ON THE TRAIL OF UNIDENTIFIED FURRY OBJECTS by Jerome Clark

Jerome Clark investigates the thing that came to visit Roachdale, IN in the summer of '72. Unsettling details like glowing eyes, lights in the sky, a penchant for leftovers, and (almost) no footprints to speak of make this one for the weird "hairy biped" records. Whatever it was, it killed the Burdine family chickens but seemed to leave humans well enough alone ... for now.

Reactions from local authorities were ambivalent. Clark quotes two skeptics, a town marshal and a conservation officer, alongside a neighboring sheriff who put out a bizarre BOLO for a "ten foot tall monster covered in fur." Sheriff Gary Cooper (yup) goes on to say the mystery creature could be a bear, or a badger. Clark describes a horde of rubberneckers descending on the town, the small panic among locals that developed, and also places the case in context alongside other Midwestern monster flaps that year.

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

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 26 - Number 8, August 1973.

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

SASQUATCH by Don Hunter with Rene Dahinden

Author Don Hunter presents the story of one of the Grand Old Men of Bigfooting, Rene Dahinden (1930-2001), and his quest to expose the SASQUATCH! Dahinden grew up a foster child, was re-adopted by his birth mother and abandoned yet again, and eventually settled in Canada from his native born Switzerland whereupon the quest for Sasquatch would consume him, to the point of ending his marriage. To finance his work he scraped by collecting and reselling spent lead shot from the Vancouver Gun Club. He became involved in millionaire Tom Slick's Bigfoot expedition, which is described herein with mixed feelings from Dahinden and some truly bizarre details ... 

What the hell, Bob?

An anecdote which is fortunately absent from the modern Bigfoot canon has expedition member Bob Titmus stealing used sanitary pads from women's rest rooms and nailing them to trees around camp in an attempt to attract horny Bigfoots. This is, admittedly, in keeping with classic stories of Bigfoot kidnapping forest brides and the modern, sleazy underbelly of the Bigfoot genre:

From the Men's Adventure Library's excellent Cryptozoology anthology

Amidst this sleaze, Dahinden struggles to make scientists and the public appreciate the serious nature of witness sightings. The death of Slick in a 1962 plane crash robs the field of a major donor, and at times money is tight for Dahinden and he has to suspend field work. Always though he continues collecting reports, and the fact that people are seeing something out there - something that leaves enormous footprints - keeps him going. Some sheriffs and policemen have sightings, along with mineral prospectors and various First Nations individuals, and these witnesses are treated as especially reliable and important by Dahinden.

Co-author Don Hunter

Not so reliable is fellow Bigfoot hunter and confirmed hoaxer Ivan Marx, who leads his comrades on a merry chase around Bossburg, WA, with the infamous "Cripplefoot" tracks of 1969, alongside a grift from one Joe Metlow, a local prospector who claimed at first to have an entire Sasquatch captured in a mine, and then later only a foot in a freezer. 

Here is where extreme fractures appear in the Bigfoot community, as Roger Patterson, John Green, and Dahinden and their cliques all find themselves at odds over the Bossburg mystery. Dahinden is offended by the moneymaking attitudes of both Patterson and Green, with Patterson acting a carnival barker and Green throwing money at Metlow's bogus captured Bigfoot.

Eventually Peter Byrne discovers he's been swindled by Marx when he checks some supposed film of the crippled Bigfoot taken by Marx and finds it blank. Other accounts have said it was snippets of Mickey Mouse cartoons but in either case it was a bust, and Dahinden is left with a bad taste in his mouth.

Co-author Rene Dahinden and his quarry

Dahinden again, in the field

Despite his friction with Patterson, Dahinden is bullish on the Patterson-Gimlin Film. Expertise from Grover Krantz and "the Russians" Dmitri Bayanov and Igor Bourtsev is brought to bear in support of its authenticity.

It's interesting 50 years on that despite Dahinden's approval of it the film is only one small part of the book - nowadays it's one of the few pieces of Bigfoot evidence left for us to pick over, and instead of blurry reprints of still frames in black white we can watch a "hi-def" (give or take) stabilized version on youtube. But Dahinden was after the real thing, the genuine article of a live Bigfoot. 

Sketches from the Bords' Bigfoot Casebook Updated

One especially evocative sighting doesn't quite get the full treatment from Hunter and Dahinden: two prospector brothers who sighted a gigantic, auburn haired creature near Pitt Lake, BC in 1965. The creature was "only a city block away" from them but on the other side of a steep gorge, and had immense hands, "like canoe paddles" and yellow in color. The brothers also found huge footprints before and after their sighting.

Hunter and Dahinden leave out the mysterious parallel grooves found beside the tracks, as well as the brothers' description of a pink tint within the tracks. Janet and Colin Bord's Bigfoot Casebook Updated (2004) includes these as well as sketches made by the brothers. Perhaps Hunter and Dahinden thought the additional details too outré, a common tension in Bigfooting that sees "scientific" perspectives of relict hominoids set against cases that include UFO, ESP, and high strangeness.

The Bords' casebook also includes three other reports of captured Bigfoots beside the famous Jacko case, with two from 1800s newspaper accounts and one from 1940 in Alaska. Hunter and Dahinden do not mention these, as they term Jacko the only captured Bigfoot. Maybe they thought the other cases too flimsy or weren't aware of them, but the point of this nitpicking is to illustrate the varied perspectives within the Bigfoot field.

Above, the original 1973 hardcover edition from McClelland and Stewart Limited. One gets a melancholy feeling reading Dahinden's quest, and he himself admits it may be a fool's errand, but that he can never give it up. Despite his searching, he never had a sighting of his own.

We'll leave Dahinden with the last word here, as recollected by fellow Bigfooter Christopher Murphy: "You know, I've spent over 40 years - and I didn't find it. I guess that's got to say something."

Sasquatch is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1975 (original pub. 1973)