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.

 

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: WARREN SMITH'S AUTHENTIC DICTIONARY OF CB

Breaker, breaker! Warren Smith's Authentic Dictionary of CB is now available to read and download at archive dot org! This marks the title's digital debut.

Get hip to all the trucker lingo:

Study up on the rules and regs:

And don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!

Courtesy Award Books, 1976.

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 WORLD: Monsters Along the Mississippi

Click to embiggen

Monsters along the Mississippi ... and in Minnesota and Washington, too! It's another edition of Brad Steiger's "Strange World" column, with Brad recycling the Fremont, WI monster from his pseudonymous 1969 title The Abominable Snowmen, though he's off by one year on when it occurred according to his own original telling. Meanwhile, Warren Smith also used this anecdote in his own Strange Abominable Snowmen from 1970, and correctly dates it to 1968.

Everyone and their mother has written about the Minnesota Iceman, of course, and here Brad relays some of exhibitor Frank Hansen's evolving excuses/explanations for the creature. We're at the point where Hansen was claiming to have shot the monster dead himself in the Minnesota woods, which makes for a convenient cover story on why he's so reluctant to let the supposed corpse be properly analyzed. Nice sideshow zigzagging, Frank!

Brad finishes up with a 1970 Bigfoot expedition by National Wildlife magazine, headed by editor George Harrison. Harrison wrote his own account of this trip as "On the Trail of Bigfoot," for the October-November 1970 issue.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Clipped from the Santa Clarita Valley Signal, June 5th, 1972.

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: MORE STRANGE SMITH

Two more strange Warren Smith volumes are now available to read and download at archive dot org: Into the Strange and Strange Women of the Occult.

Once again, this marks the digital debut of both titles. Revisit true strange wonders like Italian Superman Agostino Colli (he has two hearts!) and the fearsome Ape Woman of Patang. Previous reviews are here and here.

The incredible Agostino lifts a jeep!

Both titles are courtesy Popular Library, 1968-1969.

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.