MYSTERIOUS PLACES by Daniel Cohen

And there was Elvis - not the real one 

When he kissed me goodbye he called me hon

Just another shot in the dark 

Like El Dorado or Noah's Ark

Another very readable pop-sci primer from Daniel Cohen, collecting the most cutting edged research c.1969 around such mysterious places as Atlantis, Mu, Camelot, and others! This is a journey not just to unknown lands but through academic debates and pop culture mutations, as interpretations and explanations rise and fall through the years - was Atlantis real, or just a metaphor? Where the hell did Prester John come from? How many times do we have to establish the creators of Great Zimbabwe before the Rhodesian government will admit it wasn't a lost white race? Cohen dives into the archives to tackle all of these questions head on ...

Per usual, Cohen is gentle but firm in his exploration of fringe science and crank ideas, and by putting theories about lost worlds like Atlantis in their historical and social contexts Cohen lights the way as surely as a torch in a dusty tomb. Sometimes the journey is as important as the destination, and a few dead ends and side paths here and there can be edifying.

This title was published the same year von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods? made it to American shores, and so while Cohen does not answer von Daniken's mystery mongering by name, his chapter on Easter Island is notable nonetheless for including research and information that von Daniken would pretend was impossible and unknowable for decades to come.

Throughout his world tour of the unknown Cohen makes reference to our romantic yearning for cataclysm and mystery. The work is a pleasure to read, and Tower Books' cheap and flashy presentation (dig the ad for smokes!) adds spice to a volume that surely undercuts a good deal of other titles in their occult oeuvre.

Cohen includes a nice bibliography, and Tower Books include a nice page of juicy ads for other occult/paranormal titles such as Stefan Elg's Fortean mixer Beyond Belief and Devi Sonero's pro-phrenology reader!

Tower Books also put this title out as Lost Worlds, with new cover art and a different ad spread in the back. Check out Otto Binder's sci-fi entry Night of the Saucers, published under his Eando pseudonym:

It's been said that a girl trying to find herself the perfect man is like trying to find Atlantis. Even 50+ years on, this work is illuminating and enjoyable. Mysterious Places is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tower Books, 1969

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: THE DEVIL'S SEA

The psychic survey of The Devil's Sea by Elizabeth Nichols is now available to read and download at archive dot org. Featuring the ESPer visions of Otto Binder, Irene Hughes, Ted "PK Man Owens," and others, alongside classic Triangle terror tales ...

Courtesy Award Books, 1975.

THE FLYING SAUCERERS by Arthur Shuttlewood

Arthur Shuttlewood: BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF 'THE WARMINSTER MYSTERY!' If that blurb meant anything at all to you in 1976, you'd be snapping this book right off the rack. The Warminster mystery concerned strange earth sounds heard in 1965 (said to knock birds right out of the sky!) which developed over the years into UFO sightings and photos of varying provenance. 

One photograph of the Thing ...

... and its location in the UK

Arthur Shuttlewood was a local journalist in the small town of Warminster who soon became entranced by the mysterious happenings of the Thing, as the mystery was eponymously dubbed. A series of books followed, and eventually Shuttlewood was fully enveloped in the '70s British UFO scene, dominated as it was by the muddled mysticism of the fascists behind The Flying Saucer Review. This current title is a melange of mystic mumbo jumbo that starts with a soft pedal as Shuttlewood goes over some regular British folk and their UFO sightings:

The bold cover art promises space aged revelations, with a pair of cutting edge F-104 Starfighters engaging a saucer. But soon enough Shuttlewood is delivering the standard mystic saucer stew, citing Brinsley le Poer Trench and Otto Binder for musings on ancient astronauts and their genetic plan for humanity, and quickly blending in hollow earth and polar openings with nary a hesitation. Shuttlewood name checks Kiwi pilot Bruce Cathie and his world energy grid alongside ley lines and supposed ancient Celtic nuclear piles, as he swerves into pyramid power and dense bouts of numerology. Says Shuttlewood:

My own belief is that the great pyramid is a multi-dimensional space-time condenser, the four-triad group of a veritable powerhouse in which every dimensional form of life in the whole universe could, if so deciding, converge and converse by pure mental communication.

There's a WWII sighting of an "egg shaped craft" by Polish fighter Antoni Szachnowski and mention of foo fighters, which sound like the typical nuts'n'bolts American stuff, and then suddenly Shuttlewood is dropping his favorite mystic numerology volume, The Seal of God by one F.C. Payne. Payne's work inspired Shuttlewood to investigate recent history for signs of divine guidance:

The six leaders whose nations were involved in the biggest show of hostilities in the history of mankind were: Churchill, Hitler, Roosevelt, Il Duce, Stalin, and Tojo. Take the initial letters of these names and what have we? Spell it out loud and clear, for it was and is so true! We have C-H-R-I-S-T!

Come page 83 Shuttlewood's quoting a crank letter he got from one Muriel Barker of Southend-on-Sea, which cites his colleague Brinsley le Poer Trench on the fact of Jesus Christ flying a UFO from Gethsemane to Glastonbury, where the Son of God inspires the legend of King Arthur! It's so British it hurts at times, especially with time capsule passages like: "Not many admirers know that vivacious Adrienne Posta, well-known actress and comedienne, saw a UFO on Monday 24 January 1972 at Cambridge Square, London." You're right, I didn't know that!

Ms. Posta looking glam

Shuttlewood's friend and former Warminster nurseryman Jack Harraway sends him translations of Spanish newspaper articles on UFOs, for an informative chapter which is also another time capsule piece, as Harraway is living in Alicante, Spain while serving on the executive committee for the National Farmers' Union in the Common Market. Further Britishisms follow as Shuttlewood quotes UFO witness Ray P. Logan, who hypothesizes that the flying sorcerers (as Shuttlewood's been calling them throughout) are avoiding direct contact with us in the same manner that we'd avoid waltzing right into the gorillas' enclosure at London Zoo, and that they're feeling us out through observation “very much as Dave Sexton, manager of Chelsea FC, will send scouts to watch another team’s style of soccer play before planning his tactics in a coming match.” Shuttlewood references John Keel and Robert Charroux for more ultraterrestrial meddling in ancient mysteries, before relating a strange experience with two college students named Micah and Joeb who demonstrated strange powers on a train - the weirdest part is that Shuttlewood separately receives an account by another experiencer, Marion, who met the same boys!

Shuttlewood relaxing with a cuppa ...

... and in the field (left), pointing out a
UFO location for the Marquis of Bath

The author's approach is summed up near the end, when he asks us, “Astrology, Numerology, Symbology: Have these abstract or long-forgotten arts any contribution to make towards slotting the UFO jigsaw pieces together?” The final chapter features some intense numerology, and at this point you're either vibing with Shuttlewood or you've written him off entirely.

Grand old UFO man Hilary Evans made his appraisement clear in his essential annotated UFO catalogue:

Right before his numerological rally, Shuttlewood drops a final anecdote about one Randy Otter's "zoo hypothesis" printed as an article in the Post Office Courier, which is reheated from Charles Fort's terse observation that "we are property." The Space Age calls out to the Golden Age with the musty archives of generations between, and Shuttlewood rallies round the maypole alongside Trench, Holiday, and the rest of the British mystic brigade.

The Flying Saucerers is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Sphere Books, 1976

THE PRESENCE by Rodgers Clemens

Dig those "true" space titles from Keel, Binder, and friends!

There's a mistake in the lake, and it's growing by the day. Not just in size, but in intelligence, as it claims victim after victim and expands its neural net across a burgeoning behemoth of a body. Too bad the mayor doesn't want to cause a panic, and the only scientist researching the matter is considered a crank ... it's a familiar sort of monster story, to be sure, albeit one with a great '70s mean streak in it, and a delightful cast of period appropriate scumbags and assholes! There's the corrupt Mayor Spilokos, toxic divorced couple Blake (the scientist) and Gloria Wiley, hottie Hannah McKittrick (from Channel 5!) and a host of working stiffs and clueless citizens, and of course there's our big blossoming blob from the depths, a voracious protoplasmic void that's just learned about the all-you-can-eat Midwestern city located just past the beach ... Beware the blob! There's face melting, bone crushing, gut punching action throughout as THE PRESENCE tears through the cast, delivering capricious death and just desserts equally to the innocent and guilty alike. Eventually, Blake attempts communication, and there's a breakthrough worthy of that trippy cover art, but it's a long bloody, destructive road getting there. Author Clemens balances the sci-fi grue nicely with realistic scenes of a city in panic and that delicious '70s paranoia over the authorities and their undoubtedly unsavory plans for us plebs, leading to a smashing climactic set piece in the city sewers.

A review of this title at the Por Por Books Blog twigged me to the fact that Rodgers Clemens was a pseudonym used by one Roger Lovin, a mysterious fellow who turns out to be just as unseemly as his story. Starting in 1968, Lovin wrote a counterculture zine in New Orleans, at the time a hotbed of hippie thought. Quoting from an article in Antigravity magazine:

Some of his Discordian philosophy makes its way into THE PRESENCE'S all-caps pronunciations at the climax of the story, as it reveals to Blake that humanity has been surpassed as the most intelligent thing on the planet. It also claims that HITLER WAS ELECTED BY POPULAR VOTE, a popular canard in pop history, but hey, THE PRESENCE is working off our answers, so to speak, so GIGO. Cracked thoughts aside, a more disturbing aspect of Lovin and his work shines through when you learn that he was a convicted pedophile! Again, from that Antigravity article:

The opening scene in The Presence of a teenaged girl preyed upon, first by a lecherous old man and then by the titular being, takes on a new dimension when you learn of the author's predilections, but Lovin has even more surprises up his sleeve ... would you believe a connection to the Kennedy assassination? An exhaustive four part series at the Historia Discordia site tracks down as many facts and rumors about Lovin as possible, including a tangential thread about JFK:

Lovin also claimed to have ran guns to Castro before a change of heart, which author Gorightly says may or may not be true - there's a lot about Lovin's life that's still up in the air, including if he's even still alive or not! He supposedly passed in 1991, but Gorightly digs into some reasons to doubt that. Even his bibliography isn't clear cut, with pseudonyms and gaps in titles leaving us a threadbare entry at the SF Encyclopedia. We know he crossed paths for a brief time with SF great Norman Spinrad:

And the internet gives up fragments of his work here and there:

 

Above, three more titles by Lovin. The Complete Motorcycle Nomad was maybe his most successful work, in terms of sales. Eleven is pedophilic smut, while the religious-themed Apostle features illustrations by the great Frank Kelly Freas (and Polly).

And here's a gooey Italian edition of The Presence retitled What Came Out of Lake Michigan! It seems publisher Urania was fond of medical art, as can also be seen in their edition of Sum VII:

The Presence by Lovin earns a solid 3/4 rating as sci-fi/horror, but beware, anyone who goes digging into the rest of Lovin's work! What you find might end up being a lot grosser than plain blood and guts ...

The author in happier times ...

... and trying to beat the rap

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1977