WHY ARE THEY WATCHING US? by Allen Louis Erskine

FIFTEEN YEARS IN THE MAKING! Clocking in at a slim 124 pages with some very large text, it's hard to imagine how author Erskine spent all that time. This meager volume delivers all the same old midcentury UFO meatloaf, barely reheated despite the blistering ad copy about "frightening facts" and how this book might just save the entire planet. At least you can't say that Tower Books didn't know how to dress up a piece, as they give us another one of those fun covers with a menacing model UFO.

Those flying Swedish jelly bags are back, as is Antonia Villas-Boas and his very close encounter ... although perhaps out of modesty for his sake Erskine leaves him anonymous, decent chap. By now we should know the Hill's story by rote, and all the back and forth between J. Allen Hynek, debunkers like Philip J. Klass, the USAF and the Condon Committee. Things like the Mystery Airship flap of 1897 and Mantell "dogfight" crash of 1948 are trotted out again, we get a quick sidetrack to Ezekiel's Wheel, and by the time we're begging for some reprieve Erskine finally shakes it up and blames the great Northeast Blackout of 1965 on UFOs! 

(Update Sept 3 2023: According to Hilary Evans in his enormous catalogue of his personal UFO library, Erskine was a pseudonym used by Irving A. Greenfield which accounts for their shared interest in the Northeast Blackout of '65 being UFO related.)

In 1975 Tower Books put this title out again with a Chariots facelift, which must have been de rigeur judging by the frequency of reissued bold text plain faced covers we've seen!

Table of contents:

1.  UFOs Swarm Over the Northeast (5)

2.  UFO Overflights (20)

3.  From Beyond (41)

4.  The 1947 Flap (63)

5.  Fighter Pilot Dogfights UFO (69)

6.  The Ghost of Mantell (71)

7.  UFOs at White Sands (75)

8.  UFOs - The Illusion Becomes Real (77)

9.  "The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth" (83)

10. They Have Landed and Made Contact (89)

11. What Caused the Blackout? (98)

12. Yes, We Have Pieces of a UFO (103)

13. What UFOs Are Not (107)

14. The $300,000 Snow Job (110)

15. A Touch of Human Interest (114)

16. What's the Answer? (121)

Tower Books, 1967

OPERATION EARTH by Brinsley Le Poer Trench

Once again, author Brinsley Le Poer Trench wants to make it plain: gotta make way for the Homo superior! As an arch-reactionary hippie, Trench sees the New Age as an opportunity to open our minds to our lost heritage as children of the spacemen, and he links this awakening to an ancient war between the benevolent Space Brothers and malevolent imposters from beneath the Earth. Everything from the Bermuda Triangle to the abduction of Betty and Barney Hill, from Atlantis to Antonio Villas-Boas, is cited as evidence in his melding of the Shaver Mystery with classic Contactee cant.

Trench is logical within the confines of the subject matter, studiously documenting his connections with an extensive bibliography. That his thesis is irrevocably cracked is only natural considering the eclectic personalities involved with the clique behind the Flying Saucer Review.

Operation Earth is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tandem Books, 1975 (original pub. 1969)

GODS DEMONS AND UFO'S by Eric Norman

"The Pope is a speed freak!" Wowza! Warren Smith returns as Eric Norman for some far out space nuts and a smorgasbord of Saucerian surprises. His big bombshell story is about the mysterious (and nonexistent) Dropa Stones, a supposed carved record of alien contact in Ancient China which is sadly too good to be true. Smith interviews a Saucer Cult in California, digging into some of the theological nuances of UFO saviors, and gives the usual rundown on OOP Artifacts that should prove extraterrestrial intervention in our history. This includes a standby of misquoted verses from the Bhagavad Gita which "prove" the existence of prehistoric nuclear warfare. As researcher Jason Colavito illustrates, these mangled verses have been passed down through multiple paranormal texts, including Erich von Daniken's, ever since Pauwels and Bergier's seminal The Morning of the Magicians was published in 1960.

In contrast to Frank Edwards' turgid tome Strange World from yesterday, Smith's writing crackles with mad energy that threatens to run off the rails. Everything hangs together even with such editing gaffes as Carl Sagan's name consistently misspelled as "Sagen" and ancient astronauts compared to "powerful lizards" ... that's supposed to be wizards! Smith would later recycle his entire chapter on Nebraska highway patrolman Herbert Schirmer's UFO encounter for his UFO Trek and a bit on the "mysterious" origins of the Eskimo for his The Hidden Secrets of the Hollow Earth, both from 1976.

Sometime in the early 70s Lancer would reissue Smith's book under the title Gods, Demons and Space Chariots, a quickie facelift designed to cash in on the popularity of Chariots of the Gods? by the previously mentioned von Daniken, from whom Smith originally lifted many of the stories for his text. Now there's something else to make your head spin! Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Table of contents:

1.  Angels, Spacemen and UFO's (5)

2.  The New Age Belief (23)

3.  Legends of the Sky People (43)

4.  UFO's and the Puzzle of the Pyramids (63)

5.  Angel's, Demons, and UFO Entities (81)

6.  Mysteries, Oddities and Curiosities (119)

7.  When Giants Walked the Earth (139)

8.  Giants From the Skies (155)

9.  An Incredible UFO Contactee Case (169)

10. Guidelines for the Future (195)

Lancer Books, 1970

STRANGE WORLD by Frank Edwards

Here's Frank Edwards' Fortean magnum opus, a whopping 118 strange cases spread out over 237 pages! Some beautiful cover art reflects the swirling madness within. It's everything and the kitchen sink as Edwards blasts through entry after entry, most barely a page long. The effect is numbing after the tenth example of a ghost, UFO, weird dream or coincidence, etc., and contrary to the interior blurb it's hardly "FULLY DOCUMENTED!" Says researcher Garth Haslam at his Anomalies database :

Edwards was always an entertainer first... and, as such, he often spiced up stories to make them more interesting or to expand them to fill time on the radio, which means he often added new details that were never there before. And because of how popular Edwards' books were, many following "researchers" started to repeat Edwards' new versions of older tales complete with the new fictional details! 

The very second entry is just such an example, with those damn Venezuelan hairy dwarfs that would later show up in Warren Smith's work. Haslam has an excellent collection of fact checks on Edwards stories, including several from this very volume. Some other bogus stories include the lost cosmonauts, the Patang Snowman, the restless coffins of Barbados, and psychic "thoughtographer" Ted Serios.

Ace Star edition, 1964

Other frequent flyer Forteana who make an appearance are Pennsylvania's purple blob, the Tasmanian globster, and many, many strange rains of animals. Again, the sheer repetition leaves the mind well and truly boggled!

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Bantam Books, 1969 (original pub. 1964)

THE WORLD'S STRANGEST MYSTERIES by Rupert Furneaux

Some relatively staid mysteries here, avoiding ghosts or UFOs. Furneaux focuses on more realistic historical mysteries like the Piltdown Man hoax, the disappearance of explorer Percy Fawcett, and the plausible sounding but likely bogus mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit. The most outre topics Furneaux explores are the yeti and the Loch Ness Monster. He also presents some mythological mysteries such as the origins of King Arthur and Atlantis. Other chapters include the Kensington Runestone, Shakespeare's true identity, Kasper Hauser, and Easter Island.

Furneaux delivers 26 tales in 17 chapters in 253 pages, giving us plenty of meat per entry. By comparison, a typical volume by Steiger or Smith will pack in 60-70 tales in 150-200 pages! Furneaux also includes a bibliography, a step above Smith and Steiger's unsourced and recycled stories.

A note on Ace Books: many of their old paperbacks lack then-current copyright/reprint dates, only noting the year of original copyright. This edition is probably from the mid-60s.

Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Ace Books, 1961

THE HOLLOW EARTH by Dr. Raymond Bernard

Here's a work of pure crank genius from Dr. Raymond Bernard, A.B., M.A., Ph.D., detailing the massive conspiracy to hide Admiral Byrd's discovery of a South Polar entrance to the Hollow Earth! Dr. Bernard was born Walter Isidor Siegmeister, and spent his life on a crusade for "alternative health remedies" and Hollow Earth truth. He died in 1965, and The Hollow Earth was published posthumously with a foreword by one Robert Fieldcrest, who plugs the vintage quack cancer cure Krebiozen and Dr. Wilhem Reich's bogus Orgone energy.  Here we see an early connection between the paranormal genre and "alt medicine" scams which continues to this day. The whole thing is kicked off by Bernard's incredulity at Admiral Byrd's description of journeying to a land "beyond the pole" ... surely Admiral Byrd meant he went inside the Earth, and was forced to withdraw any further elaboration by the CIA! Says Bernard:

Byrd remarked: "The present expedition has opened up a vast new land." The word "land" is very significant. He could not have referred to any part of the Antarctic continent, since none of it consists of "land" and all of it of ice, and, besides, its geography is fairly well known and Byrd did not make any noteworthy contribution to Antarctic geography.

Bernard elaborates his thesis when he stumbles across a text in a Brazilian bookstore titled From the Subterranean World to the Sky: Flying Saucers by O.C. Huguenin which bridges classic 1800s Hollow Earth theories with the new flying saucer craze of the space age. This results in some convergent evolution alongside the Shaver Mystery which also posited UFOs based in the Hollow Earth, albeit with demonic Dero controllers - Bernard hypothesizes that his UFO pilots are benevolent and engaged in a millennia long plan to uplift mankind into a golden age.

The complete text of The Hollow Earth is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1969