MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Track of the Skunk Ape

 

Excellent map by Donald MacCallum, current to 1977 sightings. From John Green's Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us, courtesy Hancock House, 2006 (original pub. 1981).

COSMIC DEBRIS: Reflexology Hand Chart

 

Pocket sized palmistry. Printed in Canada by the Pacific Institute of Reflexology.

MONSTER by Jeffrey Konvitz

Boring! This is one turgid, overlong excuse for a "thriller" ... Jeffrey Konvitz was clearly banking on another big budget adaptation like his breakout hit The Sentinel, but this by-the-numbers potboiler didn't catch anyone's eye in Hollywood, and for good reason. From the convoluted setup (oil is discovered beneath Loch Ness, and exploration by the Gemini Company disturbs Nessie) to the following lack of monster action (she gets two "big" scenes that are over far too quickly) this novel just fails to deliver. It doesn't help that it seems like Konvitz tossed his monster research off in an afternoon and fills most of the book with his two-fisted hero's battle against a nasty piece of mercenary trash named Lefebre (that's lah-FAYVE by the way), the security head for Gemini Oil. 

Oh well, at least there's a nice step-back and map.

0/4

Ballantine Books, 1982

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE CALENDAR: July - September 1975

Those deadly Dero rays did their damnedest, but we've made it back alive with more entries from Lawrence David Kusche's Bermuda Triangle calendar of 1975! Highlights from this three month stretch include the search for the lost USS Scorpion (not found until October of 1968), the sad and bizarre story of Donald Crowhurst's doomed race against time, and some classic Triangle tales of Columbus' spooky sailing to the New World. September features a lovely painting of the Sargasso Sea by one E.S. Hodgson, a semi-obscure figure who benefits from this biographical sketch by researcher Robert J. Kirkpatrick. Here's that piece in color:

The Sargasso Sea makes a handy segue into the resolution of a minor Triangle mystery - the story of the Ellen Austin, an apocryphal entry in Kusche's The Bermuda Triangle Mystery - Solved: 

Fortuitous happenstance has provided a solid answer to this case. The tale of the Ellen Austin and the derelict happens to match beat for beat the first half of a short story titled "The Mystery of the Water-Logged Ship" by classic horror author William Hope Hodgson. The story is a minor one from 1911 and perhaps overshadowed by his other, more fantastic sea stories such as The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" ... for despite the mysterious setup, the second half of the story reveals that perfectly corporeal pirates are to blame, utilizing a hidden chamber on the derelict to ambush victims seeking salvage! The Triangle myth simply drops the clever denouement and leaves the mystery, pregnant with otherworldly menace.

Lawrence David Kusche, 1974

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Graveyards of the Mammoth

From The Unexplained: A Sourcebook of Strange Phenomena, by William R. Corliss. Courtesy Bantam Books, 1976.

And more mammoth mayhem in this illustration compiled by Corliss in Scientific Anomalies and Other Provocative Phenomena, courtesy the Sourcebook Project, 2003.

COSMIC DEBRIS: All the Saucers Fit to Print

A goldmine of flying saucer titles are listed in this ad from the December 1958 issue of Flying Saucers: The Magazine of Space Conquest.

THE SENSE AND NONSENSE OF PROPHECY by Eileen J. Garrett

An eminently readable guide to spiritualists, mediums, fortune tellers, and other purveyors of would-be prophecy! Garrett was a titan of the field herself, an interesting woman who "attributed her mediumship not to spirits but to the activity of a 'magnetic field'" or some other scientifically measurable influence. Chapter Three is an especially enjoyable rundown on psychic fakery featuring a composite "Madame Zola" with whom Garrett skillfully (and not without sympathy) illustrates both the mechanical aspects of fortune telling as well as the often ignored mental/emotional state of the fortune tellers, who often believe in their own "gifts" even as they deliberately defraud their marks. Garrett's writing is warm without being sappy or credulous, with following chapters delivering the same scoop on crystal balls, tarot, palmistry, and so on.

It's worth noting that Garrett was always researching and developing her theories on ESP and mediumship and evolved her positions over time:

Garrett wrote "In all my years' professional mediumship I have had no "sign", "test" or slightest evidence to make me believe I have contacted another world." She considered that her trance controls were personalities from her subconscious and admitted to the parapsychologist Peter Underwood, "I do not believe in individual survival after death".

Almost a decade after her death John G. Fuller wrote a book on her supposed contact with deceased airman Herbert Carmichael Irwin back in 1930. Despite statements against an afterlife (such as quoted above) this story seems to be her most lasting influence some 50 years after her passing, which does little justice to her complex personality.

The Sense and Nonsense of Prophecy is available to read and download at archive dot org.

A Berkeley Medallion Book, 1968 (original pub. 1950)