of Krakatoa's world beating eruption turns up online reprinted by the magazine Ireland's Own. Still shocking readers after all these years ...

Indeed, this title is almost 60 years old, and some things have changed less (or less faster) than expected: Macklin ends his chapter about the cursed Koh-i-Noor diamond wondering whether or not Charles will wear it at his coronation, as it supposedly brings bad luck to men. So many midcentury paranormal authors and ESP prognosticators who name checked him would never live to see Charles attain the throne, but Macklin personally may have been relieved to know that when the time did finally come, Charles went without the Koh-i-Noor, and in fact it's on display as part of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, at the Tower of London. Crisis averted!

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

Ace Books, 1968

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: ARE THE INVADERS COMING?

Steven Tyler's hopeful-but-skeptical UFO text Are the Invaders Coming? is now available to read and download at archive dot org! Whither our man of mystery? He wrote one more book on the paranormal and then disappeared into the unknown ...

Courtesy Tower Books, 1968.

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: MORE STRANGE SMITH

Two more strange Warren Smith volumes are now available to read and download at archive dot org: Into the Strange and Strange Women of the Occult.

Once again, this marks the digital debut of both titles. Revisit true strange wonders like Italian Superman Agostino Colli (he has two hearts!) and the fearsome Ape Woman of Patang. Previous reviews are here and here.

The incredible Agostino lifts a jeep!

Both titles are courtesy Popular Library, 1968-1969.

STRANGE WORLD: Midwest Monster

Click to embiggen

Here's a copy of Brad Steiger's syndicated "Strange World" column from the early '70s, which was "carried in 80 American newspapers and publications around the world." Here Brad reuses a Bigfoot story from prior work and adds a newer story on top.

Steiger had previously used the first story of the student outside Rochester, MN, in New UFO Breakthrough with Joan Whritenour, and The Abominable Snowmen, writing as Eric Norman. In these books the student is christened "Bob." The second tale is from 1970 and so postdates those works, though it does turn up alongside Bob's tale in a chapter on "Ghost Monsters of the Midwest" in 1972's Strange Encounters With Ghosts. In terror tale number two, truck driver John Hartsworth describes the creature he saw (and Mike Busby tangled with!) as looking like "a giant cat running on its hind legs" ... yowza!

Close up on that little scamp

Clipped from the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, March 3rd, 1972.

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE TIMES THREE!

Sure is strange! These three classic Forteana mixers for the Popular Library by Brad Steiger and Warren Smith are now available to read and download at archive dot org:

Strange Powers of Prophecy, by Brad Steiger

Strange Powers of Healing, by Brad Steiger

Strange Hexes, by Warren Smith

This marks the digital debut of all three titles!

For an example of Smith and Steiger's strange shared universe, psychic Al. G Manning is featured in Steiger's Strange Powers of Healing, and would later appear on Warren Smith's roster of psychic prognosticators in his Predictions for 197X series. Manning wrote bold (and sometimes ribald!) self help/psychic titles such as Eye of Newt in My Martini (1981) and The Miracle of Universal Psychic Power (1974).

Author photo for Manning (1927-2006)

Says the back cover of Eye of Newt: "If you like excitement, intrigue, sex, magic, prosperity and real enjoyment of life, this is a must for YOU!" Well, you don't hafta twist my arm!

Manning is just one of the countless psychic landmines awaiting the reader in this trio of bizarre bricolage from two of the hardest working writers in the field. Doc Anderson and John Pendragon, two other frequent flyers on the Steiger/Smith Express, also turn up in these pages, alongside psychic superstar Jeane Dixon and ... Oral Roberts!? Previous reviews are here, here, and here.

All three titles are courtesy Popular Library, 1967-1970.

IS SOMETHING UP THERE? by Dale White

This is a pretty good UFO primer for kids covering the usual midcentury narrative, from Kenneth Arnold and the Foo Fighters onwards to the Flatwoods Monster and the Condon report. Author Dale White references heavily from John G. Fuller's Incident at Exeter in an early chapter, but oddly enough doesn't mention Betty and Barney Hill despite covering a wide range of cases. White also goes over NICAP's involvement with the issue, Father Gill's sightings in New Guinea and other foreign reports, and explanations of strange weather phenomenon that can be mistaken as UFOs.

White's style is measured, and he does a fine job conveying the scale and layered contradictions of the subject. Good stuff! But the plot thickens: an online listing for the original hardcover edition reveals that White is a pseudonym for none other than Bigfoot authoress Marian T. Place!

Did she or original publisher Doubleday think young boys wouldn't read a UFO book by a lady? She didn't publish her Bigfoot work under a male pseudonym! Her papers are in a collection at Arizona State University, and offer some information on that front:

Place has written under her own name and under two pseudonyms. She recalls that "I began writing [about such subjects as] hunting, fishing, Forest Service and other state and federal fish & wildlife, grazing, [and] water projects, to mention only a few. I studied my markets before submitting and observed [that] the kind of ... subjects I was interested in were done by men. So, I chose to use the pen name of Dale [my uncle] and White [a portion of my middle name, Whitinger]. For about 10 years or more I was known as Mr. White. The other pseudonym, R. D. Whitinger, was used briefly only for westerns - i.e. bang-bangs, pulps. I was experimenting with several kinds of writing, and this one was not for me."

That online listing for Is Something Up There? also includes some promotional writing on Place, dating to the early '80s:

Scholastic Book Services, 1969 (original pub. 1968)