SECRETS OF LOCH NESS by Histrionic Publishing

Or Nessie & Other Aquatic Monsters: Secrets of Loch Ness, to use the full, slightly unwieldy title! A single article from this magazine was previously available, but now the whole publication is available to read and download at archive dot org! This collection is bulked up with some reprinted Nessie items such as Stewart McCulloch's article "A Schoolmaster Stalks the Unknown," and features lots of classic lore alongside developments that didn't quite stand the test of time.

Half the fun of these old "special edition" magazines is in the layouts and graphic design. Here, a blurry photo of the Loch is spiced up with a jagged monster outline, and a viking re-enactment in Pennsylvania is recruited as illustration for historical context on the Loch. 

Oh, and by the way, would you believe that this is the first and only issue, No. 1 of 1?

Nessie can't have all the fun to herself, of course, so we also fill pages with monster legends like Champ, the giant squid, manatees, and ... a pufferfish?!

"I'm famous, I tells ya!"

We also benefit from some fun maps, as seen in McCulloch's article and in the article on Champ:

There's also an advert/article for an art book of Frank Frazetta's work, and a trio of "exotic" houseplant ads ... the closest things readers could get to real live monsters. All in all, Secrets of Loch Ness is a vibe, man!

Histrionic Publishing, 1977

SASQUATCH: MYSTERY AND LEGEND by Richard Smedley

Did a prospector's shovel expose the secret of Bigfoot's tomb? Writer Richard Smedley combines two classic "lost giant" hoaxes, the 1895 Martindale Mummies and the Calaveras Skull of 1866, with modern Bigfoot in this article for Probe the Unknown magazine. The 1800s hoaxes are marshaled as evidence for an ancient race of Sasquatch people, the timid remnants of which may still stalk the woods, in an interesting blend of lost giant/lost white race pseudoarchaeology and modern pseudoscience Bigfootery. If you've noticed people talking about Bigfoot and the Nephilim online nowadays, it just goes to show that everything old is new again in the paranormal.

The Patterson-Gimlin Film and Bigfoot hunter Robert Morgan are also name checked. Tom Mattison, the "discoverer" of the Calaveras Skull, also has his name spelled as Matteson in some accounts.

Full artwork spread

Tom Wright's artwork for Smedley's article is yet another example of a Bigfoot/Yeti traced from Frank Frazetta's piece titled Neanderthals, from 1966.

This article is available to read and download at archive dot org, and the entire March, 1975 issue of Probe the Unknown magazine is also available at the Luminist Archives.

Dare you probe the other mysteries within?

SNOWMAN by Norman Bogner

Something in the night

Something in the day

Nothing is wrong but darling

Something's in the way 

There's slaughter in the air 

Protest on the wind 

Someone else inside me 

Someone could get skinned, how

Hard boiled pulp action meets creature feature thrills in this oddity from literary and genre novelist Norman Bogner (1935-2022). The monks of Tibet call him Sogpa - Satan. The sheriff and the local editor are claiming it's a gigantic rogue grizzly. But disgraced climber Bradford knows ... it's the SNOWMAN!

He handed Bradford the photos of Janice's head with the black stars burned into her face. The other photographs were close-ups in color of the triangular footprints.

"Christ," Bradford said, "he's on your mountain."

This beast is no normal animal, no simple brown haired hominid, as Bogner makes clear right away. He's an atavistic, evolutionary freak, 25 feet tall, burning with elemental hatred and an insatiable hunger for flesh. Alone and perpetually pissed off, he burns the land with his footsteps leaving a bizarre rainbow effervescence. His hair is hard as stone, his skin sharp as daggers, and his teeth leave burning starpoints as he rends his prey, leaving mutilated bodies in his wake.

Now he's found a new feeding ground, at the summit of the Great Northern Ski Resort's peak. And now he's PR woman Cathy Parker's problem.

Cathy had messed around when she was younger in a series of painful affairs. Now she had little respect for men, since most of them were in search of an easy piece, mothering, or both simultaneously. Her job demanded the front of glibness, friendliness, and she fell into the role rather than expose her vulnerability. She had mastered the shades of public relations, which she understood as civilization's method of counterfeiting reality.

Bogner blends pulpy grit, mundane reality, and flashy fantasy into this unique concoction, as Bradford's old Vietnam buddies and his Sherpa pal Pemba are enlisted as yeti bait. The extreme realm of mountaineering demands special considerations as to tactics - would you believe nuclear cross bows? Bogner dots his eyes and crosses his tees without ever belaboring a scene, and before we know it we're at the end of this 221 page (gut) ripping yarn wishing there was a little more to come.

The striking hardcover!

Partially traced from a Frazetta piece!

No matter, but it would have been nice if maybe the Snowman got one more big scene devouring some skiers ... Bogner keeps things ratcheted down fairly tight throughout, despite his willingness to go out there with mini-nukes and mega-yetis, and part of what makes this such an enjoyable read is his precise control of the story, with not a word wasted. Bogner's working us like a fish on a line, but ain't it a wonderful way to die!

A little romance, a little action, a little bit of the ol' ultra violence - this one has it all. Bogner knows just when to dip out on a scene, and just how far to push things.

Across the pond, Snowman got a gruesome edition courtesy the New English Library:

Which copies the monster from Terror in the Midnight Sun, aka Invasion of the Animal People (1959)!

My, my, someone fetch a priest! You can't say no to the beauty and the beast as Bogner's Snowman slaughters his way to a bloody 4/4 rating!

Man is still the prey ...

The Snowman is available to read and download at archive dot org. This title was also reviewed by one Tony Caro, friend of the blog Nocturnal Revelries, and the ever reliable PorPor Books Blog - check 'em all out.

Dell Publishing, 1978

BRAK VS. THE SORCERESS by John Jakes

The ghastly red eyes, huge as midsummer moons, had opened again. They watched, watched from the black where the stench drifted. Out of the pit blew more than a smell. Out of the pit came some nameless, ancient evil palpable as a cloud.

Brak's face twisted as the gap between hands closed. Sharp rocks poked his belly, his thighs, little shafts of pain. His shoulders ached. Groping upwards for his hand, the girl lost her balance.

She cried out. She started to fall.

Brak is back! The blond barbarian continues his quest for far Khurdisan (typo'd as Khurdistan on the back cover) and finds himself drawn into more dark doings when he passes through a backwater kingdom that's under siege from a strange new horror. The local alchemist has disappeared, rumored murdered, and his daughter has been acting strangely since. The locals are gossiping that's she's in tune with evil forces, the very same that Brak has tangled with before - the outsider Yob-Haggoth, and where that squat devil-god appears Brak knows that his earthly minion the wizard Septegundus can't be far behind. The local king is weak and fading fast, his armies deserting, the people terrified. Can Brak's savage strength and cunning prevail?

Of course! But thanks to Jakes, we'll be on the edge of our seats the whole way through. Brak will tangle with monstrosities like the subterranean Manworm and Scarletjaw the Direwolf, as well as human treachery and greed as the Sorceress bribes followers with that ancient dream of lead into gold. Jakes has a way with monsters and black magic rites, making us feel the burning ichor, smell the rot, cringe at the obscene rituals ... but it isn't all blood and guts and hopelessness, as Brak meets another of those curious Nestorians, who worship their nameless god with a small stone cross. Ambrose the Pillarite has been asleep atop his rock spire, dreaming across the astral plane, when Brak stumbles into this cursed land. Jakes is working alongside August Derleth's recontextualisation of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, wherein Christian or "Nestorian" practitioners can fight back against the encroaching darkness and chaos. Brak holds the Nestorians at arm's length throughout his adventures, and as often as not relies on his own godless barbarian skill. The climax features his quick thinking, his brute strength, and some Nestorian power in an assist. I'm happy to say that Brak makes for a dynamic hero and is easily a top tier Conan clone. His battle with the Manworm matches Robert E. Howard's own sublime action, albeit with a more day-glo, in-your-face genre savvy. There's more monsters I haven't spoiled, because Jakes' imagination delivers some pleasantly nasty surprises of a kind with his catfish creatures from Mark of the Demons.

Brak vs. the Sorceress must have been another crowd pleaser, because once again there's plenty of editions out.

The Tower Books edition is interesting in that it portrays the dread Manworm with some accurate details from the text, but has shrunk the poor creature down so small he's hardly a menace at all, and looks more like some kind of devilish frog! The real Manworm is a titan of terror, and the Star Books cover next to the Tower version at least gets the size and ferocity of the beast across. The Pocket Books edition that tops this entry is another fanciful cover, with a giant horned guy who isn't in the story at all. Jakes has a prefatory note where he remarks on the cover art for his Brak stories, but it doesn't cover this 1977 version. Meanwhile, the Paperback Library original from 1968 features a gorgeous Frazetta piece titled "Apparition." Here it is in full:

Brak's battle against the Sorceress and Septegundus earns him a solid 3/4 rating. Once again, get yourself Brak'd!

Pocket Books, 1977 (original pub. 1968)