STRANGE SECRETS OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER by Warren Smith

Another Warren Smith Special? No! Despite the question begging back cover copy, there's no recycled chapters on Hollow Earth, UFOs, or Theosophy - though Smith does remix his chapter on South American lake monsters from Lost Cities of the Ancients - Unearthed! Otherwise, this is a straightforward, thorough book on Loch Ness and other lake monsters and sea serpents, complete with Smith's usual cheeseball narrative reconstructions of sightings/experiences. Monsters profiled include Morag, Champ (one year before the dynamite Mansi Photo), Ogopogo, the Lake Iliamna Monster, the hoaxed Lake Khaiyar Monster from Siberia, washed up Globsters, giant squid and octopus, Mokele Mbembe and other Congo Dragons, and a wide swath of 19th century sea serpent and frontier lake monster crazes.

Smith is especially hot for the then-recent Flipper Photo from Dr. Robert Rines' 1972 expedition, a hopeful bit of evidence that eventually fizzled out when it was revealed that the startling photo released to the media was "enhanced" and then retouched from the original shot of "a bunch of bubbles or sediment in the water."

Table of contents: 

1.  Proof for the Existence of the Loch Ness Monster (5)
2.  Historical Records and Modern Observations (34)
3.  Modern Monster-Hunters, Rumors and Reports (49)
4.  The Vigil of the Loch Ness Phenomena Investigative Bureau (62)
5.  Search for Sea Serpents in Scandinavia (73)
6.  Unknown Animals in Africa (90)
7.  Nessie in North America? (106)
8.  Sea Serpents: Legend or Fact? (123)
9.  New England's Summer of the Sea Serpents (142)
10. New England's Sea Serpents Part II (157)
11. Recent Sea Serpent Sightings (174)
12. Antedeluvian Monsters of South America (185)
13. Present-Day Behemoths (202)
14. Alternative Answers and Explanations (218)

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Zebra Books, 1976

THE DEVIL'S SEA by Elizabeth Nichols

Nichols gathers up a crackerjack collection of wild rides through the Triangle via UFO, ghost ships (including the Ellen Austin and the Marlborough), and dimensional vortexes! It's all packed into 155 quick and dirty pages, with the much ballyhooed psychic sleuths consigned to a brief final chapter. The five psychics interviewed are Otto Binder, Maxine Asher, Fay Clark, Ted Owens, and Irene Hughes. Also includes two nicely drawn maps by Clarice Borio.

Award Books, 1975

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Tunguska Blast Site

From The Fire Came By by John Baxter & Thomas Atkins. Courtesy Warner Books, 1976.

TRIANGLE OF THE LOST by Warren Smith

Another wild ride from Warren Smith, this time through the Bermuda Triangle. Highlights include a Cuban counterrevolutionary's UFO/USO sighting while on business for the CIA, some vicious hairy dwarfs that launch a freakish attack on a Venezuelan hunter, and Smith's now de rigeur detour through the Hollow Earth by way of Shamballah.

Smith extends John Wallace Spencer's Limbo of the Lost (calling it the Triangle of the Lost) to capture shoreline territories, allowing him to include the aforementioned vicious hairy dwarfs and Ivan T. Sanderson's infamous giant penguin, here identified as a dinosaur. Globsters and a spooky bigfoot are given brief mention as well. Triangle buster Lawrence David Kusch likely had Smith in mind (among others) when he tracked down the radio transcript for Flight 19's flight to oblivion, which Smith claims is nonexistent in this text.

Once again, Smith isn't above recycling. This time it's his chapter on Shamballah and Theosophy, lifted from his collaboration with Brad Steiger on This Hollow Earth, which would turn up again next year in The Hidden Secrets of the Hollow Earth. There's also a chapter made up of one of the shabbiest of the paranormal subgenres, psychic predictions about a given subject. Next year Smith would reuse his story of Cuban exile Raymond Fernandez's "UFO contact" for an issue of Saga magazine:

Table of contents:

1.  The Mysterious Triangle of the Lost (5)

2.  Christopher Columbus in the Triangle of the Lost (17)

3.  Sea Serpents and Maritime Monsters (31)

4.  Mystery of Underwater UFOs (44)

5.  An Undersea City for the New Race (61)

6.  Bizarre Giants in the Triangle (74)

7.  Shamballah: Land of the Smoky Gods (88)

8.  Monsters, UFOs and Bizarre Beings (110)

9 . Flights to Doom (123)

10. The Evidence for Alien Intelligence (138)

11. Mysteries of Ancient Mariners (157)

12. Psychics Predict Triangle Mysteries (170)

13. Mysteries of the Devil's Island (182)

14. Ghost Ships in Satan's Sea (193)

15. What's Happening Out There? (205)

16. Mysteries of the Devil's Sea (216)

Triangle of the Lost is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Zebra Books, 1975

IMPOSSIBLE YET IT HAPPENED! by R. DeWitt Miller

Charming old collection of Forteana makes no bones about its scattershot structure, flitting from mystery to mystery and never overstaying its welcome. Interesting to see the state of General Weirdness just a few years before the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, and the UFO explosion. Miller writes with a light touch, leveling things with a wry sense of humor whether the subject is sea serpents or seances. There doesn't seem to be a lot of information out there concerning Miller, besides his published works and the fact that he died at the age of 48 in 1958. Going by the past tense of his author description, this paperback was published at some point after that. 

The excellent UFO blog The Saucers That Time Forgot has a a very thorough article on this book and its early flying saucer influence under its original title, Forgotten Mysteries.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Ace Books, circa 1960 (original pub. 1947)