When I was younger I would go to used book stores and spend hours roaming the aisles, pulling the strangest titles I could find with the yellowest pages off of the shelves. I often found myself in the fantasy or metaphysical sections, far, far removed from the new release tables at the front. When you’re in those aisles, the ones you’re not sure if the owners even know are there, you find books that just may qualify as endangered species. If not, certainly as curiosities worth a 10 cent admission fee at an old circus sideshow. And if you’re looking for it, you find some great adventures that the Discovery Channel, with it’s rigid and strange love for interviewing the pseudo-scientists at the beginning of the program and the accredited ones at the end.

This is one of those books.

The title reads: “A spine-tingling collection of what might be science fiction but what could be science fact! ----IF YOU DARE, READ THIS BOOK!----

I’m not even kidding. It’s in all caps. And underneath that they have two guys that look like Icarus, except the wings are attached. Inside, the authors, D. Scott Rogo and Jerome Clark, have chapters on things you expect, like alien encounters and bigfoot, but they also have some of the more obscure beings that may or may not exist in chapters like, “Phantom Cats, Monster Birds, and Mystery Kangaroos” and “The Coming of the Trolls.” Believe it (or not, badum-bum).

Each chapter is full of stories, some written in dramatic fashion by the authors that gives away the fact that it was published in 1979, long before the prevalence of shows like X-Files or Fringe that are its not so indirect descendants.

Then there are the loads of witness interviews that are woven into the stories, most of which resemble this kind of quote from the alien encounters chapter:

“Suddenly, the strange man vanished,” he later told investigators, “and I can’t explain how he did, since he did not disappear from my field of vision by walking away, but vanished like an image one erases suddenly.”

Absolutely classic.

And there is the obligatory layout of black and white photos (a la the Loch Ness Monster photo above) that are grainy and somehow head-tiltingly believable… you get to see tempting photos of aliens, UFO’s, bigfoot, and plenty of other pictures that have since been proven as hoaxes. But it really doesn’t matter to me if the stories are true or not.

To me, the most beautiful thing about this book is that it respectfully tells the stories, even when they are known to be false, allowing for the fact that people believe them, are driven to make them up, and that they may have a basis in either history or actual fact, as stories like this have been around in every culture for all time. It’s human nature to both fear and believe in strange things, and human nature to enjoy hearing stories about them.

This book allows you to indulge your human nature for head-scratching…

Photo Credit: luvi