SECRETS OF THE PYRAMIDS REVEALED by Robert K. Moffett

By now, it may have become apparent that doctorates carry substantial weight among the nonconformist schools of pyramid study. In fact, academic titles abound to a point where it is hardly paranoid to conclude that they are used for the purpose of impressing the reader with the author’s scholarship. But do they not also imply a promise that the scholarship in the books will be sound?

Perhaps a more accurate title would have been Secrets of Pyramidology Revealed? Author Robert K. Moffett teases us with a pointless introduction in a style that seems to have been de rigueur for skeptical works in the '70s: dressing up your critical work like it's just another mystery mongering meatloaf volume. Moffett mentions Karel Drbal and his razor sharpening pyramids, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, and Uri Geller - but none of these are relevant for the rest of the book. Moffett's actual text is about how we got here, to the pyramid mania of the '70s, through a history of the theories of the original pyramidologists. It's a crash course on writers like John Taylor and Howard Vyse (and their precursor John Greaves), fine tuners like Piazzi Smyth, and then bandwagon jumpers on up to the 20th century and the modern day. 

Moffett gives context on why specific writers were interested in certain aspects of the pyramids, and how oftentimes their facts and figures had less to do with the actual stones in the sand than with contemporary religious and political struggles:

At this point, Taylor was sure he had had a revelation, for this was a matter of keen topical interest.

The metric system, developed in France, had by this time spread throughout the Continent, and there was agitation both from the scientific community and export-conscious manufacturers to adopt it in Great Britain. But there was a strong British resistance movement largely based on religious grounds. The French Revolution, with its strong anticlerical bias, had aroused grave misgivings in Britain, and the metric system was closely identified with it. As originally proposed, the metric conversion had involved switching to a ten-day week. Genesis made it perfectly clear that the Lord endorsed the seven-day week. That, after a period of trial, the French themselves had abandoned the decimal week was immaterial. If, in this, the original thinking had been contrary to the Will of God, the entire system was suspect.

Now Taylor could perceive the true function of the Great Pyramid: It was not by chance that the pyramid used the British system of weights and measures. Rather, it was a compendium incorporating the original, Divinely inspired system which had survived in Britain. The Great Pyramid was a message passed down to modern times to strengthen the wills of the anti-metric faction.

The search for cosmic truths collapses inward! Moffett writes with a dry humor, respectfully conveying various crank ideas but occasionally popping an especially ridiculous balloon such as in the case of psychic gadfly Edgar Cayce:

In terms of both current popularity and sheer volume, the most important of the clairvoyants to have contributed to the story of Atlantis was Edgar Cayce who, despite the widespread belief in his ability to communicate across the barrier between this and the afterworld, hasn’t been heard from since his death in 1945.

Once we've completed our journey with Moffett from Ancient Egypt to 19th century Europe to 20th century America, we might be able to say we've learned something about human thought and frailty.

Tempo Books gifts us a few typos here and there, but at least they also give us a picture spread in the middle with lots of vintage images. Moffett, a class act, also gives us a bibliography:

Moffet has a few other books available, including one coauthored with (presumably) his wife - not the title you'd think though! Their shared author blurb says that "Robert and Martha Moffett are both editors as well as published writers. Mr. Moffett's introduction to the animal kingdom was as a snake farmer."

Pyramid Power now and forever! This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tempo Books, 1976

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

CAN ASTROLOGY SOLVE "THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE" MYSTERY? by M.A. Smollin

The readers were clamoring for answers! Writer M.A. Smollin starts off with disclaimers about the Triangle's per capita spookiness and the responsibility of relevant authorities to investigate accidents and disappearances ... and with that out of the way, we're ready to interrogate how Uranus, Mercury, and the rest might influence us towards evil, self destructive ends! This is on top of more earthly issues such as instrument failure, which Smollin says can aggregate alongside the heavenly alignments to cultivate a sense of impending doom. Smollin picks out the Cyclops and Flight 19 as the most important Triangle mysteries requiring this astrological analysis.

Smollin also says that theories of Atlantean atomic piles under the Triangle are unsupported.

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

From Dell's Horoscope magazine, Volume 41 - Number 11, November 1975. If this article put you on edge, you could always try to relax with the same issue's astro-word puzzle!

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Krakatoa, West of Java

Some maps and diagrams concerning Krakatoa's 1883 eruption, relevant to author J.V. Luce's discussion of the destruction of Thera in his excellent book The End of Atlantis. Krakatoa was famously misplaced in the 1968 Hollywood disaster flick titled Krakatoa, East of Java, but the fourth image of the Sunda Strait illustrates its true westerly position relative to Java ... glad that's settled!

Ash fall from the eruption
(Click to embiggen these horizontal images)

The Sunda Strait, flood zones, and the volcano west of Java 

Courtesy Bantam Books, 1978 (original pub. 1969).

PREDICTIONS FOR 1976 compiled and edited by Warren Smith

San Antonio: a huge tornado, fires and Mexican Americans and blacks taking over!

Australia and New Zealand will have a problem!

Watch Glenn Ford do it again!

The next President will be George Wallace!

Warren Smith returns with a roster of psychics, minus a few names here and there from last year. The biggest loss is gay witch Leo Martello, no longer here to make canny "predictions" about the CIA. Instead we have psychic sleuth Beverly C. Jaegers predicting that "the CIA will be blamed for everything from food shortages and coffee prices to small takeovers in Southern Hemisphere countries, with no basis in fact." She's the one with the big, bold idea that Australia and New Zealand will have "a problem," too, so nothing gets past her!

Dr. Gil E. Gilly also returns with another beefy chapter full of cheerful nonsense, and you gotta hand it to him for putting it all out there with "predictions" like these:

The mammoth economic growth we’ve witnessed by Japan is going to be surpassed by a physical growth, not in number but in size and stature. This will be shown to be caused by the atomic pollution of the waters and food they eat.  

I believe Gerald Ford is going to run for President with Rockefeller as his running mate. I don’t see him winning, but if he should he'll step down afterwards and Rockefeller will run the country. You know who I see winning? Wallace. Not that I want him to, but that’s who I see winning.

Gilly also says 1976 will be the year for aloe vera, "a Hawaiian plant that's a sure cure for baldness," and also goes into detail about a "Telecheck system" that will monitor seniors for their own safety. It seems like a third of the predictions in this book are technowonders like this, another third are safe "gimme" predictions like "trouble in the Middle East" and Glenn Ford becoming even more popular due to his massive talent and charisma, and the final third are nuclear war, race riots, plague, death, and so on. Gilly doesn't disappoint here with runaway plague and fungus, and a campaign in Zaire to "can and sell human meat!" On the plus side, "Dinah Shore will have her recipes manufactured and distributed on the frozen foods market," hopefully sans long pork!

Glenn Ford (1916-2006) in the epic Midway, 1976

Our pal Doc Anderson does his thing too and also says that he sees "George Wallace is destined to be the President of the United States" ... and that Doris Day will be offered several TV specials! Allene Cunningham says that George Wallace will present us an "amazing and sincere" program for how to clean up America ... I'm starting to have some questions about these psychics!

Allene Cunningham (1921-2016) on the job. I've got my eye on her!

There's a lot of talk of "earth changes" a la Edgar Cayce, and of Atlantis rising. Jackie O's marital status is debated, as is John Wayne's health and Dick Cavett's image as a family man - though Sharon Naccarato beileves that this won't have an effect on his standing. To think we missed out on Dick Cavett's blue era ...

Smith's Predictions series has always been a mix of big B-names in the psychic scene like Irene Hughes and Tenny Hale, and relative nobodies like the anonymous Aquarius, a doctor in the Midwest who wants to keep his ESP under wraps. Maybe the biggest name Smith scored for this year is "the PK Man" himself, Ted Owens, who, despite Smith's usual disclaimer against using these volumes for financial advice, tell us to sell all our stocks and bonds and basically keep cash in hand! 

Ted Owens (1920-1987)

Ted sees bad news all over, with UFOs "kicking the slats" off of Texas and Nevada, with Florida, California, and Illinois also facing some dark future. If only Nixon had listened to Ted:

Years ago I wrote fo President Nixon (excuse the expression) and offered to organize all the great psychics in the land. I’d get Geller, Dixon, Doc Anderson, Gypsy Markoff (Countess Amaya), Hurkos, and others in the psychic field together as one superpsychic team. We'd help guide the United States through times ahead. The government would put up salaries for these top psychics so they would not want. They could devote their energies and time to helping the United States. This superpsychic team would be invaluable to the United States! Now, each psychic is helping an individual here or there with psychic powers. But the total picture would be much better if the psychics banded together to become a powerful psychic force.

Psychic Mark Vito predicts women giving birth to starseeds in 1976, though he avoids that exact term. His brief entry is mostly focused on UFOs and starseeds, which makes sense given he was a contactee:

“My second contact occurred on March 19, 1975,” reported Mark. “I received the following message, which was given to me by mental projection: ‘United States founded by Higher Beings, extraterrestrials. Study the Great Seal of the United States on reverse side of dollar bill. Our messengers responsible for its design. We are the Flying Eagle. Thirteen of us responsible, as shown by the thirteen stars above Eagle. Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, a few of our coworkers. Divine Plan in operation. We bring you sweet tidings of great joy. This is the beginning of remarkable golden goodness. You have no idea of the magnitude of our work. The Great Seal of United States appears on our ships.'"

There's gotta be over a thousand predictions in this volume, although again many are safe bets and generic guesses. But for the out-there observations, of nuclear war and super-pills, of celebrity love and death, of President George Wallace and mass UFO disclosure, we'd have to wait for 1976 to pass us by to see ...

Predictions For 1976 is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Award Books, 1975

MYSTERIOUS PLACES by Daniel Cohen

And there was Elvis - not the real one 

When he kissed me goodbye he called me hon

Just another shot in the dark 

Like El Dorado or Noah's Ark

Another very readable pop-sci primer from Daniel Cohen, collecting the most cutting edged research c.1969 around such mysterious places as Atlantis, Mu, Camelot, and others! This is a journey not just to unknown lands but through academic debates and pop culture mutations, as interpretations and explanations rise and fall through the years - was Atlantis real, or just a metaphor? Where the hell did Prester John come from? How many times do we have to establish the creators of Great Zimbabwe before the Rhodesian government will admit it wasn't a lost white race? Cohen dives into the archives to tackle all of these questions head on ...

Per usual, Cohen is gentle but firm in his exploration of fringe science and crank ideas, and by putting theories about lost worlds like Atlantis in their historical and social contexts Cohen lights the way as surely as a torch in a dusty tomb. Sometimes the journey is as important as the destination, and a few dead ends and side paths here and there can be edifying.

This title was published the same year von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods? made it to American shores, and so while Cohen does not answer von Daniken's mystery mongering by name, his chapter on Easter Island is notable nonetheless for including research and information that von Daniken would pretend was impossible and unknowable for decades to come.

Throughout his world tour of the unknown Cohen makes reference to our romantic yearning for cataclysm and mystery. The work is a pleasure to read, and Tower Books' cheap and flashy presentation (dig the ad for smokes!) adds spice to a volume that surely undercuts a good deal of other titles in their occult oeuvre.

Cohen includes a nice bibliography, and Tower Books include a nice page of juicy ads for other occult/paranormal titles such as Stefan Elg's Fortean mixer Beyond Belief and Devi Sonero's pro-phrenology reader!

Tower Books also put this title out as Lost Worlds, with new cover art and a different ad spread in the back. Check out Otto Binder's sci-fi entry Night of the Saucers, published under his Eando pseudonym:

It's been said that a girl trying to find herself the perfect man is like trying to find Atlantis. Even 50+ years on, this work is illuminating and enjoyable. Mysterious Places is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tower Books, 1969