Lucian Poll's Collection

[Lucian Poll]

Hi, Joe. I've not seen Futurama for ages! Not since its return, anyway. I remember a similar gag in Family Guy, only with Lois smacking down a sexually-agressive merman and, being fish-top and man-bottom, it just flapping around on the floor uselessly. Now that's a show I'd kill to write for. I'd post my entire Family Guy box set collection here, but that's not really in keeping with a horror fiction forum!

[Joe315]

That reminds of an episode of a cartoon (Futurama) in which the main character falls in love with a mermaid but when he realized the way in which they would have relations (like a fish would, one releases eggs, they other, as the mermaid said, "fertilizer") he said, "Why couldn’t she be the other type of mermaid, with the fish part on top and the lady part on the bottom?!"

Thanks, bookworm. I still wouldn't like to find the Fejee mermaid nibbling my toes. The other mermaid, however... Anyway, before things get super-weird here's another cover!

[Joe315]

Google can give you some interesting results.

[Lucian Poll]

Hi, bookworm. When I saw that particular photo I knew I had to include it here! Pop his name into Google images and you'll see some incredible images of other unfortunate people with the same (and sometimes more extreme) condition. And Halle Berry in a bikini top. Swear to God, I don't know how the internet works sometimes...

Anyway, here's a picture of how the lad looks following the surgery:

[Lucian Poll]

Hello again. How about another dose of covers? Coming right up! This antepenultimate post on The Unexplained covers issues 129 to 137:



And a quick once-over the contents of each issue:

Issue 129
Eliphas Levi
Altantis in the Bahamas?
China's psychic children
The Thornton murders
'Invisible' UFOs
(The image is a magical design known as a Goetic circle used in infernal evocations - "the raising of the denizen's of hell to visible appearance". It accompanies an article that discusses whether famed ritual magician Eliphas Levi was all he was cracked up to be.)

Issue 130
Miracle cures
Secrets of the ancients
Where is everybody?
The road to Altantis?
Benson Herbert
(The image is the cover of the Spring 1942 issue of Planet Stories and accompanies the "Where is everybody?" article. The image can also be found on the Wikepedia entry for Planet Stories magazine:



Issue 131
Search for ETI
Miracles of the Virgin
Regression: the facts
Great Lakes Triangle
The Ripper murders
(The image from this 1983 issue's cover is an artist's impression of a space telescope that may be used in the search for ETI - Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. The Hubble Space Telescope had an original launch target of 1983 so maybe this painting was an early concept piece? Probably not, but it's still pretty cool.)

Issue 132
Talking to aliens
Ripper riddle - solved?
One man's earthquake
Life before life?
Croiset's critics
(The image is an etching of the discovery of Jack the Ripper's fifth victim. Here's the full picture:



Issue 133
Sex and psi
Masons, royalty and the Ripper
Lakes' legends: the facts
Gillan's grave
Andrija Puharich
(The image is an engraving from 1896 called Satana, by Fidus, which was the pseudonym used by German illustrator, painter and publisher Hugo Reinhold Karl Johann Höppener.)

Issue 134
UFOs from Ummo
Sex, sorcery and seances
Reincarnated twins
Joanna Southcott
Solectrics on test
(The image is detail from an 1814 cartoon entitled "Joanna Southcott the prophetess excommunicating the bishops". Here's a high-quality image of the whole piece from Yale University's website:



Issue 135
News from Ummo
Amazing French poltergeist
Bloxham tapes debunked?
Observation theory
A new twist to PK
(The image accompanies an article regarding a series of extraordinary letters and phone calls received by a group of Madrid ufologists in 1967 from creatures who insisted they hailed from the planet Ummo. "A professor in the faculty of medicine at Madrid University allegedly received through the post a small cube that was smooth, black and metallic on all sides bar one; the remaining side had a translucent screen. Accompanying instructions told him to speak a certain sequence of vowels - upon which the little screen lit up, and the professor saw a live specimen of a nerve cell. It is said that the professor filmed the entire incident - but his name has been withheld and the whereabouts of the film unknown." Cool!)

Issue 136
Geller's guru
Betty and Barney's lost hours
Just a coincidence?
Changing the past
Southcott's saga
("The photograph [is] of an alleged UFO in mid-flight (jagged line on left) and a 'space being'". The photograph was taken by Andrija Puharich at Mill Hill, North London, on 24th May 1974. Believe me, the photo is no clearer in the magazine. It could be anything!)

Issue 137
Ummo: true or false?
St Joan: child of God?
Miracles of St Medard
Pursued by a poltergeist
Salem: the madness begins
(The image shows Joan of Arc riding into Orléans after the English withdrew. The accompanying article discusses the mysterious 'voices' that "impelled her inexorably towards her amazing military triumphs - and a martyr's death.")

[bookworm 1]

Holy crap!! That boy about freaked me out and I work with the disabled.Would love to see a picture of what he looks like now.I thought it was trick photograph at first.

[Lucian Poll]

Anyone for a little more oddness? Me too. Here is a photo of The Unexplained covers, spanning 120 to 128:



And here's a shufti through the contents:

Issue 120
Comets' fiery history
The talents of D. D. Home
The Amityville debate
The mind of a psychic
The horse whisperers
(The image, surely dear to all horror fans' hearts, is of 112 Ocean Avenue in the Long Island district of Amityville.)

Issue 121
Peace in 1939?
The Enfield poltergeist
The greatest medium?
Inside the UFO nests
The perfect murder
(The image is of a crop circle that appeared at Cheesefoot Head in Hampshire in the summer of 1981. The work of pranksters they may be, but crop circles have since made for some incredible images over the years. It's a shame my bread is so expensive these days...)

Issue 122
The Priddy Project
Sinister sounds at Enfield
Amityville - the truth
The Watseka wonder
Psychic photo file
(From the Psychic photo file: Based on the notion that some sensitives can see the emotions of other people, the image shows "the thought form of a person 'not terrified but seriously startled'.")

Issue 123
Enfield on trial
The man they couldn't hang
Was Christ married?
Catastrophe theory
Life copies art
(The image is of the Virgin Mary tending to her son's body following the crucifixion. The artist is uncredited, sadly. A quick look on Google images yielded more pictures of Christ appearing on a slice of toast than of this painting.)

Issue 124
Christ in India
Computing catastrophes
Psi: a practical approach
More psychic photos
Mind versus brain
(The image shows hippuric acid at a magnification of 150, used to illustrate "the bright colours and abstract patterns [that] are typical of certain types of drug-induced hallucination.")

Issue 125
Weird China
Voodoo's strange gods
Rennes: secret dossier
Phantom planes
Is death a dream?
(The image is of Yu Zhenhuan, one of the most famous of China's hairy children, born in 1977. "His parents were horrified when he was born and were tempted to let him die. Now the state is helping them with his upbringing." Happily the guy seems to be doing alright for himself these days:



Incidentally, the boy with Yu Zhenhuan is Hou Guozhu, once referred to as the 'half-brain boy'. He has since had successful cosmetic surgery to correct the shape of his skull.)

Issue 126
Gurdjieff
Rennes: the Grand Masters
Bottesford witches
Voodoo in Brazil
What is genius?
(The image is of Chopin. His muse makes a last appearance as death embraces him. Here is the full image, if a little small:



Issue 127
UFOs and radar
The Chinese puzzle
Did Christ survive the cross?
Houdini and the mediums
Two-way timeslips
(The image: "The radar blips on 'primary' radar are formed by direct reflection of radar waves from objects." Not a classic cover!)

Issue 128
Wilhelm Reich
Who discovered America?
Was Houdini psychic?
Unravelling Rennes
UFOs and angels
(The image is from a painting that depicts life being created from inorganic matter, "the alchemists' obsession". Sadly another uncredited image and one I can't seem to track down. It accompanies the article on Wilheim Reich, who believed that the secret of physical and mental health was contained in the orgasm. Well, it certainly puts a spring in your step!)

[Lucian Poll]

Here's another round of covers, this time for issues 111 to 119:



And here is a rundown of contents:

Issue 111
Riddles of reality
Aliens' many masks
Centaurs, scales and scorpions
Geraldine Cummins
Rites and wrongs
(The photo shows Cecil Williamson, head of The Witches Kitchen coven in the Isle of Man, breathing life into a poppet. He had earlier received a curse via a letter. The poppet represents the woman that sent the letter, and he later inserts glass splinters into its body. I'm sure he was a lovely man once you got to know him.)

Issue 112
Freaks of nature
UFO vehicle interference
Cosmic joke revisited
Summoning spirits
The goat, the angel and the fish
(The image is of fork lightning, which is always awe-inspiring. It accompanies an article on freaks of nature, for example how lightning can sometimes be seen to pick and choose who or what it strikes.)

Issue 113
Eusapia Palladino
Strange sounds of nature
Mu - the lost continent
Lightning calculators
Computer nets UFOs
(The image is an artist's impression of a UFO witnessed by two factory workers in the town of Nelson, Lancashire, early in 1977. The presence of the UFO caused the lights of their car to dim and the engine to cut out. The witnesses were only able to start the car once the UFO had moved on.)

Issue 114
Alien cats in Britain
The Swiss woman's dream
More natural oddities
Ritual magic today
Queenie Nixon
(The photo shows 'Sister Edith', one of Queenie Nixon's spirit guides. She is the one holding her hands to her face. "Said to be Queenie's spirit counterpart outside her body, this figure was not seen by witnesses at the seance.")

Issue 115
Pub ghosts
The dowser and the dream
Lemuria: a likely story?
The doom boom
Edgar Cayce
(The image is detail from a painting called 'The Riders Of The Apolcalypse' by Vasco Taskovski, whose other works are very Dali-esque. The photo probably doesn't do justice to this striking but decidedly odd painting. Here's a better picture, if a little small:



Issue 116
Mystery Earth lights
Hurtling towards the end
Cottingley revelations
Lion hunts in Britain
Psi in vogue
(The image is artist John Petts' impression of a curious light he saw during a spate of UFO sightings that occurred around St Brides Bay, Dyfed, in 1977. I can't imagine it took him long to paint.)

Issue 117
Sex cults
Hanging Rock: what happened?
Curse of the Celtic heads
Countdown to the end
Cottingley - the truth
(The image shows the erotic sculptures on the Khajuraho temple in India. Looks a cinch to me! I don't know if the picture editor was going through another rocky patch but the same picture in the article was positioned such that a staple went right through the naughty bits. Ooyah!)

Issue 118
Love burials
Sex: elixir of life?
Return of the comets
Earth's power lines
Dream dialogues
(The image is of "the Whirlpool Galaxy, which, like our own is clearly a spiral galaxy." The article discusses whether the path of the Sun in such a galaxy can place a large number of comets into our solar system, and whether they could cause catastrophic events on Earth.)

Issue 119
1914: all quiet?
Helen Duncan: martyr?
Squatters in the mind
Suspended animation
Waking up to psi
(The somewhat comical image, from 1974, shows an Indian yogi with his head buried in the earth. He remained there for many long minutes with a pulse rate of just two beats per minute - but he survived. It accompanies an article on suspended animation.)

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, bookworm. I still wouldn't like to find the Fejee mermaid nibbling my toes. The other mermaid, however... Anyway, before things get super-weird here's another cover!



And a run-down of each issue:

Issue 102
Future shock
Crashed saucers at Roswell
Perpetual motion machines
Telepathy: seeing the light
Oldfield: current crusader
(The image is of a late-seventeenth-century idea for a perpetual motion machine. "No inventor has ever been granted a patent." For me these designs are always interesting, and always flawed by such pesky things as friction and gravity. Some of them remind me of Rube Goldberg cartoons.)

Issue 103
The Bell Witch strikes
End of perpetual motion?
Twitches, twigs and treasure
Whose crashed saucers?
Visiting the future
(The image shows a woodcut from De re metallica, by the German mineralogist Agricola (a.k.a. Georg Bauer), published in 1556, and accompanies the "Twitches, twigs and treasure" article about dowsing.)

Issue 104
Oldfield's new field
Anastasia: end of the line
Aliens identity parade
Glastonbury zodiac
Madame Blavatsky
(My photography skills fail me again. The image is detail from a painting by Odilon Redon. Here's the full painting, in which a Cyclops gets an eyeful of naked lady...



...which is all very pleasant, and not the least bit stalkerish . This old TV advert, however, for Little Caesar's Pizza is just outright chilling! I saw this on a comedy clip-show around 20 years ago, ill, in the dark, whilst sitting in a creaking caravan during a downpour. It completely took me by suprise, and I still can't watch it today without breaking out in goosebumps. As the guy from the clip-show said at the time: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?"

Issue 105
Aromatherapy
Learn how to dowse
Human glow worms
Aleister Crowley
An alien is born
(The image is of "Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec god, in his guise as the morning star...surrounded by fire on an ancient stele from Mexico." It accompanies the article on human glow worms, or how the holy and the sick are often depicted with auras of light around their heads.)

Issue 106
Electric people
What crashed at Rendlesham?
Sagée and her shadow
Every man an alien?
Dowsing dissected
(The image accompanies an article on whether accounts of UFO abduction are rooted in the experience of human birth. "When Betty Andreasson was abducted from her home in South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, on 25 January 1967, she found herself sitting in a clear plastic chair with a fitted cover filled with a grey liquid. Closing her eyes she felt pleasant vibrations and was fed some sweet fluid through a tube in her mouth. She felt relaxed and happy. The whole experience, Alvin Lawson points out, is a classic reflection of good experiences in the womb.")

Issue 107
Blinded by UFOs
Crowley: man and magick
'Eva C' and ectoplasm
The real Robin Hood
Secret graffiti
(The image shows one of many buildings in the region of Puglia, in southern Italy, that have odd symbols painted on their unique conical roofs. "The origin of these unique trulli is hotly disputed...")

Issue 108
John Cain, healer
Electrical connections
Suffering of UFO victims
Sagée, a second look
Secrets of the zodiac
("In this 14th-century astrological drawing Aries (the ram) sits on the head, Taurus (the bull) on the neck and Gemini (the twins) on the upper arms. Each part of the body was traditionally associated with a sign of the zodiac.")

Issue 109
The Flying Dutchman
Fairies, demons and aliens
White symbols - black arts?
Who was Robin Hood?
The crab, the lion and the virgin
(The image is an illustration by Gregory Robinson for Rudyard Kipling's poem Seven seas and accompanies an article on the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which is an old sea story of how a ship's captain, the titular Flying Dutchman, challenges the wrath of God and as a result is condemned to sail the ocean for eternity, bringing death to all who see his ship.)

Issue 110
Fishpond enigma
Are aliens angels?
Ilkley rock carvings
Texas UFO debate
Ruth's nightmare
(The image is one of several in an article that details assorted rocks on the Yorkshire moors that sport weathered symbols of unusual origin, and ponders who could have carved them into the stones.)

[bookworm 1]

Very nice.I don't think that mermaid is to scary.I have been more terified watching the news.

[Lucian Poll]

Here is another photo, this time showing the covers from issues 93 to 101:



And here's a run through the articles in each issue:

Issue 93
Spotlight on Borley
Mysterious moving stones
Cergy-Pontoise confusion
Alternative medicine
Figures from beyond
(The image shows a mysterious moving stone of Racetrack Playa, one of the dried-up lakes of the Sierra Nevada mountains.)

Issue 94
A touch of the Sun
The king and the covens
Homeopathy - does it work?
Bible and the paranormal
A UFO comes to town
(The image shows detail from the first of a series of shots taken by Anthony Russell, a keen photographer, in 1966 of a UFO he spotted in Streatham, London.)

Issue 95
Inside the Sun
Merfolk: a fishy tale?
Tension mounts at Borley
New Testament miracles
Spirit photographs
(The image is of a mermaid as painted by John William Waterhouse. It's quite a nice painting:



I'm guessing the Fejee mermaid image, also featured in the article, was too scary to put on the cover:



Issue 96
Borley in ruins?
British scareships
Murder and the Moon
The art of geomancy
The healing touch
(The image is of Macbeth and Banquo meeting the Weird Sisters, from the article about geomancy. The picure is not credited, but was drawn by the famous turn-of-the-century illustrator Arthur Rackham. Check out his work on Google images. Amazing stuff!)

Issue 97
Whose scareships?
The talking mongoose
Consulting the I Ching
The greatest miracle?
Spirits in the studio
(The image is of Gef, the talking mongoose from the Isle of Man, which was the centre of a media sensation in the 1930s. "All of the pictures of the talking mongoose were uniformly poor and indistinct, leaving as much to the imagination as to the eye.")

Issue 98
No end to Borley
Minnesota iceman mystery
Where are memories stored?
Animals' spirits on film
Gef keeps talking
(The image is one of two computer images showing cells dividing in a sea urchin's egg. (This is the "before" shot.) They accompany an article that discusses theories on how memories are stored and whether past experiences and memories can be accessed by future generations of a species in order to "skip a few pages", so to speak.)

Issue 99
John Dee
Tarot cards explained
In search of Harry Price
Glastonbury explored
Who was the iceman?
(The image is an (uncredited) artist's impression of how Homo Pongoides would have looked, based on the accounts of Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. It accompanies an article that continues to explore the Minnesota iceman, an 'apeman' preserved in a block of ice by American showman Frank Hansen.)

Issue 100
Crashed UFOs
A step through time
Eileen Garrett: modern medium
Palmistry - does it work?
The coming ice age
(The image is of "the birth of the new island of Surtsey, in the North Altantic, on 14 November 1963, as the result of a submarine volcanic eruption. It has been suggested that huge clouds of dust ejected into the upper atmosphere by large-scale volcanic eruptions may be responsible for ice ages.")

Issue 101
Besieged by UFOs
The Pat McAdam mystery
The case for Harry Price
The real Anastasia?
Quest for Avalon
(The image (uncredited) illustrates an account of a dazzling UFO display over Aveyron, in rural France, in 1967.)

[Lucian Poll]

Here are another set of covers of The Unexplained, this time covering issues 84 to 92:



And a quick run-down of the contents:

Issue 84
Mind over body
Beast of Gevaudan
'Windows' explained
The waiting future
Earth's pole vault
(The image shows the Beast of Gevaudan. "Very few survived an assault by the beast - and those that did were liable to be left mad by the encounter." Beast stories are another area of the paranormal that I could happily lap up until the end of my days.)

Issue 85
The alient fleet
Living thought forms
100 years of the SPR
Screaming skulls
End of the beast
(The image is of "the screaming skull of Bettiscombe Manor in Dorset. As recently as the early 1900s the skull is said to have taken revenge on someone who tossed it out of the house it loved. Family tradition has it that the relic is the head of a West Indian slave.")

Issue 86
Black dogs
Sinister UFO cults
Phantom hitch-hikers
Living in the past
SPR's psi search
(The image shows "members of the Aetherius Society charging a 'prayer battery' with spiritual energy on Wimbledon Common in London. They believe that the energy, when released under the direction of the Interplanetary Parliament, can assist troubled parts of the globe to struggle against spiritual danger." They're still going today.)

Issue 87
Apocalypse now?
Joan Grant's many lives
Black dogs - friend or foe?
World of Charles Fort
The last frontier
(The image accompanies an article on Charles Fort, who is, of course, quite simply the godfather of the unexplained. It is an engraving depicting the classic 'fire from heaven' story, to illustrate Fort's belief that almost anything can fall from the sky.)

Issue 88
The SPR today
Lost isle of Lyonesse
Fort - prophet or fool?
Rose Gladden, healer
Search for Pluto
(Another uncredited picture, this time an artist's impression of the surface of Pluto. I like this image as it's very serene. "The Sun's warmth is so feeble that snows of frozen methane cover the rocky shores of a lake of liquid methane." So a bit nippy then.)

Issue 89
Psychic surgery
The man who created life
Long shadow of past lives
Meaning of UFO cults
Trouble with curses
(The image shows "the strange insect that came to life in the bottom of a basin during (Andrew) Crosse's experiments with electricity.")

Issue 90
Jinxes
Biorhythms - the inside story
Crazy night with UFOs
Solid proof for survival?
The city under the sea
(The image shows William Marriott, an author and debunker, surrounded by the props used by a fake medium.)

Issue 91
ESP unlimited
Surgery or sleight of hand?
Objects from nowhere
Classic UFO abduction
Occult chemistry
(The image shows one of "two kinds of 'ultimate physical atom' seen clairvoyantly by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater." The article discusses whether some discoveries regarding the structure of matter had already been made using ancient Indian yoga techniques.)

Issue 92
The cycles of life
Psychic surgery - success
Haunting of the quark
Christ's bloodline
The dead speak
(The image is of the crucifixion, as depicted by Giotto, and accompanies an article that discusses whether Christ actually died on the cross or went on to marry and father children.)
(This issue is notable for the extraordinary photo sequence showing the (illegal) psychic surgery being performed on Anne Dooley, who later went onto write about the subject after it relieved her of a chronic lung condition. In the procedure she had an unscheduled tonsilectomy performed on her with unsterilised scissors, then a razor incision made into her back to allow the psychic surgeon to suck out a blood clot from her lung. All throughout the 'operation' she has a handkerchief clamped to her mouth as if trying not to throw up, and looks utterly spent by the end of it. Compulsive reading!)

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, bookworm, it's really nice of you to say that. I hope that some of the stories and articles listed on these covers inspire further reading, as Joe found with the King Umberto story, and fire imaginations, as I have found since revisiting these magazines.

I'll have a few more curios once all the covers have been posted, then it'll be regular paperbacks and hardbacks from all round the bookshop.

[bookworm 1]

I really like these.I think it is great that another collection thread has started.Everyone is always worried about posting the same stuff and we still love to see it.Then along comes someone like you Lucian who introduces us to something different and gets us excited for things we have not seen.By the way we still love looking at books we have seen before.When they are in a different thread they are part of that person and we get to know other people who have the same interests as some others.So anyone looking at this just post your collections we do want to see them.

[Lucian Poll]

Another round of covers, anyone? Coming right up! This time issues 75 to 83:



And a here's a run through each cover:

Issue 75
Psi in the lab
Margo Williams, medium
The man who fell to earth
Secrets of the red planet
Alien contacts
(The image is a still from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.)

Issue 76
Aliens in the mind
What killed the dinosaurs?
The bookies' nightmare
Chanctonbury Ring
Timeloops
(The cover shows "an image-processed photograph of the Stephan's Quintet group of galaxies. Scientists believe that time becomes distorted near large, dense masses - such as stars or black holes - making time travel possible.")

Issue 77
A great eccentric
Where dark forces meet
Making a time machine
The dinosaur debate
New light on leys
(The image fronts an article which ponders how a dinosaur may look these days had they survived. As with several images in the partwork the picture is uncredited, which is a shame as I think the model looks awesome! Very detailed and well thought out.)

Issue 78
The Cock Lane ghost
Matthew Manning: healer
Contactee controversies
Visions of the Virgin
PK in the office
(The photo depicts the grotto at Lourdes, France, where Bernadette Soubirous had a vision of a beautiful lady who later said: "I am the Immaculate Conception.")

Issue 79
Psi: the secret agent
The Dragon and the leys
Contact with the Pleiades
The anger of Annemarie
Ghost on trial
(The image is one of "two photographs taken within a short time of each other, showing 'spacecraft' of two different types manoeuvring over (Billy) Meier's farm".)

Issue 80
Pleiades contact
Prophecies of the Virgin
American lake monsters
The evil Gilles de Rais
Listening to leys
("Since 1970 Veronica Leuken, the 'Bayside seeress' from New York, has claimed she has had visions of the Virgin, who blessed her Polaroid camera so that it takes pictures with strange effects, especially the appearance of the so-called 'Ball of Redemption'. Critics, however, think it resembles a thumb over the lens." After capturing a few 'Balls of Redemption' of my own in trying to photo these covers, I'm with the critics. You decide:



Issue 81
Psi warnings
UFO photos exposed
Lake monsters surface
Leys' hidden powers
Window areas
(The image: "Simcoe Lake, Ontario, reputedly the home of a monster variously dubbed Igopogo and Kempenfelt Kelly. Reports of the monster go back to the 19th Century.")

(This has, just this moment, given me the idea for a story. Good Lord, folks, run now! You've been warned!)

Issue 82
Spirit portraits
Monsters that got away
Zombies: the walking dead
Window area mysteries
Mystery submersibles
(The image: "the role of a zombie is acted out in a voodoo street festival.")

Issue 83
What is time?
The corpse that winked
The fire and the phantom
Creating zombies
Reversing poles
(The image is a theoretical look at the Earth, with an ice cap over Central America and part of South America, to illustrate an article that argues that our polar configuration may not be as set-in-stone as we think.)
(The coprse that winked - come on, don't tell me you're not curious - details how "The old belief that a corpse will react to the presence of its murderer seems to have found horrific expression in the strange case of Joan Norkot.". Brilliant stuff!)