Lucian Poll's Collection

[Joe315]

Those are cool. I looked up the umberto story. Really interesting.

[Lucian Poll]

No worries, Martin. Here's the first photo, covering issues 30 to 38. (I'll stagger them over a number of days so I don't hit you all with a datablast!)



In case the images are a little too fuzzy here are the articles mentioned on the covers.

Issue 30
Dream experiments
How to cast a horoscope
Instrusions from elsewhere
A regiment vanishes
Coincidences
(The image depicts the assassination of King Umberto I of Italy, whose death and important events in his life were closely paralleled by the life of another Umberto, a restaurant owner in Northern Italy.)

Issue 31
Against all the odds
Photographing ghosts
Vanishing soldiers - found?
Influence of the planets
The master doswer
(The image depicts a giant solar flare "perhaps as much as 100,000 miles in length")

Issue 32
The Geller phenomenon
Science and astrology
Ghosts true and false
Strange tricks of fate
Criticisms of Kirlian
OFOs filmed
(The image depicts a very youthful-looking Uri Geller. And yes, the issue is full of spoon-bending!)

Issue 33
When time slips
Kirlian's tarnished aura
Lethbridge's discoveries
The meaning of coincidences
UFOs and the computer (NB: Bear in mind this is from 1981!)
(The image depicts "...a 'computer eye view' of a glowing disc seen over Colorado, USA")

Issue 34
Mass hysteria
Uri Geller tested
Mysteries of the Moon
Classic UFOs analysed
Ghost hunter's guide
(The image depicts the Nuremberg rallies, given as an example of mass hysteria.)

Issue 35
The cosmic joke
Leaps into the future
UFO photos - facts and frauds
Uri: psychic superstar
Is death the end?
(The image depicts detail from "Part of the huge block of ice that suddenly dropped out of the sky and almost hit meteorologist Dr Richard Griffiths in Manchester, England, on 2 April 1973. This photograph was taken through a polarising filter in an effort to determine the structure, and therefore the origin, of the ice - but it remains a complete mystery.")

Issue 36
UFOs in action
Ancient technology
The impossible moon
Miraculous rose petals
A history of hysteria
Ted Serios in focus
(The image is of the Chicago Hilton, as thought onto film by Ted Serios (yes, with the power of his mind), who had actually intended to create an image of the Hilton Hotel at Denver.)

Issue 37
The facts of death
Encounter in Mendoza
The moon's best-kept secrets
A psychic contagion
Man-made UFOs
(The image is detail from a 16th century painting by Joachim Patinir of "a soul being ferried across the river of death - the Styx.")

Issue 38
Irish lake monsters
The UFO goes to war
Mystery of the Welsh lights
Timeslip mechanisms
Puzzles from the past
(The image is a depiction of "the Lough Dubh creature, described as being covered with bristles and having a hippo-like face with a horn on its snout.") (The image further down the page in question is much more to my liking, being a young witch trying to invoke a sea creature. In the nude, obviously. You gotta love those witches, man.)

[Martin]

I would love to see the covers!

Hi all. Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you liked The Unexplained. There's a nice story behind the collection. Being only five or six years old when the magazines came out I wasn't in much of a position to collect them, but a few years ago I had a mini-midlife crisis moment. (I guess you can say the moment is ongoing, hence the Eeries, the Creepys and so on!)

Anyway I was able to track down a full set of The Unexplained here: http://www.partworks.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d136.html. (It's a labour-of-love small business here in the UK.) I explained that I loved the covers of the magazines when I was younger, all moody black background with a stark circle of whatever featured in each issue, and wondered whether the covers had been retained. The owner replied saying that, sadly, the covers tended to be removed so that the content of each issue could run unbroken within each binder. I ordered a set regardless and was incredibly pleased to find the guy had put an unbroken run of covers from issue 30 to 156 in with my order, along with a couple of odds and ends from Issue 1. (You can slightly see them resting against my set of binders.)

Now that's customer service!

If you're curious I'll put the covers on here so you can get a feel for the spooky goings on in each issue. (Don't worry, I won't photograph each one individually, though it is a good way of getting my post count up!)

[Lucian Poll]

Hi all. Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you liked The Unexplained. There's a nice story behind the collection. Being only five or six years old when the magazines came out I wasn't in much of a position to collect them, but a few years ago I had a mini-midlife crisis moment. (I guess you can say the moment is ongoing, hence the Eeries, the Creepys and so on!)

Anyway I was able to track down a full set of The Unexplained here: http://www.partworks.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d136.html. (It's a labour-of-love small business here in the UK.) I explained that I loved the covers of the magazines when I was younger, all moody black background with a stark circle of whatever featured in each issue, and wondered whether the covers had been retained. The owner replied saying that, sadly, the covers tended to be removed so that the content of each issue could run unbroken within each binder. I ordered a set regardless and was incredibly pleased to find the guy had put an unbroken run of covers from issue 30 to 156 in with my order, along with a couple of odds and ends from Issue 1. (You can slightly see them resting against my set of binders.)

Now that's customer service!

If you're curious I'll put the covers on here so you can get a feel for the spooky goings on in each issue. (Don't worry, I won't photograph each one individually, though it is a good way of getting my post count up!)

[Joe315]

I think the unexplained books are cool as well. I like that kind of stuff.

[Ben Staad]

Very cool looking collection. The Unexplained books are just awesome!

[bookworm 1]

Love the horror comics myself.Great stuff.

[Martin]

Great stuff. I love the Unexplained books!

[Lucian Poll]

And here's a (blurry) look inside volume 1. Spontaneous human combustion anybody? Oh go on then...

[Lucian Poll]

I also like the binders for The Unexplained:

[Lucian Poll]

This is something I am particularly pleased with...



In the early 1980's a partwork magazine called The Unexplained ran for a couple of years here in the UK. (Again issues of these were often left dotted around the house when I was a nipper.) Each weekly issue covered assorted topics of the... well... unexplained. Fast forward thirty years and they have a certain charm in these cynical times. Anyway, what you are seeing here is a complete collection of The Unexplained: over 3,000 pages of stories, articles and accounts of oddness split over 157 issues.

Obviously there had to be thirteen volumes!

[Lucian Poll]

Okay, here are a few more snaps.



I've always had a soft spot for horror comics. There were always a couple of ragged copies of Eerie floating around that just so happened to land in the hands of an impressionable pre-teen. I had often seen tatty old magazines for sale via eBay, but when Dark Horse started printing the entire run of both Creepy and Eerie in handsome hardback volumes I was a very happy (old) lad!

[Martin]

Good stuff, thanks for starting another collector's thread!

[bookworm 1]

Very nice stuff.Can not wait to see more.

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, Joe. I'm glad they were of interest. (Relieved too!) I'll get a few more snaps together and will post them in the coming days. Thanks also for the tip re: photobucket.