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 The X-Files Book of the Unexplained: Volume II (1996)
by Jane Goldman
351 pages - Simon & Schuster
 This second and final volume in the series takes the episodes of the second and third seasons of The X-Files as a starting point from which to examine various subject matter from voodoo and conspiracies to freakshows and, of course, alien abductions. I think this second volume is even a bit stronger than the first, as it pulls less punches and presents more facts, even when some of them are a bit cringe-worthy (such as the section on scientific experimentation on captive or uninformed human populations).
 There's lots to learn in here, such as the relationship between witches, the drugs they took, and sitting on broomsticks, or the case of the woman who found her partially-formed parasitic twin to be pregnant, as that was the one her husband usually had sex with. Or weird things falling from the sky, such as frogs or one specific species of fish, or even perfectly legitimate banknotes that no one has reported missing or stolen. The most fascinating chapter is probably the one on lightning. Some people (or even generations of families) seem to attract it to a remarkable degree. And ball lightning is fascinating, at times seeming to move in an intelligent fashion, and until recently dismissed by scientific minds as entirely fictional (a fate it shares with things such as meteors).
On a related note, since I saw it in the summer, I was among the biggest detractors of the latest X-Files movie, but after seeing it again recently on DVD, in the slightly-longer, and slightly-smoother cut, putting away any judgmental attitude as best I could, I have to say...I didn't hate it. It didn't really belong on cinema screens, but I have to say that it's okay.
Dr. Blockhead: Twenty-first century genetic engineering will not only eliminate the siamese twins and the alligator-skin people, but you're gonna be hard-pressed to find a slight overbite, or a not-so-high cheekbone. You see, I've seen the future, and the future looks just like him! [points to Mulder] Imagine, going through your whole life looking like that. That's why it's up to the self-made freaks like me and The Conundrum to remind people.
Dana Scully: Remind people of what?
Dr. Blockhead: Nature abhors normality. It can't go for long without creating a mutant. Do you know why?
Dana Scully: No, why?
Dr. Blockhead: I don't know either. It's a mystery. Maybe some mysteries are never meant to be solved.
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 The X-Files Book of the Unexplained: Volume One (1995)
by Jane Goldman
352 pages - Simon & Schuster
 The X Files, in its nine season television run, explored many mysteries in fictional form, from UFOs and government cover-ups to monsters hiding in forests and new diseases. This book takes the episodes of the first season and expands on the subject matter by exploring various myths, allegations, and confirmed events. Areas covered include ghosts, extrasensory perception, human physical anomalies, legendary beasts, UFOs, and even profiles of some real-life 'experts on the unknown' (one of them points out how nonsensical a term like that is).
 The author takes a relatively neutral view, being somewhat on the materialist side on most of the subject matter, except in the area of UFOs and government cover-ups of said activity, where she presents a lot of evidence both in favour of the phenomenon and various admitted untruths put forward by the government, the military, and NASA. Though the book does not go into very much depth on each subject, a very welcome inclusion is a bibliography at the end of each chapter, so you can continue reading if you want to know more.
There's some really interesting stuff in here, like the people who only shed their skin once a year, like a snake, and various cases of setting fire by psychic power that have landed people in jail even in just the last few decades. In 1990, a law was passed in the state of Connecticut that protects realtors from disclosing the haunting (or, legally speaking, 'psychological impacting') of a property to potential buyers, unless presented with a formal written request.
Sometimes, when reading material like this, your imagination can start really running away from you, which is both thrilling and slightly unnerving.
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Monsters, Strange Dreams, and UFOs (Strange Unsolved Mysteries) (1990)
by Phyllis Raybin Emert, illustrated by Paul Jennis
119 pages - Tor
I picked this book up at a used book sale for 25 cents or something similar, and it's only when I brought it home that I realized that it is aimed at a younger readership. Each story takes up a couple of pages, and there's some of the usual suspects (Sasquatch, Mothman, etc) along with some stories that are new to me. I found the story of the Hope Diamond and its curse quite fascinating. But because the stories are so slight, and contain dialogue invented by the author, an adult reader would find the book useful only as a starting point.
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The Mothman Prophecies (1975)
by John A. Keel
272 pages - Tor
The author of this book is either a) making up a large portion of this 'non-fiction' account, b) insane, or c) repeated witness to phenomena that is totally outside everyday experience. Option 'c' seems the least likely.
This book centres around the odd events in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the year leading up to the collapse of the town's main bridge, in which 46 people died. The phenomena are not limited to Mothman (or Mothmen), but include UFO's, Men in Black, and all sorts of strange behaviour of the phone and postal systems.
I think the most interesting thing about this book is that Keel doesn't believe that UFOs, or even the experiences of people that get aboard spaceships and are either abducted or travel to distant planets or whatever, have anything to do with actual aliens from other planets, or any kind of advanced technology. Instead, he sees it as a sort of natural phenomenon of our world, and explains that through the history of humanity people have experienced similar things, but the way we interpret what we see has changed a little, so instead of meeting fairies in the forest, we now get confronted by Men in Black that drive around in old Cadillacs. Instead of meeting a devil at the crossroads, now a UFO descends from the heavens in front of your car as you travel the highway.
It's an interesting and quite a spooky read in places, but the author's seeming inability to analyze things logically, or to refrain from taking huge leaps, means that you really question his credibility. I quite liked the movie they made from this book, though it was a fairly loose adaptation. Still beats the pants off the new X-Files movie.
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Terrors of the Night: Canadian Accounts of Eerie Events and Weird Experiences (2005)
by John Robert Columbo
229 pages - The Dundurn Group
A collection of various accounts of unusual and uncanny events, mostly gathered from old newspaper pieces, and usually a page or two in length. Categories are: Witchery and Magic, Earthly Powers, Wild Things, Hardly Human, Omens and Prophecies, Powers Beyound Ours, Miracles and Other Cures, and Inquiry into the Bizarre.
Because of the nature of the book, being mostly old newspaper clippings with a short introduction, reading this is a bit of a fragmented and inconsistent experience. A lot of these pieces are simply the result of being from publications that obviously had a very broad and creative idea of what constitutes 'news'. Probably the most interesting part is the last chapter, 'Inquiry into the Bizarre', which consists of some responses that were received from a 1978 survey that asked people to send in their own weird experiences.
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Apparitions (1975)
by Celia Green & Charles McCreery
218 pages - Hamish Hamilton
The authors of this book have assembled the contained accounts mostly from an appeal for people to send in written accounts of their experiences with 'apparitions'. These were then followed up by extra questioning to obtain more detail. The term 'ghosts' really isn't appropriate, because only a small portion of these apparitions are of people that are dead; there are apparitions of the living, of animals, inanimate objects, and even apparitions of the percipient themselves.
I found this a really wonderful book that was fascinating to read through. Contrary to most horror stories and films, the real-life experience of an apparition doesn't seem to hold much terror, and in fact in some cases provides a comfort or benefit to the person who is having the experience. A lot of these occur at the moment of death or distress of a loved one who is far away, where the person passing away makes something of a last visit. Another common theme is encountering someone in a regular situation (such as gardening in their yard, or a pet coming to greet you) before receiving the knowledge that they'd already died some time ago. In the cases of repeated appearances of an apparition, it seems that discussing it with others and gaining some sort of consensus about your experience, and what the figure is, tends to prevent further appearances. There also seems to be a whole subcategory for apparitional cats that are unknown to the percipient, but then not only appear regularly, but follow a person around when they change residences.
Though the authors only speculate about various theories, they don't seem to be inclined to think that the experiences are literally 'real', and tend more in the direction of them being a way that the mind presents information to the consciousness after it has received information in some subconscious manner. But the real value here is in the accounts from regular people, and they are fascinating and really make you wonder about the structure of reality. For the record, I've never had an experience of any kind of apparition, though after reading this I think I'd be a lot less anxious about it; as even during experiences that might sound like they'd be scary, it seems that something makes the person treat them in a very matter-of-fact way while they are taking place.
'...I was working as housekeeper, and was preparing the midday meal, which had to be ready by one o'clock. I wanted to see the time, and stepped to one side, from the cooker, to look into the next room where the clock was. The door to the room was open, as I only had to look across to the dresser where the clock stood, but standing looking at me was another me, dressed the same and looking very calm and spotless. I have never understood the meaning of it. It seems a wonderful thing to have happened.' (pg.184)
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Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (2005)
by Susan A. Clancy
179 pages - Harvard University Press
This is a creepy idea, and many people understandably resist it. Our memories are who we are. They inform our personal history, our life stories, our sense of ourselves. Our lives, after all, are only what we remember of them. It's unnerving to realize that our stories, feelings, memories of the past are reconstructed over time, and that we make up history as we go along. (pg.69) This book sets out to explore the phenomenon that has occurred in the last fifty years or so, of people claiming to be abducted and experimented on by extraterrestrials. The titles of the chapters sum up quite well the ground this book covers: How do you wind up studying aliens? How do people come to believe they were abducted by aliens? Why do I have memories if it didn't happen? Why are abduction stories so consistent? Who gets abducted? If it didn't happen, why would I want to believe that it did? The author pretty much assumes from the beginning that these events didn't literally happen, and tries to understand why people feel so strongly about what they claim happened to them. The author is very big on supporting the principles of scientific inquiry, but ironically enough she seems to be somewhat blind to this when it comes to her own book. A lot of the conclusions and remarks she makes have very little basis in actual testing or observation, and are just conclusions she jumps to because they make sense to her. At other times it seems like the scientific method is used more as a smokescreen, such as the time when she talks about a series of tests that were made while monitoring the subjects using MRI, but then when she talks about the results of the tests, it's all about what the subjects said, and no reference is made to anything that might have been picked up in the MRI, though it sure impresses you when mentions that an MRI was used at the beginning. I think too often people trumpet 'science' and then science just happens to be whatever it is that most of the scientists have as their own personal opinions, tastes, feelings, and prejudices, even when they have nothing to do with the scientific method. It was still a pretty interesting book to read, and sometimes pretty funny too, and probably better written than most of the 'unexplained phenomena' stuff out there. I don't believe that extraterrestrials are flying around on our planet and abducting people (and, in fact, I have strong doubts that there's anything else out in space that we would recognize as alien intelligence or alien civilization), but perhaps ironically, I think I'm a touch more likely to believe abduction accounts after reading this. The author touched on it briefly, but I would have liked to have heard more about comparisons between these current experiences and other phenomenon people have experienced in the past in regards to shapes in the sky or beings they've encountered such as spirits, fairies, demons, etc.
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The World's Greatest Unsolved Mysteries (2005)
edited by Damon Wilson
485 pages - Magpie
A grab-bag of weird 'true' stories and legends, this book is divided into three sections. The first concerns strange events in different corners of the globe, such as disappearances, curses, and strange sights. Perhaps the most interesting is a chapter devoted to the curious story of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, where for hundreds of years people have been digging for treasure that quite possibly doesn't even exist, at great financial and human cost. The second part deals with monsters and other weird creatures, such as vampires and sasquatches . The content is a mix of reportedly true stories and mythology. The last section deals with various psychic phenomena, and was the least interesting for me, especially as that is where the book seems least skeptical.
I would say that most of the things described here are reported with a reasonable mix of doubt and openness. I looked up a few of the more curious things online, and though the reports I found varied in the details, I didn't think the book twisted the available story to any extreme. The book is said to be 'edited' by Damon Wilson (son of Colin Wilson), but doesn't give any details on who wrote the bulk of the text; whether it was a team of freelancers, or if it's pulled from a variety of sources, or if it's a slight reworking of an older book, or what. Since this book was published in 2005 but the most recent events in it are from about the 1960's, I suspect it may be a slight reworking of some previously published material. There's no index, and though some book titles are mentioned in passing, there's also no bibliography. On the positive side the prose style, which is often grating in these types of 'sensational' books, was very clear, plain and direct, and never tries your patience even though what is being said might.
The book is an interesting exhibit of salesmanship as well, with the 'Unsolved Mysteries' of the title being very large and prominent so it looks like a tie-in with the TV series until you pick the book up off the store shelf and (possibly) read the entire title. There's also a 'little green man' on the front and back cover, though UFO's aren't delt with at all in the text, except for being referenced as an unlikely source of some phenomena. So, I quite enjoyed the first part of the book, and overall it was an amusing lark, but I don't think I realized how long it would take to read through the whole thing.
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True Ghost Stories (1936)
by Marchioness Townshend & Maude ffoulkes
287 pages - Senate
This is a reprint of a book originally published in 1936. Sadly it's quite a cheap printing, so the photos (about 10 or so) accompanying the text look like bad photocopies, and other than the brief text on the back it doesn't put the contents into any sort of context, or tell you much about who either Townshend or ffoulkes (yes, that is the correct spelling) were. Still, it's interesting to read both for the stories themselves and as well as an artifact of the times, as it's somewhat in the tone of the spiritualist fad, and ffoulkes especially is never shy about adding personal observations and commentary into the stories.
The stories themselves usually concern either Townshend, ffoulkes, or someone they are closely or distantly acquainted with; sometimes the story passes through several hands before it gets to them. Though there's a bit of colour and pacing added most of the stories are fairly short and don't give you the sort of dramatic/emotional/intellectual payoff you would get with most purely fictional ghost stories. As for what kind of ghost stories they are, most of them are the kind of experiences of ghosts that could easily be mistaken for the sound of wind/rain/critters, or briefly falling asleep and into a dream, or strong memories combined with being in a still and dark place, or the mental confusion that comes with a stroke or heavy fever. Perhaps I'm being a bit unkind, as I really did enjoy the book for the most part, but reading on and on it just got to be too much. I think if it was half the length, keeping the better half of the tales, it would have been far more effective.
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Access to Inner Worlds: The Story of Brad Absetz (1983)
By Colin Wilson
Rider
143 pages
A thematic follow-up to Frankenstein's Castle, this short work by Wilson is partly based on an American he met at a retreat in Finland, though much of it departs from Absetz's story entirely, and just gets into Wilson's ideas. The two themes are connecting with the unconscious (also referred to as 'right-brain consciousness'), and engaging with the real world.
Absetz, through a series of personal events, began to feel 'another part' of himself, other than his conscious self, desire to take some action. This started with movements of his arms while he was lying still, and went on to things like choosing food from a buffet, drawing, making sculptures, and writing poetry. Absetz gave this submerged side of him expression, and the results were quite unlike what he would of consciously created. What was probably most characteristic was that its expression was odd, not linear, rational, or in any way signaled ahead of time -- the moment needed to reveal itself. Wilson's take on this is that it so happened that Absetz's personal circumstances at the time (spending long hours alert but inactive in bed, waiting for his ailing wife to snap out of fugue states) enabled these things to come to the forefront, where in most people they are constantly ignored or fought against. The advice for accessing these inner worlds is simply listening to their call; because they're always calling.
Interspersed with this are also some things about actively seeing the world, instead of passively doing so. As in other books, Wilson puts forward his belief that when we feel the world is devoid of meaning, it's because we think we should be passively taking in the world, instead of actively grasping it and then seeing and appreciating the 'more'. He describes a neat little concentration exercise where you hold up a pen in your hand against a blank wall, and then actively try to concentrate on *seeing* the pen as muck as possible. After a moment of doing this, switch back to just seeing the pen against the wall. Then go back-and-forth, and this does a fantastic thing to your ability to really grasp real things 'out there'.
At the same time, it's kind of a disordered book, and you need to sort of frame the argument yourself, though there's not really anything so complex or ephemeral about it that Wilson couldn't have summed it up concisely himself. He also gets into strange side-notes, and a little bit where he gives a short history of a few months of his writing work, taking on different projects, helps you understand how he's been able to write 100 books, and also why a lot of them are kind of shoddy in quality.
Still, a really good book for the sort of insights it provides and the directions it opens up for thoughts and experiences, which trumps any deficiencies in Wilson's style.
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