WITCHES U.S.A. by Susan Roberts

Witchcraft '71! Author Susan Roberts covers big names in the midcentury American witchcraft scene like Joseph Wilson, the Air Force man who publishes a quarterly zine called The Waxing Moon, and Bill and Phyllis Janney, heads of a Cincinnati coven. There's another Bill on the scene, last name Saffin, and together he and Janney are "the two Bills." Get ready to meet a lot of Bills and Eds and Jennies who all swish about mysteriously over coffee and casseroles and cocktail parties while dropping cryptic hints about the divine thread and the caves of the unknown.

Roberts' perspective emerges early as she claims that a witch named Joe told her to write this book the day before her agent calls with the same suggestion ... spooky, right? 

Joseph Wilson's zine

As far as gossipy guides to midcentury magic go, Roberts' work here pales in comparison to Today's Witches (1970) by Susy Smith. There's way too much self satisfied preening by random witchy ding dongs and too much filler from Roberts about how kind, beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful your neighborhood witches are. Watch out, though, because Roberts also warns us that witches can zap us if we cross them! This is a dopey section where Roberts claims on the one hand that dedicated witches won't use their powers to harm people, but on the other hand, the universe might hit us with karma if we cross them! How convenient!

The most interesting chapter concerns the law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander - yeah, that Nixon!

Yet the law firm in which President Nixon served as senior partner until his inauguration on January 20, 1969 — Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander — apparently agreed with the views of Bill and Joe when they filed a petition at 4:47 p.m. on June 7, 1968, before the National Labor Relations Board. They requested that the Board set aside the victory of the International Association of Machinists in an election held on May 31, 1968. The employer the Nixon firm represented was the General Cigar de Utaudo of Puerto Rico.

The attorney’s charge? Witchcraft. Their client, they claimed, was hexed.

The National Labor Relations Board puts the kibosh on things, but Roberts goes over the 13 page white paper on historical witchery the firm filed to support their claim. This overview, covering grimoires and folk traditions, makes up a good chunk of Robert's historical treatment of witchcraft, and elsewhere her background on the craft also repeats the basic witch-cult hypothesis that a lot of vintage witch books took as read. Beside the high point of the Nixon chapter, the real meaty bits here are the profiles of real, random witches across America, who despite all their protestations come across as your average atomized suburbanites, searching for deeper meaning just like the rest of us.

Roberts ends with a ritual of self-blessing to "bring the individual into closer contact with the Godhead."

Above, a 1974 edition from Phoenix House. Susan Roberts also wrote The Yogi Cookbook (1968) with Yogi Vithaldas and The Magician of the Golden Dawn (1978), about Aleister Crowley. Roberts briefly covers Crowley in Witches U.S.A. too, along with the de rigueur chapter on Anton LaVey. 

Bill Janney died in a car accident before publication, but Roberts (tastefully) doesn't ask if this could be another case of karmic zappage. Witches U.S.A. is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1971

COVER UPDATES: BEYOND EARTH

Beyond Earth: Man's Contact with UFOs by Ralph and Judy Blum gets a flashy 1978 edition from Bantam Books. See also this sinister 1976 edition. Original publication 1974. 

THE THROWBACKS by Roger Sarac

Were they the elusive Bigfoot creatures ... or something worse? Well, Belmont's back summary kind of gives the game away there, but this is still a pretty good little horror shocker about backwoods monsters and the people who get too close to them. Newlyweds Paul and Joanne Greer hit and run a mysterious man-beast in the Klamath Mountains, and soon enough they're talking to Professor Roos and assistant Mike of the San Francisco Academy of Natural Sciences, who rule out any known animal. Roos says the FBI has every animal hair in the world on file, and if they can't identify it, it must be a new species!

A potential witness in the small town near their accident is found with her throat ripped out, so it's with trepidation that our heroes trek into the wilderness. Fortunately they meet the mysterious Bradshaw brothers, who live alone in their rustic if very well stocked lakeside manse ... or do they? Sarac combines Bigfoot folklore with gothic thrills and while we aren't exactly surprised by the outcome, he unspools everything with enough care that we're invested and pleased with the results.

Author Roger Sarac is actually wildlife advocate, dog show host, and former ASPCA president Roger Caras (1928-2001), using a simple pseudonym for his single attempt at a fiction thriller. This story obviously has parallels to his nonfiction work, focused as it is on humanity's attempts to coexist with nature and to face the darkness within ourselves that may drive so much of our conflict with the natural world. 

Caras is sympathetic but unsentimental in his portrayal of the monstrous throwbacks, and the gothic/dark house stylings of the story blend well with the Bigfoot hook. It's a surprise that there aren't more thrillers in this vein, given the "forest bride" and missing link elements to the Bigfoot mythos!

In Caras' cold eyed world, danger lurks behind every cellar door, crumbled ruin, and murky shadow around the Bradshaw estate. But then, danger from who? We're them, and they're us, whether we're out-of-towners from the big city or the Bradshaw boys.

Above, the 1969 reprint from Belmont, which tries to up the stakes a little by calling the throwbacks the "most serious threat to ever confront mankind!" Good ol' Belmont ballyhoo!

The Throwbacks earn themselves a 3/4 rating for their tidy little story. They're available to read and download at archive dot org.

Belmont Books, 1965

THE WORLD'S MOST AMAZING MAN! by Ernest Shinbaum

Our man who knows the plan, "Doc" R.C. Anderson, gets a gushing profile in Ray Palmer's Search magazine, courtesy his friend Ernest Shinbaum. Would you believe Doc is the kindest, gentlest, most psychic fella you'd ever want to meet? He donates crutches to cripples! Don't cross him though, because he's performed feats of strength that would make your eyes bug out ... and even if you're his best friend, he's not above predicting your son's gonna die in the war and your wife's gonna die of a broken heart! See pages 14-15 for this and some other far-ranging predictions that Shinbaum says were typed up by Anderson in 1944 and sealed in an envelope, not to revealed until 1956. 

Sadly, Shinbaum's son and wife died in the manner Anderson predicted ... if he really did predict it! The ballyhoo with sealed envelops and sworn affidavits is typical of 20th century psychic hooey. Shinbaum could have been rooked or he could have been a co-conspirator, or Anderson could have worked some personal magic after the fact to convince him of how things really went down. 

There's no mention here of Anderson's supposed bumming around in China during WWII that he related to Warren Smith, only a short stint as a Marines athletic instructor before becoming a traveling strongman. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Anderson seems like he was a classic bullshitter! His geopolitical predictions are the usual psychic guff as well, either so obvious as to be pointless (conflict in the Middle East), so vague as to be useless (ditto, plus conflict with Russia and China), or just plain boldly wrong - dig a reunified Germany "within five years!"

Anderson was also a bullfighter, and it's appropriate that a psychic scammer and sideshow strongman would be into this rigged macho "sport" with its one, inevitable outcome. Looks are everything whether you're massaging a mark, bending iron bars, or pantomiming bravery in the bullring.

This issue of Search was pure Doc-o-mania! We also get another another ad for Ray Palmer's chili recipe!

Shinbaum's article is available to read and download at archive dot org.

From Search, Issue No. 19, February, 1957. 

BURIED TREASURE GUIDE by Eric Norman

One more time! Warren Smith scrapes the last bit of ore from this vein with a final treasure hunting guide, coming after his Finders Keepers and buddy Brad Steiger's Treasure Hunting. Award Books packages this one up nice, even if they do typo "Bermuda" as "Burmuda" on page 74 while discussing diver Teddy Tucker's jackpot salvage of a 1597 wreck which netted him "a cool $100,000 tax free." There also aren't any maps, rare or otherwise, in this book, and the advertised guide to equipment sourcing was in Finders Keepers. Swings and roundabouts.

The emerald cross salvaged by Tucker from the San Pedro.
Photo credit to the wonderful Teddy Tucker dot com.

Treasure diver James Stillson is back from Steiger's Treasure Hunting, as is Padre Island, the Little Fleta, and all sundry lost mines and stolen payrolls! This time around Smith opts for a straightforward chapter format, listing entries one after the other: sunken pirate ships, lost mines, Spanish galleons, forgotten caches of cash, gold, or gems, etc., etc. Smith also throws in a state-by-state guide like the last two volumes, and a chapter on TWENTY whole lost mines - Steiger only managed ten in his book!

Chapter four sees young Peter Johnson discovering "Treasure in the Lost Pharoah's Cave," and gives us another typo from Award, right in the chapter title! Johnson and two Indian friends take shelter in a cave during a storm and find mysterious wall art and piles and piles of gold coins. Johnson takes one home, and while his father scolds him for fraternizing with Indians, years later Peter's grandson has the coin examined by a professor ... would you believe, the coin has an extinct mastodon carved into it? Was this incredible proof of an ancient lost civilization?

Smith doesn't tell us where he originally got this story (reused from his 1968 title Into the Strange) but it sounds like classic frontier bunkum, placing ancient pre-Amerindian civilizations in situ for settlers to discover. Mastodons were a favorite choice of OOP animal representation for the 1800s (as dinosaurs became in the 20th century), beloved by Thomas Jefferson and cropping up in mysterious Mound Builder accounts all across the eastern half of the country. Smith does name a Richard Gurnee, president of the National Speleological Society, as having an interest in finding the mysterious cave.

This story as related by Smith crops up on two modern websites: a thread on Treasure Net and an entry on Uncharted History. The OP of the thread on Treasure Net says they don't even know the name of the book the chapter came out of, because their copy was so beat! After a little discussion, user "Bsktkaz" gives some local context:

I grew up in Ticonderoga and I never heard this story growing up. That seems unusual in itself. I am greatly intrigued by this story but have many doubts of my own. The first doubt is the actual pages in the post. If these pages were as old as presented the outer edges should be greatly frayed not straight as razors. These pages are all pretty well the same color, if they were this old they would have stains and discoloration. The inside edges appear such that the pages were torn out of a book, but the pages 45-46 (should be back to back) do not match up like pages 47 and 48. The outer side rips on 47-48 look as if they were done on purpose not accidentally which would have to be the case on outer edge. Second, I have searched local censes and find no residences for Johnson's near Pharaoh Mountain in the 1840's, I may have overlooked though. They may have rented but his father made a living as a farmer, so I doubt it, most farmers especially in those times owned their farms. The Johnsons (Johnson's Farm and Johnsons Orchard) I found lived more towards Crown Point (near 7 miles from Ti). One last question I have is the time frame for the hike. Ti (Ticonderoga) is several miles (6-7 estimate) from Pharaoh Mountain. Like I said I grew up in Ti, well Chilson just outside Ti and even closer to Pharaoh Mountain and I grew up hiking those mountains, That kind of hike would take hours one way let alone to, playing around, waiting out a thunder storm the returning. A good estimate of time would be close to if not more than 12 hours. That father seems awfully calm for having his son disappear for 12 hours. Even if the boy was coming from Eagle lake area the closest to Pharaoh Mountain you looking at 4 miles or more one way.

There's something apropos about a quickie bullshit chapter from Smith becoming its own lost legend ...

A page of the chapter as it appears online ...

The eighth chapter, Lost Viking Mines and Mystery Ships, also utilizes Smith's pseudohistory background. Viking miners outside of Red Rock, AZ are also reused from Into the Strange, and are joined by Eric the Red's lost longship buried in the California dunes and the old saw about a white and bearded Quetzalcoatl. These are all comfortable old pseudohistorical legends that fit right into the treasure hunting theme. Smith also cites settler/surveyor Herman Ehrenberg and his research into a possible lost white tribe in the Southwest, and a story by one Mrs. Myrtle Botts and her husband, who met a prospector while camping and were shown his faded photographs of what appear to be viking longships half-buried in the desert.

This chapter also features two separate old Indians who begin their stories by saying, "Many moons ago ..." C'mon, Warren!

Meanwhile it's more of the same treasure teasing in other chapters, with cheeseball accounts of jackpot finds, quotes from professional treasure hunters, and quick listings of random locations, some more specific than others. A chapter on confirmed finds whets the appetite some more: like I said before, these treasure hunting volumes seem like they were made for armchair dreaming by daddy-o: "Man oh man, if we rent a metal detector next time we go to the Keys!"

The back page ads offer money saving and self help titles ... plus a Sergio Leone novelization, bringing the dust, gold, and blood of the Wild West vividly to life for readers who'd just finished this treasure guide!

The final title for sale is a guide to suing the pants off everyone!

Award Books, 1970

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Inca Roads Instrumental

Much more intricate that our last look at ancient Peru, this is another great map from Max Toth and Greg Nielsen's blockbuster Pyramid Power. Was it round? Did it have a motor? Or was it something different?

Courtesy Warner Books, 1976 (original pub. 1974).