ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE POWERS OF THE MIND & STRANGE POWERS OF E.S.P.

It's a double dose of psychic flimflam from the gruesome twosome of Warren Smith and Brad Steiger! Both Strange Powers of the Mind and Strange Powers of E.S.P. are now available to read and download at archive dot org. This marks the digital debut for both titles, chock full of midcentury parapsychology, psychic predictions, and that old reliable maybe-fiction:

Original reviews are here and here, from way back in 2022.

 

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.

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

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.

THE WEIRD, THE WILD, & THE WICKED by Brad Steiger and John Pendragon

"TAKE CARE OF THAT SISSY, J. EDGAR!"

Settlers defeating savage Indians, the "revolting" rites of said Native Americans, scary slaves and Voodoo Queens ... despite the sexy cover art, this dreary volume has more in common with C.B. Colby's Strangely Enough! from 1940 than it does with any contemporary, cutting edged works on psi or the unknown. Pendragon's influence seems nil, with nothing much in the way of ESP or astral content. Instead, we get a bunch of time wasting chapters on weird guys from olden times and the aforementioned residue of Manifest Destiny.

The first chapter sets the tone, with Thomas Day embarking on a bizarre quest to raise the perfect wife from childhood. He adopts two orphans girls to this end. Steiger's writing is cutesy and glib, and you'd be forgiven for thinking Day was some random crank and not a major man of letters of the time! Day's story could fill an entire book, but Steiger boils it down to a quick, easy filler chapter, the first of many about a guy from way-back-when who did something weird.

Ma Barker's Bloody Brood provides that pull quote up above, one of the few exciting moments in this text. Another chapter on Victorian grave robbers is pretty good, but too many others are on the level of KING'S PIGS SQUEAKED THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. Fat guys getting custom coffins makes for a good time too, but not enough to carry the filler. There should be plenty of historical heft here with characters like Day or John Nichols Thom, but Steiger's glib treatment robs each story of any weight or context. The result is a boring slog.

As a final insult, Pyramid Books suggests we check out their other titles "listed in the back of this book" ... and then don't list any! Was everyone asleep at the wheel?

Pyramid Books, 1969

PSYCHIC TRAVEL by Christopher Dane

Brad Steiger's back as Christopher Dane, with another sloppy batch of esoteric trivia packaged as some kind of stunning revelation. This time it's the enigma of PSYCHIC TRAVEL, spilled out in 52 quickie chapters variously sourced from Fate magazine, the Society of Psychical Research, the National Enquirer, Jack London, classic books on the subject, unnamed archives, and the pure ether of Steiger's imagination. We're burning this bitch down sector by sector, level by level, so strap in for an artless exploration of one giant nonsense volume!

The nonsense starts with Popular Library's assertion that this is the title's FIRST TIME IN PAPERBACK. That's technically true, and the title's not a reprint, but there never was a hardcover edition as you might expect from a declaration like that. It sounds like Popular Library is trying to give Psychic Travel more provenance than it really has! Ditto for the cases within being "completely authenticated" ... at least 20 chapters out of 52 are totally unsourced by Steiger, as we'll see.

It's looking like the only "awe-inspiring" thing about this volume is how much crud Steiger can cram into 192 pages. Here we go ...

Sock it to us, Brad ...

Chapter 1: The Strange Experience of a Woman Who "Died" (page 5). Mrs. Patricia Arliss has a near-death experience (NDE) while under the knife for stomach cancer at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England. She sees her dead mum, complete with both her legs (they were amputated before she died). Steiger provides zero sourcing here.

Chapter 2: An Encounter With a Ghost (7). In 1965 one Lynda Houston astrally projects to her neighbor's house, where she sees Mr. Spiby, the original builder, who's been dead for 25 years! Another unsourced anecdote, and Steiger doesn't even give us a city.

These first two chapters set the scene: we're deep in Tanner F. Boyle's "maybe-fiction" genre, those "true" stories of Fortean wonders that operate as precursors to the modern creepy-pasta. Steiger whipped together another of these volumes as Christopher Dane the prior year with his Possession. "Maybe-fiction" doesn't really tell us anything about the universe, it just titillates with the smug certainty of an unfalsifiable rumor.

Chapter 3: The Star Rover (10). Here's an interesting twist from Steiger, as he recounts Jack London's novel The Star Rover, about a convict who astrally projects to escape his hellish prison. London interviewed ex-con Edward H. Morrell for background about some of the tortures inflicted at San Quentin, and Steiger gets cheeky by claiming that the astral projection was part of this true research! Of course, London added that to the story as a purely fictional invention.

Chapter 4: Help From Another Dimension (13). Steiger's first real nonfiction source is from The Phenomena of Astral Projection (1951) by Hereward Carrington and Sylvan Muldoon. Percy Cole of Melbourne dreams of a doctor and nurse who diagnose him with "mitrial regurgitation" ... he checks it out and really does have a heart condition. This may be a "true" story for better or worse but Steiger simply quotes it as yet another quick hit.

Chapter 5: Astral Travel in War (17). Here's a sturdy reference from the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume XXXIV! It's August 23rd, 1944, and an unnamed officer has just been hit by German artillery. He has an out of body experience. Steiger bundles in Ernest Hemingway's own wartime account of a OOBE near Fossalta, as told to Guy Hickock of the Brooklyn Eagle, and notes Hemingway's use of the experience in A Farewell to Arms.

Chapter 6: The Hunger Strike That Produced "Out-of-Body" Experience (20). More maybe-fiction as sick girl Frances Simpson goes on an orange cleanse that, well, produces an out of body experience! Again we don't get any source, and no real facts beyond a date of 1955. Frances scrapes her knee on the ceiling while floating around and the cut is still there after her experience, a perfect maybe-fiction stinger.

Chapter 7: Inventions That Came From Another World (22). Various inventors are inspired in their dreams. Sir Charles V. Boys, Elias Howe, John Carter, David Parkinson, and a few nameless men are listed, and I'm pretty sure Steiger or Warren Smith used at least one of these anecdotes in a Strange volume.

Chapter 8: A Minister's Proof of Life After Death (26). The Reverend L.J. Bertrand is lost and freezing to death in the Alps, and astrally projects to see his climbing students fucking around like dolts and their guide eating the lunch that's meant for the Reverend! He also sees his wife arriving in town and registering at the hotel. The guide and students find Bertrand and save him. No sources from Steiger, though the case is documented in a paper from the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

Chapter 9: "It Was Not Yet My Time" (29). Steiger quotes the National Enquirer, March 2nd, 1969, on the case of one Mrs. Ruby Staley. In January 1938 Mrs. Staley is sick from pneumonia and has a NDE, seeing her dead grandmother and hearing a voice tell her to go back.

Chapter 10: Astral Projection in Childbirth (31). Isabel Carenas calls to sister Victoria during childbirth, shocking Victoria and her little terrier in their NYC apartment. From Fate, December 1967.

Chapter 11: Can Drugs Take Us Out of Our Bodies? (34). R. Gordon Wasson, a VP at J.P. Morgan, travels to Mexico for a sacred mushroom trip. He sees visions of his son enlisting in the army and a relative passing away - of course these occur when he returns to the states. Writing in 1974, Steiger isn't able to clue us in that Wasson's trip was secretly funded by the CIA as part of MK-Ultra!

Steiger also describes Dr. Erick-Willi Peuckert of Gottingen University theorizing on the use of "witch's salve" to fly and engage in black magic orgies. Maybe-fiction and parapolitics are melded with classic '70s witchsploitation.

Chapter 12: The Long Journey (38). Mrs. Monica Fisher is another patient in Birmingham Hospital. Her difficult delivery triggers an OOBE and she sees a huge gate, but some huge hands push her back! I wonder if Steiger had a source collecting cases from this hospital. It sounds like something from the Society for Psychical Research, but he's good about citing them in other chapters so I'm not sure. Or maybe he just made it up!

Chapter 13: A Doctor's Encounter With Astral Travel (41). Sir Auckland Geddes reads a case for a 1937 meeting of the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh about an anonymous doctor who splits into an A and B personality while astral projecting. The A personality travels while the B personality stays with the body.

Chapter 14: A Prediction of Impending Death (45). Danton Walker, columnist for the New York Daily News, reports on his friend Ella Donaldson and her dream of impending death. She dreams of her friend Patricia's mother telling her Patricia's dead - lo and behold, Ella learns that Patricia and her husband Henry have died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their European apartment!

Chapter 15: The Many Astral Travels of Oliver Fox (49). Another case described by Hereward Carrington, this time from his 1959 book Astral Projection: A Record of Out-of-the-Body Experiences. Oliver Fox experiments with astral projection and molests a random woman while projecting into her room! He also pisses off his fiancee Elsie, who projects herself into his room to prove she can do it too. Steiger mentions that Fox wrote up his experiences in a 1920 issue of the Occult Review.

Chapter 16: A Buffer Against the Tragedies of Life (55). From the July 1st issue of the National Enquirer comes the story of Helen DeDolce of Allentown, PA, who describes a NDE while undergoing an emergency appendectomy. Later, her husband dies but visits her in a vision, and later still she sees a spectral nun just before her daughter dies of leukemia!

Chapter 17: He Wanted to See His Pictures (57). From the British Society for Psychical Research, no case file or journal mentioned. James Dickinson runs a photo studio in Newcastle, England, and J.S. Thompson comes in for his photos. They aren't done yet, so he leaves in a sad mood. Later Dickinson learns that Thompson was on his deathbed the whole time and must have projected to his studio for one last attempt at getting his pictures.

Chapter 18: Dead on the Delivery Table (59). Unsourced story of Mrs. Josephine Hand's rough delivery in a Georgia hospital, January 16th, 1965. She's dead for 12 minutes and undergoes an NDE, floating down a long dark tunnel that opens on a cloud filled sky.

Chapter 19: A Journey Into Death and Back Again (62). A beefy chapter (a whole 5 pages!) taken from Volume VII of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, wherein a Dr. Raynes testifies as to his friend Dr. Wiltse, of Skiddy, KS, who was upon his deathbed when he projected out into his neighborhood in the nude, traveling through the air and on the ground until his path is blocked by a rockfall. Steiger heavily quotes himself ("author Brad Steiger") from the 1968 volume The Mind Travelers as to the meaning of Wiltse's nudity, the familiar neighborhood he traveled through, and the rockfall that blocked further travel.

It's worth checking how many chapters in Psychic Travel are recycled from The Mind Travelers or other Steiger works. This won't be the last time in this text that Steiger quotes himself as if he's another author.

Chapter 20: A Marble Staircase to the Other Side (67). Bertram Frace is knocked off a crane at a steel plant outside Trenton, NJ, in 1957, and has a NDE while in hospital in Levittown, PA. He climbs a marble staircase for what feels like days, until the voice of his dead grandmother warns him back down. Now he lectures at a church in Allentown, PA, on NDE. Lots of details but no source from Steiger, though as of 1981 Frace was listed in the directory of ministers of the National Spiritualist Association of Churches.

Chapter 21: John Pendragon and the Etheric Body (69). Steiger dredges up his favorite addled would-be seer, John Pendragon, quoting from the 1968 book Pendragon but leaving off his own co-author credit.  Pendragon claims he can project up to over 3,000 miles to visit friends. He also says, “I liken the physical body to a base from which the others operate. I would not say that they permeate each other, since each can act independently of each other.”

Pendragon featured many, many times in Steiger and buddy Warren Smith's old Strange volumes, so what's one more bout of recycled text?

Chapter 22: The Man Who Was in Two Places at Once (74). A silly story from NYC, 1896 as William McDonald is on trial for burglary - however, Professor Wein testifies that he was hypnotizing McDonald on stage at the time of the robbery, and witnesses to the show back this up. McDonald is acquitted because ... astral robbery isn't a crime? This chapter is mentioned in the inside cover blurb, except the detail are bungled.

Chapter 23: There's More Than One Way to Go Home (79). In England in 1917 unhappy GI Milton C. Watson dreams of going home - later his sister writes that their brother and cousin heard Milton opening the gate outside their home and then walking inside, just as he had done in his dream. Another super short chapter with no source and not much of a point.

Chapter 24: A Meeting With St. Peter (81). Mrs. Rowene Forrest of Oxnard, CA, is in a coma in 1958 after being hit by a car. She meets a dead school friend, dead relatives, and St. Peter himself. Her dead friend gives her a card to carry "upstairs, to the gate" but St. Peter tells her it's unsigned and to go back. He also tells her no more deaths will occur in their family for 5 years, which comes true as a niece dies by car in 1963. Forrest says whether or not her experience "really happened" or was something that existed all in her head, it helped her cope with her experience and with death. This is another chapter with lots of details but no sourcing.

Chapter 25: The Nocturnal Visitors (84). Another chapter sourced from the Society for Psychical Research, taken from the Journal of the SPR Volume XXXII, 1942. A Dr. L and his wife visit each other astrally. Despite the explicit sourcing this is a nothing of a chapter, pure filler.

Chapter 26: An Astral Trip to Idaho (87). Helen Louise Utter of Wilkes-Barre, PA, dreams in 1913 of visiting her sister's place in Idaho. In 1916 she moves west with her sickly husband Leon and their new child to stay with her sister - of course, she finds her sister's place exactly as in her dream! No source from Steiger.

Chapter 27: Sex That is Out of This World (90). Smut taken from an article by Ryan Master in the March 10th, 1969 issue of tabloid Midnight. Angela Fiorelli, aged 23 of Nice, France, has sex while astral projecting. "While dubious," Steiger asserts that the story is more common than suspected.

Some examples of Midnight's content c.1969

Chapter 28: The Uncompleted Journey (93). Marian Walker of Plymouth, England, has an NDE after two major operations in 1966. She walks down a long hall and sees a mysterious figure, and then her dead friend beside her. After she returns to the land of the living Walker says she's no longer afraid of death. Steiger gives no source.

Chapter 29: The Little Old Lady of Balluchullish (95). A very silly chapter where Mrs. Boulton (no first name) dreams of visiting a Scottish mansion. She and her husband Mr. Boulton (no first name either) travel to Scotland and rent an estate that turns out to be the very same house! Owner Mrs. Beresford had told them it was haunted, and Mrs. Boulton realizes the "ghost" was actually herself astral projecting to the home. No sourcing on Steiger's part and this is classic maybe-fiction melodrama.

Chapter 30: Is There Life After Death? (99). From the January 19th, 1969 issue of the National Enquirer comes the story of John Lowe, a British soldier who has an NDE in Burma when the tank he's riding in hits a mine. Japanese soldiers advance on his shattered body as he watches from above, but friendly forces ride in at the last moment and he's saved. Lowe notes that he had no pain and no fear of death when he was outside his body.

Chapter 31: Astral Projection in the Laboratory (102). Sourced from the November 1968 issue of Fate, Dr. Charles Tart tests astral projection at UC Davis. Two subjects are hooked up to EEG and EKG while they sleep, and numbers are hidden around the room in places they could only see while projecting. Results are inconclusive thus far but Steiger uses a lot of space recounting the experiment.

Chapter 32: "This Body is But a Garment" (110). Another National Enquirer story, from the February 2nd, 1969 issue. Paul M. Vest drowns and watches his body rescued by other swimmers. Like others in this volume, he says he felt no pain and no connection to his body while he was watching from above.

Chapter 33: The Brazen Lady of the "City of Limerick" (112). From Volume VII of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Businessman S.R. Wilmot books passage on the City of Limerick from Liverpool to NYC, 1863. He dreams his wife visits him, and fellow passenger Richard Tait observes Wilmot's wife entering their room and kissing Wilmot as he sleeps! Wilmot's wife says she also dreamt she visited him and describes the steamship.

Chapter 34: "I Shall Never Again Fear Death" (116). No source here as Oleta A. Martin suffers a heart attack on Christmas morning, 1957. She has an NDE and sees robed beings of light on the other side of a huge chasm. Somehow she knows if she crosses to join them she will not be able to come back. She turns back for her daughter's sake and awakens to the doctor resuscitating her. She remarks that she no longer fears death and Steiger emphasizes that this perspective has been occurring across cases, in one of his few analytical remarks throughout the volume.

Chapter 35: A Student's Experiments in Out-of-Body Travel (119). Michael Hanson is a freshman at New College in Sarasota, FL who (say it with me) experiments with out-of-body travel. He flies up into space and meets God, who bellows "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING HERE?" and scares Hanson shitless out of trying any more astral projection. No source from Steiger for this cheeky story.

Chapter 36: Projection at the Moment of Death (121). Mrs. Margaret Sargent is a nurse in Atlanta, GA, who witnesses a dying patient project out of her body as a glowing form. The patient's aura strikes the attending doctor and then reenters her body. She regains consciousness, dying 24 hours later. Steiger doesn't source the story, but when he reused this tale some 30 years later in his 2003 volume Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and Haunted Places (page 157) he credited Hereward Carrington and Sylvan Muldoon's The Phenomena of Astral Projection, already responsible for an earlier chapter!

Here's a small piece of the puzzle, then: Steiger is probably naming most of the sources he used but not bothering to credit individual stories to them.

Chapter 37: Spying From an Astral Perspective (123). From the June 1963 issue of Prediction magazine, a story from occultist G.W. Surya about a German soldier in WWI who could astral project, He offers his service to his superiors but is rebuffed. Too late, they learn he was telling the truth, as the French attack he saw being planned over enemy lines overruns them.

Chapter 38: Doppelgangers and Out-of-Body Projections (126). From the June 1968 issue of Fate, Harry Hoffbower astral projects to grandma and is shocked when she tells him it runs in the family. Her own great-uncle once saved a lost child by projecting through the woods until he found them. Grandma refers to the astrally projected form as a doppelganger.

Chapter 39: Experiments With Hypnosis (131). Once more, from Volume VII of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. A Mrs. Sedgewick writes of a Dr. F. and his experiments with hypnosis. "Jane" is hypnotized and instructed to project herself to a room where Mr. Eglington waits. Mr. Eglington gets bored and leaves, however, with a pillow stuffed under the sheets to make it look like he's still there. "Jane" describes seeing Mr. Eglington under the covers - she's astral projected all the way to his room to be fooled by a simple trick!

Here Steiger quotes himself again, this time from some unknown source, saying that clearly this was a case of pure astral projection, because if any clairvoyance had been involved then "Jane" would have seen through Mr. Eglington's ruse. Steiger as Dane reports that Steiger believes that astral projection accounts for the majority of psy phenomena.

Chapter 40: A Word About the Dangers in Astral Projection (134). Some more about Oliver Fox from Hereward Carrington's Astral Projection: A Record of Out-of-the-Body Experiences. Fox lists some dangers associated with, well, astral projection, including madness, premature burial, obsession, and cerebral hemorrhage.

Steiger then quotes himself yet again, this time from his 1971 title Minds Through Space and Time, coauthored with Loring G. Williams, on the threat of spirit possession - when astral projecting, evil spirits may covet your body!

Chapter 41: The Spiritual Essence of Man (137). Steiger quotes from Alfred North Whitehead on the need for a spiritual realm of existence amid modern materialism, and follows with quotes from Charles Hapgood (more famous for his blockbuster pseudohistory Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings), Dr. Robert Crookhall and his 1964 book More Astral Projection, Dr. Alexander Cannon and his 1925 book The Power of Karma in Relation to Destiny, and Ecclesiastes XII, 5-7.

Chapter 42: Where Was Admiral Tyron? (144). Steiger recounts the tragedy of the Victoria and Camperdown collision off of Tripoli in 1893 and adds a pathetic claim to some people having seen Admiral George Tyron at his home in England even as the disaster was unfolding thousands of miles away.

This wouldn't be the last time Admiral Tyron's reckless arrogance has been incorporated into mystery mongering: in his 1977 book of Triangle leftovers From the Devil's Triangle to the Devil's Jaw, Richard Winer asked if some mysterious force may have influenced Tyron to give the idiotic order for maneuvers that put the Victoria and Camperdown on a collision course.

Chapter 43: Summoned to Her Mother's Deathbed (149). Mrs. Beeda Brown recalls Valentine's Day, 1927, when she was summoned by a mysterious old man to travel to (all together now) her mother's deathbed. Later the family receives delayed news of her mother's passing. No source from Steiger.

Chapter 44: Psychic Dreams or Astral Projection? (155). Steiger quotes an article by S. Ralph Harlow from the September 1969 issue of Fate about two different cases of shipwrecked sailors involving astral projection. Two captains dream of castaways and alter their courses, finding lost men who would have perished without their visions.

Chapter 45: She Saw the Murder of Her Daughter (158). In Lewiston, MA, 1870, Jim Lowell murders his poor wife Lizzie, but her mother Sarah Burton sees the crime from miles away in a vision. Nobody listens to her however, and it takes three years to find Lizzie's body and put Lowell on trial! He's eventually pardoned due to the circumstantial nature of the evidence. The case is documented, but where Steiger got the astral factor is unknown.

Chapter 46: "Tell Them I'm Not Dead!" (161). Dr. Harry M. Archer is interviewed by Frank B. Copley for the August 8th, 1925 issue of Collier's, on the case of fireman Johnny Seufert, who was buried under a collapsed building but called to his wife across the astral plane. She forces rescuers to keep digging until he's found alive, after over 12 hours under rubble.

Chapter 47: I Saved My Son's Life (165). Another Fate reference, from the January 1963 issue: Mrs. Edyth Elizabeth Jonze of Denver, CO, describes her experience in 1927 when she was visited by a spectral black child who took her on an astral journey to find her sick, lost son Elmer in a cabin in a mysterious forest. They tend to him and then Edyth awakens in her own bed. Later she receives word of his location and travels to him through the real world. His feet are amputated, but he's alive. The black child was Jo-Jo, who Elmer had befriended on the road before he tragically drowned - somehow, the child returned from beyond the dead to lead Edyth to her sick son.

Elmer dies just three years later, but Edyth credits Jo-Jo with allowing her to save her son even if only for a time. This is a sad, melodramatic yarn that goes on and on.

Chapter 48: She Lived Two Days in One (172). It's another unsourced anecdote as Mrs. Ted Stoeckel sleeps through her alarm one morning in 1953 and misses work. She stays home to clean instead and returns to work the next day expecting to be sacked - but it's still Thursday! Somehow, she lived one day twice, and notes that she spent the day without feeling hunger or pain. A real trifle of a tale.

Chapter 49: A Soldier's Out-of-Body Experience (175). From Fate, the November/December 1951 issue. Sgt. Ted Snowden is shelled by the Japanese at Guadalcanal in 1942 and has an OOBE. As others have said, Snowden reports that he no longer fears death or the other side.

Chapter 50: Advice From an Astral "Park Keeper" (179). The night of March 25th, 1945, Mrs. Margaret Newby has an astral dream of exploring a park. A park keeper gives her some cryptic advice that she uses to overcome some obstacles in her life. No source, but Mrs. Newby is a practical astral explorer and the story is polished.

Chapter 51: Astral Flight From a Doomed Train (185). William McFarland Campbell is on the train to Sudbury, Ontario, when it derails into an icy river in 1910. His wife Mary is shocked when a spectral vision of William arrives on their doorstep with "fiery eyes like coal" and unable to speak. He leaves his hat behind, and later Mary receives word of the crash and gives him up for dead. Two days later the real William arrives home alive, and when he and his wife check his hat they find his train ticket inside. Somehow, he not only survived the crash but was able to project home to leave an omen for his wife. No source from Steiger.

Chapter 52: When Death Becomes a Trial Run (189). Another reference to Dr. Robert Crookhall and his books The Study and Practice of Astral Projection (1961) and More Astral Projection. Steiger relates a story from The Study and Practice of an atheist Russian who undergoes an OOBE where he's carried by angels, converting him to belief in an afterlife.

That's it! This is the last chapter, and there's no conclusion! This volume was just one of many mechanically separated paranormal meat products Steiger shoveled out over the years, with disconnected anecdotes strung together to fill pages and only the thinnest analytical frame - at some point, Steiger hits his page count and dips, leaving us vaguely dissatisfied and 95 cents poorer.

The purpose of this very long review? Showing how the sausage was made.

One Bob Peterson also reviewed this volume at his site the OBE Outlook of Life:

If I had to describe this book succinctly I'd say it is all "Sensationalized Grocery-store Tabloid-style astral projection narratives." It's all fast-food OBE stories, one after another. These are supposedly true stories about out-of-body experiences, but they're certainly embellished by the author the way the movie "Titanic" sensationalized the events of April 14, 1912. In fact, some of the OBE narratives are even excerpted from the "National Enquirer," a United States tabloid known for its sensationalist "JFK Abducted by UFOs!"-style nonsense.

All of the narratives are short, just a page or two, sometimes three, which makes the book easy to read, but they all lack depth.

Most of the stories are about out-of-body experiences, but several are near-death experiences as well. A few delve into bilocation, autoscopy (doppelganger), and even some death-bed apparitions.

A few of these stories are about well-known astral projection authors like Oliver Fox, and some were lifted from Robert Crookall's books and the famous book Phantasms of the Living.

Popular Library, 1974