SCORING THE SEERS IN 1969 by Brad Steiger

It's easy for them to make the predictions, but how do our psychic stars actually score on their prognostication? Steiger grades a nice clutch of midcentury psychic stars here, most of whom would become regulars in his '70s book series coauthored with Warren Smith: What the Seers Predict - Smith would continue this series solo as the Predictions for 197X line before scuttling it after the final entry for 1977.

Supposed "hits" include Richard Burton and Liz Taylor going round and round, which tells you what to expect here. Conflict in the Middle East is another easy "prediction." Steiger rates predictress Irene Hughes especially high, with visions of de Gaulle's retirement and Ho Chi Minh's death among other hits. Steiger would cobble together a promotional volume for Hughes later this year with Know the Future Today!

Jeane Dixon's prediction of Governor Reagan having issues with rioting is part of a forgotten saga where Reagan proved his hippie-bashing bonafides via vehement rhetoric towards campus protests in California. See John Dolan's classic article "Reagan's Cheshire Snarl" for a window into this memory holed piece of the Gipper's career. Race baiting Dixon also predicts that Nixon will do more to advance the Negro's status than "any other man in the last 100 years" ... Steiger wisely considers this one too soon to call.

Frequent fliers like John Pendragon, Malva Dee, Paul Twitchell of the Eckankar cult, and the Countess Gypsy Markoff Amaya round out the proceedings. Amaya whiffs on a prediction of Castro's fall in 1970 ... woof! One of the most recent traces of her online is on the blog Eleanor Britton's People, where an anonymous commenter describes caring for Amaya's chihuahua and says the last they knew of her was in 1989. It's entirely possible Amaya suffered the same fate of so many predicting Castro's downfall, and ended up preceding him by quite some time.

Gypsy Markoff Amaya

The commenter ends by saying "we are trying to figure out what happened to her." How sad that so many of the psychics here have faded into history, with neither hide nor hair of their final fates before passing on to the great unknown. At least we know that John Pendragon passed in 1970, as sad as that knowledge is - he was relatively young at just 59 years old!

  

A rare pic of the addled John Pendragon!

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

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 23 - Number 1, January 1970.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Tapes to Explore the Unknown!

In sync with Brad Steiger's article on Dick and Trenna Sutphen, here's an ad in Fate magazine for some of the Sutphens' self-hypnosis tapes. The ad also features upcoming seminar dates, with Brad Steiger as a guest speaker at the Scottsdale, AZ conference, and an offer of a free subscription to Dick's Self Help Update magazine (just pay S+H)!

The Sutphen Family channel on youtube has archived many, many recordings and home movies of the Sutphens, including some vintage tapes. Check 'em out!

From Fate magazine, Volume 32 - Number 4, April 1979.

YOUR PAST LIFE CAN SET YOU FREE by Brad Steiger

Article in Fate magazine by Steiger on hypnotist and professional past life regressor Dick Sutphen, who aims to help people recover their past life memories. Steiger opens with the cheeky claim recycled from his volume Psychic Travel (written as Christopher Dane) that real life convict and prison reform crusader Edward H. Morrell was astrally projecting during the tortures he endured while incarcerated - of course, Steiger is taking the fictionalized aspects that Jack London added for his novel The Star Rover and pretending London got them straight from Morrell, who he interviewed as part of the background research on prisons for his story!

All this by Steiger is to claim that Sutphen may be a reincarnation of Morrell!

Steiger and his then-wife Francie were living the New Age crystal cowboy life down in Arizona at this time, and he describes attending a seminar by Sutphen and his wife Trenna in Scottsdale. Learning their past lives can, according to Sutphen, help people deal with problems in their current lives such as impotence and alcoholism. People also report Atlantean and extraterrestrial heritage through their regressions, which must have been of interest to Steiger per his Starseed theories, though he's careful to point out that Sutphen personally doesn't ascribe to any one interpretation.

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

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 32 - Number 4, April 1979.

STRANGE WORLD: Monsters Along the Mississippi

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Monsters along the Mississippi ... and in Minnesota and Washington, too! It's another edition of Brad Steiger's "Strange World" column, with Brad recycling 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!"

Clipped from the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, June 5th, 1972.

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.

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: MORE STRANGE STEIGER

Three more strange Brad Steiger volumes are now available to read and download on archive dot org:

The Unknown

Beyond Unseen Boundaries

Strange Men and Women

This marks the digital debut of all three titles! Reacquaint yourself with such luminaries as the hideous Monster of Glamis, history mysteries like Edgar Allan Poe's missing bones, and dangerous adventure like Dr. Jeanne-Marie-Therese Koffman's search for the Abominable Snowman! These strange tales and many, many more are packed into these early titles from Steiger. Previous reviews are here, here, and here.

A bonny lass who knows how to get ahead!

All three titles are courtesy Popular Library, 1966-1967.

STRANGE WORLD: Midwest Monster

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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.

BURIED TREASURE GUIDE by Eric Norman

One more time! Warren Smith scrapes the last bit of ore from this vein with a final treasure hunting guide, coming after his Finders Keepers and buddy Brad Steiger's Treasure Hunting. Award Books packages this one up nice, even if they do typo "Bermuda" as "Burmuda" on page 74 while discussing diver Teddy Tucker's jackpot salvage of a 1597 wreck which netted him "a cool $100,000 tax free." There also aren't any maps, rare or otherwise, in this book, and the advertised guide to equipment sourcing was in Finders Keepers. Swings and roundabouts.

The emerald cross salvaged by Tucker from the San Pedro.
Photo credit to the wonderful Teddy Tucker dot com.

Treasure diver James Stillson is back from Steiger's Treasure Hunting, as is Padre Island, the Little Fleta, and all sundry lost mines and stolen payrolls! This time around Smith opts for a straightforward chapter format, listing entries one after the other: sunken pirate ships, lost mines, Spanish galleons, forgotten caches of cash, gold, or gems, etc., etc. Smith also throws in a state-by-state guide like the last two volumes, and a chapter on TWENTY whole lost mines - Steiger only managed ten in his book!

Chapter four sees young Peter Johnson discovering "Treasure in the Lost Pharoah's Cave," and gives us another typo from Award, right in the chapter title! Johnson and two Indian friends take shelter in a cave during a storm and find mysterious wall art and piles and piles of gold coins. Johnson takes one home, and while his father scolds him for fraternizing with Indians, years later Peter's grandson has the coin examined by a professor ... would you believe, the coin has an extinct mastodon carved into it? Was this incredible proof of an ancient lost civilization?

Smith doesn't tell us where he originally got this story (reused from his 1968 title Into the Strange) but it sounds like classic frontier bunkum, placing ancient pre-Amerindian civilizations in situ for settlers to discover. Mastodons were a favorite choice of OOP animal representation for the 1800s (as dinosaurs became in the 20th century), beloved by Thomas Jefferson and cropping up in mysterious Mound Builder accounts all across the eastern half of the country. Smith does name a Richard Gurnee, president of the National Speleological Society, as having an interest in finding the mysterious cave.

This story as related by Smith crops up on two modern websites: a thread on Treasure Net and an entry on Uncharted History. The OP of the thread on Treasure Net says they don't even know the name of the book the chapter came out of, because their copy was so beat! After a little discussion, user "Bsktkaz" gives some local context:

I grew up in Ticonderoga and I never heard this story growing up. That seems unusual in itself. I am greatly intrigued by this story but have many doubts of my own. The first doubt is the actual pages in the post. If these pages were as old as presented the outer edges should be greatly frayed not straight as razors. These pages are all pretty well the same color, if they were this old they would have stains and discoloration. The inside edges appear such that the pages were torn out of a book, but the pages 45-46 (should be back to back) do not match up like pages 47 and 48. The outer side rips on 47-48 look as if they were done on purpose not accidentally which would have to be the case on outer edge. Second, I have searched local censes and find no residences for Johnson's near Pharaoh Mountain in the 1840's, I may have overlooked though. They may have rented but his father made a living as a farmer, so I doubt it, most farmers especially in those times owned their farms. The Johnsons (Johnson's Farm and Johnsons Orchard) I found lived more towards Crown Point (near 7 miles from Ti). One last question I have is the time frame for the hike. Ti (Ticonderoga) is several miles (6-7 estimate) from Pharaoh Mountain. Like I said I grew up in Ti, well Chilson just outside Ti and even closer to Pharaoh Mountain and I grew up hiking those mountains, That kind of hike would take hours one way let alone to, playing around, waiting out a thunder storm the returning. A good estimate of time would be close to if not more than 12 hours. That father seems awfully calm for having his son disappear for 12 hours. Even if the boy was coming from Eagle lake area the closest to Pharaoh Mountain you looking at 4 miles or more one way.

There's something apropos about a quickie bullshit chapter from Smith becoming its own lost legend ...

A page of the chapter as it appears online ...

The eighth chapter, Lost Viking Mines and Mystery Ships, also utilizes Smith's pseudohistory background. Viking miners outside of Red Rock, AZ are also reused from Into the Strange, and are joined by Eric the Red's lost longship buried in the California dunes and the old saw about a white and bearded Quetzalcoatl. These are all comfortable old pseudohistorical legends that fit right into the treasure hunting theme. Smith also cites settler/surveyor Herman Ehrenberg and his research into a possible lost white tribe in the Southwest, and a story by one Mrs. Myrtle Botts and her husband, who met a prospector while camping and were shown his faded photographs of what appear to be viking longships half-buried in the desert.

This chapter also features two separate old Indians who begin their stories by saying, "Many moons ago ..." C'mon, Warren!

Meanwhile it's more of the same treasure teasing in other chapters, with cheeseball accounts of jackpot finds, quotes from professional treasure hunters, and quick listings of random locations, some more specific than others. A chapter on confirmed finds whets the appetite some more: like I said before, these treasure hunting volumes seem like they were made for armchair dreaming by daddy-o: "Man oh man, if we rent a metal detector next time we go to the Keys!"

The backpage ads offer money saving and self help titles ... plus a Sergio Leone novelization, bringing the dust, gold, and blood of the Wild West vividly to life for readers who'd just finished this treasure guide!

The final title for sale is a guide to suing the pants off everyone!

Award Books, 1970