THE OCCULT IN THE ORIENT by Christopher Dane

Mystery man Christopher Dane takes us to the other side on the other side of the world for a sinister survey of THE OCCULT IN THE ORIENT! Nice to see a fresh face around here ... or so you would believe! Things are never what they seem in the world of the paranormal paperbacks however, and author "Christopher Dane" is none other than bad old Brad Steiger, moonlighting under yet another pseudonym. This particular title is Steiger's store brand version of John Keel's influential occult travelogue Jadoo and Dane must have been Steiger's more upmarket moniker, because Popular Library spared no expense with this volume, shelling out for some cool cover art and even a table of contents - that's almost unheard of for them!

Keel's Jadoo in several editions

A colonial haze hangs over the stories, whether we're talking phantom hitchhikers in Okinawa or a drawn out death curse afflicting an American consul's house servant in Jakarta. That servant, Djam Hari, draws the ire of a rival when he attains the rank of "Number One Boy" in US Vice Consul Robert Pierson's household. You see, Steiger informs us that "an Indonesian's position on this ladder [of servant rank] decreed the degree of respect accorded to him from his people." Djam Hari is a grown man, by the way, but Pierson and Steiger still refer to him as "boy" throughout. This casual infantilization casts a sickly pallor over the rest of the book, especially since the story drags on far too long before we get the expected ending. It's pure page padding and an especially bad sign of things to come since we're only three chapters in!

Front left is Robert Pierson, "U.S. aide"

Moving on, we start to recognize Steiger's formula as he staggers quick hits (like a "Negrito ghost child" whose disembodied voice calls to the living) between longer chapters, mostly pulled from his prior books or summarized from Fate magazine stories. Thankfully none end up as overlong as Djam Hari's tale, and Steiger is good enough to credit the original Fate writers when necessary. He gives a decent overview of the New Guinea UFO flap of 1959, when multiple Anglican missionaries and their local flocks reported seeing low flying spacecraft crewed by mysterious beings. This flap is sometimes named "the Gill Sightings" after one of the missionaries, Father William Gill. Another Fate summary follows with the very British sounding Arthur Grimble (of Her Majesty's Colonial Service) witnessing a death curse he christens as "Raku-nene madness," where the spirit of Raku-nene is called forth by a spurned man to possess the woman he desires and drive her to madness and death. The original story Steiger cites by writer E.P. Herman can be downloaded at the Luminist Archives, as part of the September 1953 issue of Fate.

Three Argentine Navy cadets have a scare when Deception Island vanishes from sight, leaving them adrift in a dingy on the open ocean! This is from another Fate article, written by one of the cadets, Carlo Bel Moro. Steiger mines the Flying Saucer Review for some UFOs over Hawaii, and then recaps Mary Margaret Fuller's piece on Balinese cremation rituals, which can also be downloaded from the Luminist Archives as part of Fate's August 1954 issue. The ghost of an executed French soldier haunts some Americans at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, having been "decapitated like a common criminal" by the cruel communists after they overran his position. Steiger laments the "fierce, though vain struggle" by the brave Frenchman, another example of the upside down moral logic of colonialism. This chapter ends with a cornball joke about the Frenchman being able to look for his own head after death because he was a radar officer. 

The ruins of Nan Madol give Steiger a chance to mention Lemuria as well as American atomic testing at nearby Enewetak Atoll, another clash between the modern space age and a mythical golden age. Steiger mines the August 1954 issue of Fate again for missionary May Elliot's experience in Tahiti with a spirit named Uratua. Strange lights in the South Pacific skies include a report by the crew of the Morgantown Victory in 1966 and a 1774 sighting off New Caledonia by the naturalist Johann Forster, recorded in a diary of Captain James Cook's second voyage. Steiger calls this "Captain Cook's sighting" though he's not named as seeing anything. That's typical ballyhoo by Steiger, and it's followed by a repeat of the invisible biting bug eyed monster of Manila, a Steiger staple through the years. The hoaxed Monongahela sea serpent report is also here, again, having just been seen in Weird Unsolved Mysteries by Steiger writing as Eric Norman. Burton Klein, an American GI in Vietnam, saves his wife Janice from a car accident 9,000 miles away with an ESP message. Another GI, WWII veteran A.R. Thompson, relates his story from the May 1955 issue of Fate about a disembodied voice that has saved him from plane crashes and car accidents.

And now Steiger really starts to recycle, with four straight chapters of Max Freedom Long and his manufactured Huna magic! It's a good chunk of pure nonsense padding. After this, another headless ghost visits soldier Lawrence Stevens in Seoul and performs a gruesome show, holding up his own head and saying "I'll sure be glad when these three months are up!" Later Stevens realizes that the ghost predicted the end of the Korean War! Steiger stretches the definition of "the Orient" when he profiles Komar the Hindu Fakir, whose real name was Vernon Craig and who hailed from Ohio, USA. Komar performed feats of endurance in character, and there's a brief but touching post at the Magician's Forum by someone who remembers him. Steiger and Komar would later coauthor a book, seen below:

Komar, aka Vernon Craig

The occidental fascination with Eastern thought continues with Steiger's next subject, the Master Subramuniya, who was born Robert Hansen in California before a religious experience at the age of 6 inspired him to walk the path of enlightenment. After reaching Sannyasa in Sri Lanka, Subramuniya eventually opened an ashram in Hawaii, where Steiger catches up with him. Steiger doesn't spill much ink over the guru, just noting that he disapproves of drug use and and is happy to see more young people meditating. Disappointing that this intriguing man doesn't deserve more than a quick filler chapter, while Max Freedom Long gets five whole chapters to to peddle his fraudulent "Huna" magic. You can tell that Steiger is just looking to fill pages now. Author and photographer Wilmon Menard stars in another long story of murder and magic in Tahiti which is padded with pulp fiction prose by Steiger.

Did I say five chapters of Huna bull? Yes I did, because Steiger now slips in "Huna Healing Techniques" as if realizing he still has some content to fill before the end. And after this is another telepathic warning, saving soldier John E. Rebel Thomas from death at Guadalcanal. American missionary and CIA operative Harold M. Young relays a grisly account of jungle werewolves in the hill country of Thailand, and like Edward Lansdale's faked vampire attacks in the Philippines the story reveals more about the casual sociopathy of imperialism than about primitive monsters or native superstition. Young describes shooting a Taw werewolf and tracking the blood trail to a hut. Inside that hut is a dead man with a bullet wound, and Young's mind is boggled at the implication. We all know from the movies that dead werewolves revert to human form, so Young must have really shot a werewolf! The darkness inside modern "civilized" man is laundered through purported barbarity and illogic in the "savage" Third World.

True to form, Steiger reused the story of the Taw multiple times. Turning and turning in the widening gyre ...

The Occult in the Orient is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Popular Library, 1974.

WORLD OF THE STRANGE by Susy Smith

The "improbably named" Susy Smith (see below) brings her considerable talents to bear and shows us an entire WORLD OF THE STRANGE! It's ESP, astrology, poltergeists and more psychic debris in this vintage explainer text.

I'm not sure what copy writer decided that Susy Smith was an improbable name but bless 'em anyways! Smith aims to educate with her writing, laying out the promising field of psychical studies circa 1963. There's a newfangled term called "parapsychology" which covers all the bases, showing us just how long ago this book was written.

Susy Smith looking lovely as usual

Smith opens with some startling poltergeist activity, as an illustration that even in this modern space age there are things lurking beyond our ken. It even happens in "matter-of-fact Dallas!" A brief history of Spiritualism follows, and while Smith's honesty is never in doubt, her credulity sometime stretches a mite too far. For example, the Fox sisters and their confession to fakery - Smith wants to believe so badly that she tries to wriggle around this, basically saying that the sisters didn't know any better than to falsely claim fraud. Smith even speaks to this desire of hers to believe in the unknown, and it is refreshingly candid in a genre where authors often strike a pose as supremely neutral arbiters. Rolling into the 20th century we find J.B. Rhine, his ESP cards, and the Society for Psychical Research, and a survey of today's witches. Smith would later fill an entire book with modern witchcraft in 1970. Smith also covers psychical pioneer Dr. Nandor Fodor, and superstar seer Eileen J. Garrett. Garrett's sessions channelling the captain of airship R101, which crashed spectacularly in 1930, are summarized in a naive manner by Smith - despite the author's claims to the contrary, it turns out Garrett did follow the construction of R101, and was savvy to the technical terms she supposedly channelled from flight lieutenant Herbert Carmichael Irwin. C'est la vie.

Above, a 1970 reprint cover. Out of left field who should wander by but the abominable snowmen! According to Ivan T. Sanderson, they could be extant relic hominids. Oh yeah, and Sanderson disclaims the term "abominable snowmen" altogether in favor of yeti, almas, and Sasquatch. Smith thinks it's just too cromulent a phrase to pass up, even if its etymology is flat busted. Astrology gets a chapter, as do vampires and ghosts. Smith notes that "real" ghosts are rarely the shrieking specters shaking chains that they appear as in other genre fare. Some are downright lovely, like Ocean Born Mary! Astral projection and levitation make for some light reading before Smith presents some do-it-yourself ESP experimenters and a return of the poltergeists. Smith specializes in slice-of-life Americana by way of the weird, with housewives and blue collar Joes across the country brushing up against the other side. Right before the last page Smith drops in the well worn case of Patience Worth, before finishing with another sensible statement as to the possibility of the paranormal. She's also kind enough to give us a fantastic bibliography, not something to be taken for granted. Thanks Susy!

Table of contents:

1.  Nearer Than You Think (5)

2.  Dreams Do Come True (13)

3.  The Weird Sisters (28)

4.  Fact or Fiction (41)

5.  They Hitch Their Wagons to the Stars (54)

6.  The First Men in Orbit (66)

7.  Traveling Without a Ticket (78)

8.  Miracles Do Happen (85)

9.  Hocus-Pocus (94)

10. And Shall Man Live Again? (102)

11. Things That Go Bump in the Night (117)

12. Invisible Juvenile Delinquents (130)

13. The Unexplained Residuum (139)

14. Do-It-Yourself Phenomena (147)

Pyramid Books, 1963

WEIRD UNSOLVED MYSTERIES by Eric Norman

Brad Steiger dons his alter ego Eric Norman and invites you to enter the doorway to the strange and discover some WEIRD UNSOLVED MYSTERIES! Presented with a verve and panache that rises above his Popular Library fare, this volume is a tidy little collection of themed mysteries, with a great table of contents courtesy Award Books - ol' Popular Library never bothered with that! Presentation counts, and even though this is the usual remixed slush pile from Steiger, it somehow seems fresh and intriguing, even as the thought starts to tickle the back of our brains, now where have I read this before?

Chapter one, for example, opens with missing child Tommy Bowman, who disappeared on a family hike in 1953. Steiger intones mysterious happenings of a trans-dimensional nature, though the truth seems far more prosaic, and sadder too, as Bowman likely was an unnamed victim of serial killer Mack Ray Edwards. Steiger will reuse this case, and pretty much this entire chapter, in his Strange Disappearances in 1972, just jiggling some words around. The missing Chinese army, the fictional Charles Ashmore, they may have all disappeared (or not) but they reappear in these pages over and over. A chapter on sea serpents follows, with many vintage 1800s case reports that buddy Warren Smith would paste into his Strange Secrets of the Loch Ness Monster in 1976, and some hoax accounts of the Lake Vorota monster of Siberia - which, to be clear, is a "real" unknown creature, with sighting reports that continue to this day. However, Steiger's claims of the monster devouring dogs and elk and an "undetermined" number of people are classic ballyhoo, adding just a little spice to a story to stretch it that much further. He also misspells the location as "Vororta" - go figure.

Next are ghost ships galore, and as we might expect the crew of the Ellen Austin performs their usual dramatic disappearing act. Various vessels are lost in the Bermuda Triangle before we move on to some classic spontaneous human combustion, and then unearth some mysterious artifacts like the Kensington Runestone. Steiger also gallantly defends James Churchward and his Mu fantasy against the snobby "sophisticates" with some cutting edge developments by botanist Dr. Albert C. Smith, who found "an overwhelming affinity" between Fijian and New Guinea flowers, which Steiger says is proof of an ancient  landmass stretching across the ocean. Balkan pyramids and super civilizations are another mystery that lingers in the present day.

Steiger's penultimate chapter is a knockout on monsters of all shapes and sizes. Strange sightings from South America would be reused by Warren Smith for Lost Cities of the Ancients - Unearthed! in 1976. Nice selection here by Brad. His final chapter is on fairy folk with a sidebar into their possible UFO connection. Charmingly, Steiger posits the alien babe who made it with Antonio Villas-Boas as a possible fairy queen! I like it. We also get a credulous bit on the Cottingley Fairies and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with technical arguments about the (im)possibility of hoaxing that sound similar to those marshaled for certain other mysterious creatures. Steiger ends on a high note though when he offers us a passport to Magonia, and ponders the "kernel of reality that may lie at the core of centuries of myth and legend." Bravo to Brad for this clean delivery of some old reliables. It must have paid the rent!

These Weird Unsolved Mysteries are available to read and download at archive dot org.

Award Books, 1969

THE TAROT by Brad Steiger and Ron Warmoth

Here's another Steiger volume that looks like it washed up on the shores of time, a little worse for wear but still ready to teach us THE ANCIENT ART OF THE TAROT! Steiger's teamed up with tarot futurecaster (and dowser!) Ron Warmoth, a colorful character who seems to have enjoyed B-tier celebrity on the psychic scene. Brad opens with a real wacked out scene of Warmoth giving a tarot reading to a small time hood in a hippie bar who turns out to be Jack "Murf the Surf" Murphy, another minor celebrity of the time who committed the "Jewel Heist of the Century" and held up Eva Gabor for her gems before going down for murder after a nasty Florida crime spree. Warmoth sees all of this in the cards and tries to warn Jack off his path but nothing doing. Later on Warmoth says he would do anything to save a human life, but I gotta say he doesn't seem to have tried too hard with Jack! His other psychic skills include "correctly interpreting personalities of men and women he's just met" so maybe Ron wasn't one to aim too high with his gifts.

After some flashy stories with Warmoth, we move into the meat and potatoes of tarot, and here again is more of the same you'd get in any similar guide of the time. The card art is uncredited but gets the job done. Perhaps someone well versed in tarot would recognize their provenance; I admit that's not my bag. Steiger does a neat job tying everything together, making this book a prime example of his talent at writing these cheap occult books. Just get a minor "name" to coauthor, throw in a little occult history on some specific subject, some psychic readings maybe, wrap it up in under 200 pages and bon appetit!

Award Books, 1969

CUPID AND THE STARS by John Pendragon with Brad Steiger

Brad Steiger's got something to say: it's Valentine's Day! And he's snookered sessile psychic John Pendragon into this self help astrology love book for the ladies, answering burning questions on your fate in the stars. Remember, "forewarned is forearmed in the battle of the sexes!" Perhaps old John wasn't the best candidate for this, but it's too late now, we're full steam ahead into some vintage nonsense. 

Brad makes a lot of noise about how crap most modern astrologists are, as if tearing down the competition makes his section of the book any more reputable. It doesn't, by the way, as this is the same exact stuff you'll find in any similar text of the time, with dangerous sexy Scorpio babes and headstrong Aries gals and so on. At least Steiger admits that astrology's predictive powers are somewhat beside the point, though Pendragon's pretty clear that you shouldn't mess around with any guys who aren't good sign matches. 

Pendragon actually acquits himself well in the penultimate chapter, dropping his typical muddled prophecies in favor of straightforward advice. Did you ladies know that your sign determines how you walk? "Aries girls move rapidly, Gemini girls have a quick, nervous step, rather like a timid bird - but they are far from timid! Sagittarians have a bold step, while the Virgo girl walks precisely, as if carefully avoiding puddles." That's news you can use.

Meanwhile, Pendragon "has no astrological data on thalidomide babies," but does think that it's "highly probable" that Britain will have a woman Prime Minister within the next generation. You canny old goat, Pendragon! Too bad he didn't live to see such a thing, as he passed away the very next year, 1970. I'm not 100% certain he wrote the afterword, "Astrology as a Compass," but it seems to match his florid prose, diving into systems ancient and Biblical for astrological guidance, and their relevance to us now: "Astrology, rightly used, serves as a dependable compass pointing the way across the Bay of Time, and beyond an Ocean of Stars, to the Shores of Eternity." My own afterword is that this copy looks to have been dunked in the Bay of Time!

Ace Books, 1969

COVER UPDATES: THE OUTER SPACE CONNECTION and THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE

A cool cover by Corgi Books for Alan and Sally Landsburg's The Outer Space Connection, 1975.

And a fierce and fiery cover for Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey's The Bermuda Triangle from Star Books, also from 1975.