MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Lost Temple of the Maya

From an article by Gillett G. Griffin, "The Search for a Lost Mayan Temple: Part I." Griffin was the real deal in archaeology. Featured in Fate, Volume 32 - Number 5, May 1979.

COSMIC DEBRIS: The Book of Adamski

That's Adamski's pal Orthon of Venus striking a pose, though perhaps author Gray Barker was hoping some less attentive readers might mistake him for a lady alien like the lovely Aura Rhanes of Clarion. Barker wasn't above a little misdirection, as this anecdote reveals:

Barker occasionally engaged in deliberate hoaxes to deceive UFO enthusiasts. In 1957, for example, Barker and [James W.] Moseley wrote a fake letter (signed "R.E. Straith") to self-claimed "contactee" George Adamski, telling Adamski that the United States Department of State was pleased with Adamski's research into UFOs. The letter was written on State Department stationery, and Barker himself described it as "one of the great unsolved mysteries of the UFO field" in his 1967 Book of Adamski.

Furthermore, the "giant 8.5 x 11 format" advertised was due to the book being self published and assembled from loose leaf papers rather than professionally bound.

From Fate, Volume 22 - Number 7, July 1969.

STRANGE WOMEN OF THE OCCULT by Warren Smith

Furious Female Forteana! Warren Smith has collated a tidy little volume full of witches and widows, victims and villainesses, ghosts and visions and whatever other weird women-centric happenings Smith could dredge up! We start off strong with a disturbing tale of body swapping across time, sadly unsourced and almost cheerfully bogus in its high melodrama. Tracking the origins for all of Smith's entries is almost its own paranormal cross-time saga. The "Ape Woman of Patang" (who would turn up again in Smith's Strange Abominable Snowmen) seems to have sprung from the kernel of this story in Frank Edwards' 1959 volume Stranger Than Science, with a newly invented "Dr. Gordon Mueller" to authenticate the creature. That accursed biting Bug Eyed Monster also pops in on his whirlwind tour through the paranormal pulps, as writer Garth Haslam describes at his invaluable site for Anomaly Info.

One of the most intriguing tales is of poor (but pretty!) English schoolgirl Eileen Jane Welch, who is snatched up into the the air and then smashed to the earth by some unknown force! There really is a Hanson School in Yorkshire, but everything else about the story seems to be totally fabricated. For some reason this Spanish language horror site turns Eileen from a student to a teacher and pushes up the date to 1973. On and on it goes ...

A short chapter on Helena Blavatsky looks like the seed for what would become Smith's dependable cut and paste chapter on Theosophy featured in his 70s Zebra specials.

On a final note, I admit I'm smitten with the Witch Queen of Hell, who looks like a very gracious hostess inviting you to her blood sacrifice.

This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Popular Library, 1968

COSMIC DEBRIS: Astro Handheld Astrological Computer

Manufacturer Kosmos was responsible for a line of handheld biorhythm calculators, of which the Astro was the most advanced. There's an in-depth video review and manual read at the Calculator Review, and a tech breakdown at the Datamath Calculator Museum. It turns out vintage calculators are alive and well on the web!

Click here for the complete manual. The Astro was also available at Radio Shack:

From Fate, Volume 33 - Number 2, February 1980.

THE MUTILATORS by Mervin Casey

A major theme of the 70s cattle mutilation phenomenon was the frisson of fear/excitement that human beings were next on the operating table. Even the back copy for Kagan and Summers' Mute Evidence positively slavers for human blood, despite the authors' exhaustive investigation uncovering nothing of the sort.

First time novelist Casey acquits himself well threading this tension with his fast paced thriller. His cast of down'n'dirty 1970s Regular Folk are adrift in a sea of possibilities as to the identities and purpose of the Mutilators, leading down rabbit holes to flying saucers, blood cultists and most sinister of all, the United States government. A warning for minor spoilers: the Mutilators use an unmarked helicopter with some kind of gripping device to snatch up their bovine victims, retreating to some unknown sanctuary to do their dirtiest work before returning the desecrated carcasses in situ. It all leads up to a crackerjack finale with some searing imagery. Only the final "Note from the Author" disappoints, with its clunky, obviously bogus news item that only reiterates what we've already told ourselves: 

We're next. 

3/4

Major Books, 1975

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: The Devil's Sea

The fearsome Dragon's Triangle! From The Bible and the Bermuda Triangle, by George Johnson and Don Tanner. Courtesy Logos International, 1976.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Shocking UFO Cassette!

Would love to listen to this cassette 40 years on. "Stendec" refers to a cryptic message transmitted by the doomed Star Dust in its final moments:

On 2 August 1947, Star Dust, a British South American Airways (BSAA) Avro Lancastrian airliner on a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Santiago, Chile, crashed into Mount Tupungato, in the Argentine Andes. An extensive search operation failed to locate the wreckage, despite covering the area of the crash site, and the fate of the aircraft and its occupants remained unknown for over 50 years, giving rise to various conspiracy theories about its disappearance. 

The last word in Star Dust's final Morse Code transmission to Santiago airport, "STENDEC", was received by the airport control tower four minutes before its planned landing and repeated twice; it has never been satisfactorily explained.

The website for Search And Rescue Technology, Inc. has a detailed breakdown of Morse code and radio technicalities behind the "Stendec" mystery, concluding that the mystery message was slightly garbled by the receiver and was simply a routine attempt at contacting the Santiago airport.

From Fate, Volume 34 - Number 6, June 1981.