STRANGE & MIRACULOUS CURES by Warren Smith

In between churning out his slapdash Strange volumes for Popular Library, Warren Smith took the time to put together this pretty sturdy volume about faith healing and alternative medicine for Ace Books. The difference in quality is clear when compared to, for example, his buddy Brad's Strange Powers of Healing on the same subject from the year before. Smith balances some intermittent skepticism with the usual mystery mongering and "who knows?" copouts, and presents a pretty good overview of historical faith healers, movements like Christian Science, and subjects like the healing waters of Lourdes, with some "gee whiz" super-science medical advancement sprinkled on top. He even includes the AMA's guidelines on recognizing quackery:

Frequent Smith subject Doc Anderson pops up here, and you also might be surprised at his attitude towards faith healing: Doc says that NOBODY has powers of healing except for God himself, and trained doctors! People write Doc asking for healing miracles (or so he claims) and he has to let them down easy saying all he can do is pray to the Lord. It's either very honest or very canny marketing on Anderson's part.

Another intriguing bit is Smith's description of an anonymous Filipino faith healer fraud, and the planeload of North American health tourists who left his Luzon compound feeling used and abused, but not cured. News items from the time point to this healer being the infamous Tony Agpaoa:

Brad Steiger wrote up "Dr. Tony" as a genuine miracle man in 1967's Strange Men and Women, of course. 

Heavy hitters like Edgar Cayce are profiled next to forgotten pioneers/men of letters/weirdos like Phineas Quimby and candidates for sainthood like Teresa Demjanovich aka Sister Miriam Teresa of Bayonne, NJ, and there's just enough of a structure to the text to prevent this from falling into the Strange style of anecdote after anecdote. Smith ends with a short roundup of psychic predictions for medical advances, featuring Doc Anderson again along with John Pendragon, Malva Dee, and Eckankar founder Paul Twitchell. Doc predicts a cure for cancer is coming soon ... 

Psychic housewife Louise Proctor agrees, and also sees the FDA cracking down on bad medicine and quackery. Proctor, as the text informs us, also supposedly saw the Richard Speck murders in a vision, and she's the very same woman mentioned in the facing ad for Smith's Strange Powers of the Mind!

The backpage ads are jam packed with paranormal/Fortean goodness, including the big man himself, Charles Fort! Rupert Furneaux, John Macklin, and Hans Holzer also provide titles, alongside The Occult World of John Pendragon, featuring you-know-who and edited by Brad Steiger.

Strange & Miraculous Cures is available to read and download, absolutely free, at archive dot org! This volume is recommended as a surprise highpoint in Smith's canon.

P'raps an alchemical encryption?

Ace Books, 1969

SASQUATCH by M.E. Knerr

DEATH IN THE SNOW ... death that comes on two legs, eight feet tall, with arms of iron and hands that can tear the head off a man and fold his rifle into a pretzel! Author M.E. Knerr presents an all-too-plausible story of what could - no, what will happen, when a gentle forest giant is pushed into a frenzy by the encroachment of our modern world. When that happens, all will fear the name SASQUATCH!

Knerr's story is not quite the over-the-top gonzo thriller like Bogner's Snowman was, with its globetrotting, 20-foot-tall Yeti nukin' action, instead tracking the violent outbursts that threaten the small town milieu in Lodgepole, CA. Knerr's characters are cleanly drawn and get the job done well enough, and he doesn't waste too much time getting where he's going. Characters are here one minute, dead the next, as they tell each other what they know about the mysterious Sasquatch, argue about if he even exists, and run around on each other between the town's sole, sleazy bar and the ski lodge up the way. It all leads up to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it climax typical of vintage thriller writing. Where Knerr really excels is his sense of place: you can almost hear the snow crunching underfoot as cowboys and coppers skulk around the woods searching for the beast!

NEL's best ...

There's not a lot out there about author Michael Knerr, aside from that he worked under a lot of pseudonyms writing quickie sex and genre titles for cheapie publishers like Monarch and Pinnacle. A guest post by SF author John F. Carr at the Mystery File blog dredges up some biographical detail, including Knerr's relationship with classic SF writer H. Beam Piper ... be sure to read the comments, too!

Knerr's terror tale was originally published by Belmont Tower Books as Sasquatch: Monster of the Northwest Woods in 1977. This edition goes for ridiculous prices online due to kitsch value, which is why I finally wrangled a copy of the NEL edition from the following year and threw it up on the archive for all to read, absolutely free: here it is in all its scanned glory!

For simple pleasures and knowing glances, Knerr's Sasquatch earns a 3/4 rating.

New English Library, 1978 (original pub. 1977)

THE THROWBACKS by Roger Sarac

Were they the elusive Bigfoot creatures ... or something worse? Well, Belmont's back summary kind of gives the game away there, but this is still a pretty good little horror shocker about backwoods monsters and the people who get too close to them. Newlyweds Paul and Joanne Greer hit and run a mysterious man-beast in the Klamath Mountains, and soon enough they're talking to Professor Roos and assistant Mike of the San Francisco Academy of Natural Sciences, who rule out any known animal. Roos says the FBI has every animal hair in the world on file, and if they can't identify it, it must be a new species!

A potential witness in the small town near their accident is found with her throat ripped out, so it's with trepidation that our heroes trek into the wilderness. Fortunately they meet the mysterious Bradshaw brothers, who live alone in their rustic if very well stocked lakeside manse ... or do they? Sarac combines Bigfoot folklore with gothic thrills and while we aren't exactly surprised by the outcome, he unspools everything with enough care that we're invested and pleased with the results.

Author Roger Sarac is actually wildlife advocate, dog show host, and former ASPCA president Roger Caras (1928-2001), using a simple pseudonym for his single attempt at a fiction thriller. This story obviously has parallels to his nonfiction work, focused as it is on humanity's attempts to coexist with nature and to face the darkness within ourselves that may drive so much of our conflict with the natural world. 

Caras is sympathetic but unsentimental in his portrayal of the monstrous throwbacks, and the gothic/dark house stylings of the story blend well with the Bigfoot hook. It's a surprise that there aren't more thrillers in this vein, given the "forest bride" and missing link elements to the Bigfoot mythos!

In Caras' cold eyed world, danger lurks behind every cellar door, crumbled ruin, and murky shadow around the Bradshaw estate. But then, danger from who? We're them, and they're us, whether we're out-of-towners from the big city or the Bradshaw boys.

Above, the 1969 reprint from Belmont, which tries to up the stakes a little by calling the throwbacks the "most serious threat to ever confront mankind!" Good ol' Belmont ballyhoo!

The Throwbacks earn themselves a 3/4 rating for their tidy little story. They're available to read and download at archive dot org.

Belmont Books, 1965

NEW TAG: Ephemeral Notes

A new tag on the blog: ephemera! For all those notes, scribbles, names, stickers, bookstore stamps, and whatever else that's made its mark on all of our PAPERBACKS OF THE GODS!

Don't forget the makeshift bookmarks and news clippings too!

And important dates!

The tag will continue to be updated as I sort through the archives, and until then ...

Keep smilin'!