WITCHCRAFT IN THE WORLD TODAY by C.H. Wallace

Crowley misspent his lifetime trying to prove himself a magician and leader of a black magic cult. Time has proved him to have been a mere amoral charlatan, a debauchee, and, in all mystic connotations, a failure.

Author C.H. Wallace comes out swinging! But right off the bat, we should know that "Wallace" is actually writer Rosaylmer Burger, using a pseudonym for this dense witchcraft reader.

Par for the course for midcentury witchcraft books, Burger takes the "witch cult" hypothesis as read. And like Today's Witches by Susy Smith this is a globetrotting affair, with highlights around Papa Doc's Haiti, merc wars in the Congo, and a swatch of European witchery through the UK, France, Germany, and Italy! New York and the West Coast are also represented, of course, with Anton LaVey receiving mercifully brief coverage. Regarding another black magic superstar as quoted above, Crowley deservedly gets his licks. Some of the theorizing is definitely of the time:

Is there a connection between this form of German witchcraft and the murky Nazi mentality? Psychiatric experts firmly believe so; the link is said to be the deeply hidden but firmly embedded homosexual nature of those who follow either the devil sex cult or the Nazi political philosophy. This links them to the witch-hunters of yore, who also displayed manifestations of suppressed homosexuality. Yes. The links are there without a doubt.

While other portions are surprisingly levelheaded: as mentioned, there's a beefy chapter on black magic's role in the '60s Congo wars, and Burger impresses with her measured appraisal of how both Simba rebels and white mercs utilize juju to gain an edge in their bloody battles. Here's where Burger's background as a Men's Adventure writer shines - oh yeah, it turns out she also wrote a series of hard men action thrillers, including 1965's Crashlanding in the Congo!

Oh bingo bango bongo, I GOTTA leave the Congo ...

The website for Spy Guys and Gals lists the Steve Ramsay spy fiction written by Burger, which were also released under her Wallace pseud.

More intriguing nonfiction titles, oddly 
described as novels ...

Wallace ends things with digressions into ESP and alternative healing, her own personal views on magic, and a few more anecdotes, including some spectral revenge for the gruesome "Handkerchief Lady" murder case. Lest we think she's pulling a fast one a la Brad Steiger on a slow day, this was a real murder and a "real" (at least, claimed and documented at the time) revenge from beyond the grave on the killer of Elsie Litt:

From the Cincinnati Post, 1967

That "B-girl" trick mentioned on the inside cover, by the way? Filing your nails into a guy's drink! It's sure to drive him off, especially if he catches you in the act! What other wonders lurk in these pages? Find out for yourself: Witchcraft in the World Today is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Award Books, 1967

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 back page 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

HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR ESP by Susy Smith

Whether instant or persistent, from Edgar Cayce to alpha states to Johann C.F. Zollner, Susy Smith's teaching us HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR ESP! Smith melds practical how-to advice with historical background on ESP in her usual professional treatment. Dig that funky vintage cover!

Booze is not recommended for cultivating psychic ability, as it turns out, though shamanistic drugs trips are successfully utilized by the Mixtecos. Smith references Freud and J.B. Rhine's perspectives on the ESP powers of the "primitive" mind, hitting the same notes as Brad Steiger did in his introduction to Warren Smith's Strange Powers of the Mind from 1968. Australian Aborigines, Maori, and "the Kaffirs of South Africa" are some of those peoples blessed with some atavistic connection to ESP. Smith also name checks Walter McGraw's The World of the Paranormal from 1969.

It's a blockbuster presentation, though Smith's credulity lessens the impact somewhat. Earnest attempts at probing the unknown nestle uneasily alongside scammers like "faith healer" Jose Arigo, promoted alongside other psychic surgeon frauds by the gruesome twosome of spooked up writer John G. Fuller and Dr. Andrija Puharich ... more background on Puharich can be found as part of Tanner F. Boyle's audio series on the Starseed phenomenon, which also touches on that old spoonbender Uri Geller. Geller's thankfully absent from Smith's text, as of publication not yet a titan of the paranormal entertainment field. Other vintage psychics like Peter Hurkos and Gerard Croiset do make appearances.

Smith provides a bibliography and index, not always a given for this field, and another reason her writing was a cut above. Despite some caveats, How to Develop Your ESP is a worthy addition to any library of the vintage paranormal.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Pinnacle Books, 1973

COSMIC DEBRIS: Atlantean Crystal Headband

Over $100 total for three pieces of naff tat ... but money orders ship out within 48 hours, so that's service you can count on. Clarion Gems has no current web presence but a quick search shows many similar products available from individual sellers on sites like etsy as well as other established psychic hucksters, with the same inflated prices. Dr. Tassioulos leaves the price tag off his site entirely, requiring you to request an order form - a sure sign you're about to get rooked!

From Fate, Volume 43 - Number 12, December 1990.

STRANGE MEN AND WOMEN by Brad Steiger

Every day is fete day when Brad Steiger's back in town, delivering 34 quick hits in 128 pages for this above average entry about STRANGE MEN AND WOMEN! Steiger runs down a roster of "doers of good and agents of evil" throughout history, and although we might quibble with descriptors (does Charles Leale, the young doctor who tried to save Lincoln's life, really count as "strange" and not simply heroic?) Steiger manages a nice turn, avoiding the filler junk that piles up in so many of his other Popular Library entries. No folk remedies or biting bug eyed monsters here, just loads of historical weirdos and fakirs!

Steiger gives us some tried and true heavy hitters like the Countess Bathory, Burke and Hare, and William Yeats, who has turned up somewhere before in Steiger or Smith's work for his interest in the spirit realm. Psychic "thoughtographer" Ted Serios is another repeat offender, but Steiger can be forgiven for some minor recycling as he picks some real dynamite entries to repeat, like the one for Dr. Jeanne-Marie-Therese Koffman, the woman who hunts Abominable Snowmen! She's after Zana the Ape Woman, who long time readers will remember from multiple ABSM volumes by Smith, Steiger, and the rest. Here's Steiger's potpourri approach at its best, truly engaging and interesting as opposed to dull and deadening.

Steiger is deep in midcentury Lost Cause mythology when writing on Belle Boyd, infamous womanly spy for the Confederacy - she defends Southron honor by shooting a Union soldier dead and passing messages for Confederate generals, all while looking ravishing. Treason in defense of slavery is apparently no vice if you can make it sexy! To be fair, Steiger also includes a chapter on a heroic southern soldier, one Major Robert Anderson, who stayed true to his oath and defended Fort Sumter from Confederate cannon. More sexy ladies include the possibly apocryphal lady pirate Mary Anne Blythe, who cavorted with Blackbeard according to Steiger's telling, and the aforementioned Countess Bathory. 

That sickly orientalist haze creeps back in a chapter on Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin, the famous French conjurer who was tasked with a "magic mission" to pacify the Marabouts of Algeria. It seems that the natives are restless, indeed they're downright "unpredictable and impulsive" for no discernible reason that civilized Europeans can see! This is a fascinating story, actually, and a shame that Steiger can only give us the white (magic) man's burden. We also get the usual washed up "psychic" stars like ol' Ted Serios, Gerard Croiset, and Peter Hurkos, with Steiger's usual credulous writing, plus spiritualist Mina Crandon who tussles with Houdini as "Margery of the Spirits" and, according to Steiger, proves her psychic mettle! About that ... "Investigators who studied Crandon concluded that she had no such paranormal ability, and others detected her in outright deception." Too bad. The same goes for psychic healing superstar "Dr. Tony of Manila" who Brad also puffs up as some sort of heroic figure. The prize winning dream of Dr. Otto Loewi gets reused from another volume by Steiger, though honestly I've forgotten which one. Ya gotta hit your page counts ya know!

This title is available to read and download at archive dot org. Overall a good read, but as usual those jerks at the Paperback Library think they're too good to give us a table of contents:

1.  The Ghoul of Paris (5)

2.  The Four Year Life of a Genius (7)

3.  Water Dowser Deluxe (9)

4.  Escape Artist of the Korean War (12)

5.  The Doctor Who Kept Lincoln Alive (16)

6.  America's First Secret Agent (19)

7. The Dream That Won a Nobel Prize (23)

8.  John R. Brinkley, the Great Rejuvenator (25)

9.  Burke's the Butcher, Hare's the Thief, Knox the Boy Who Buys the Beef (30)

10. The Russian Woman Doctor Who Hunts Abominable Snowmen (35)

11. The Man Who Takes Pictures With His Head (37)

12. George Devol, King of the Mississippi (41)

13. The Woman Who Collected Coffins (49)

14. The Rebel Officer Who Defended Fort Sumter (52)

15. Rhymes From the Spirit World (57)

16. The Death Wind (60)

17. Belle Boyd, the Confederacy's Shapely Spy (64)

18. The One Man Lost and Found Department (73)

19. The Man Who Invented the Mickey (75)

20. Gerard Croiset, Clairvoyant Extraordinary (78)

21. The Sailor With Nine Lives (82)

22. The World's Greatest Athlete (84)

23. The Buccaneer Who Wore a Bikini (87)

24. The Psychic Who Solves Crimes (90)

25. The Countess Was a Vampire (94)

26. The Teen-Ager Who Fought Off Eighty Men (97)

27. Dr. Tony, Manila's Man With the Healing Hands (102)

28. The Spy Who Became a Monster (105)

29. Joseph Dunninger, Master Mentalist (109)

30. Simon Gerty, the White Savage (112)

31. Margery of the Spirits (116)

32. Cartouche, Emperor of Crime (120)

33. The Magician and the Marabouts (123)

34. The Scientist and His Pet Ghost (127)

Get in line boys, she's taken!

Paperback Library, 1967

THE OCCULT IN THE ORIENT by Christopher Dane

Mystery man Christopher Dane takes us to the other side on the other side of the world for a sinister survey of THE OCCULT IN THE ORIENT! Nice to see a fresh face around here ... or so you would believe! Things are never what they seem in the world of the paranormal paperbacks however, and author "Christopher Dane" is none other than bad old Brad Steiger, moonlighting under yet another pseudonym. This particular title is Steiger's store brand version of John Keel's influential occult travelogue Jadoo and Dane must have been Steiger's more upmarket moniker, because Popular Library spared no expense with this volume, shelling out for some cool cover art and even a table of contents - that's almost unheard of for them!

Keel's Jadoo in several editions

A colonial haze hangs over the stories, whether we're talking phantom hitchhikers in Okinawa or a drawn out death curse afflicting an American consul's house servant in Jakarta. That servant, Djam Hari, draws the ire of a rival when he attains the rank of "Number One Boy" in US Vice Consul Robert Pierson's household. You see, Steiger informs us that "an Indonesian's position on this ladder [of servant rank] decreed the degree of respect accorded to him from his people." Djam Hari is a grown man, by the way, but Pierson and Steiger still refer to him as "boy" throughout. This casual infantilization casts a sickly pallor over the rest of the book, especially since the story drags on far too long before we get the expected ending. It's pure page padding and an especially bad sign of things to come since we're only three chapters in!

Front left is Robert Pierson, "U.S. aide"

Moving on, we start to recognize Steiger's formula as he staggers quick hits (like a "Negrito ghost child" whose disembodied voice calls to the living) between longer chapters, mostly pulled from his prior books or summarized from Fate magazine stories. Thankfully none end up as overlong as Djam Hari's tale, and Steiger is good enough to credit the original Fate writers when necessary. He gives a decent overview of the New Guinea UFO flap of 1959, when multiple Anglican missionaries and their local flocks reported seeing low flying spacecraft crewed by mysterious beings. This flap is sometimes named "the Gill Sightings" after one of the missionaries, Father William Gill. Another Fate summary follows with the very British sounding Arthur Grimble (of Her Majesty's Colonial Service) witnessing a death curse he christens as "Raku-nene madness," where the spirit of Raku-nene is called forth by a spurned man to possess the woman he desires and drive her to madness and death. The original story Steiger cites by writer E.P. Herman can be downloaded at the Luminist Archives, as part of the September 1953 issue of Fate.

Three Argentine Navy cadets have a scare when Deception Island vanishes from sight, leaving them adrift in a dingy on the open ocean! This is from another Fate article, written by one of the cadets, Carlo Bel Moro. Steiger mines the Flying Saucer Review for some UFOs over Hawaii, and then recaps Mary Margaret Fuller's piece on Balinese cremation rituals, which can also be downloaded from the Luminist Archives as part of Fate's August 1954 issue. The ghost of an executed French soldier haunts some Americans at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, having been "decapitated like a common criminal" by the cruel communists after they overran his position. Steiger laments the "fierce, though vain struggle" by the brave Frenchman, another example of the upside down moral logic of colonialism. This chapter ends with a cornball joke about the Frenchman being able to look for his own head after death because he was a radar officer. 

The ruins of Nan Madol give Steiger a chance to mention Lemuria as well as American atomic testing at nearby Enewetak Atoll, another clash between the modern space age and a mythical golden age. Steiger mines the August 1954 issue of Fate again for missionary May Elliot's experience in Tahiti with a spirit named Uratua. Strange lights in the South Pacific skies include a report by the crew of the Morgantown Victory in 1966 and a 1774 sighting off New Caledonia by the naturalist Johann Forster, recorded in a diary of Captain James Cook's second voyage. Steiger calls this "Captain Cook's sighting" though he's not named as seeing anything. That's typical ballyhoo by Steiger, and it's followed by a repeat of the invisible biting bug eyed monster of Manila, a Steiger staple through the years. The hoaxed Monongahela sea serpent report is also here, again, having just been seen in Weird Unsolved Mysteries by Steiger writing as Eric Norman. Burton Klein, an American GI in Vietnam, saves his wife Janice from a car accident 9,000 miles away with an ESP message. Another GI, WWII veteran A.R. Thompson, relates his story from the May 1955 issue of Fate about a disembodied voice that has saved him from plane crashes and car accidents.

And now Steiger really starts to recycle, with four straight chapters of Max Freedom Long and his manufactured Huna magic! It's a good chunk of pure nonsense padding. After this, another headless ghost visits soldier Lawrence Stevens in Seoul and performs a gruesome show, holding up his own head and saying "I'll sure be glad when these three months are up!" Later Stevens realizes that the ghost predicted the end of the Korean War! Steiger stretches the definition of "the Orient" when he profiles Komar the Hindu Fakir, whose real name was Vernon Craig and who hailed from Ohio, USA. Komar performed feats of endurance in character, and there's a brief but touching post at the Magician's Forum by someone who remembers him. Steiger and Komar would later coauthor a book, seen below:

Komar, aka Vernon Craig

The occidental fascination with Eastern thought continues with Steiger's next subject, the Master Subramuniya, who was born Robert Hansen in California before a religious experience at the age of 6 inspired him to walk the path of enlightenment. After reaching Sannyasa in Sri Lanka, Subramuniya eventually opened an ashram in Hawaii, where Steiger catches up with him. Steiger doesn't spill much ink over the guru, just noting that he disapproves of drug use and and is happy to see more young people meditating. Disappointing that this intriguing man doesn't deserve more than a quick filler chapter, while Max Freedom Long gets five whole chapters to to peddle his fraudulent "Huna" magic. You can tell that Steiger is just looking to fill pages now. Author and photographer Wilmon Menard stars in another long story of murder and magic in Tahiti which is padded with pulp fiction prose by Steiger.

Did I say five chapters of Huna bull? Yes I did, because Steiger now slips in "Huna Healing Techniques" as if realizing he still has some content to fill before the end. And after this is another telepathic warning, saving soldier John E. Rebel Thomas from death at Guadalcanal. American missionary and CIA operative Harold M. Young relays a grisly account of jungle werewolves in the hill country of Thailand, and like Edward Lansdale's faked vampire attacks in the Philippines the story reveals more about the casual sociopathy of imperialism than about primitive monsters or native superstition. Young describes shooting a Taw werewolf and tracking the blood trail to a hut. Inside that hut is a dead man with a bullet wound, and Young's mind is boggled at the implication. We all know from the movies that dead werewolves revert to human form, so Young must have really shot a werewolf! The darkness inside modern "civilized" man is laundered through purported barbarity and illogic in the "savage" Third World.

True to form, Steiger reused the story of the Taw multiple times. Turning and turning in the widening gyre ...

The Occult in the Orient is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Popular Library, 1974.