Lucian Poll's Collection

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, Martin. I'm glad you're enjoying it! If you want a brief overview of any of the more esoteric article headings found on these covers let me know and I'll post a digested read.

[Lucian Poll]

Another set of covers, this time issues 66 to 74:



And a quick rundown of each one:

Issue 66
Without a trace?
PK for the people
The aliens strike back
Magic of numbers
The Holy Grail
(The image accompanies an account of a close encounter of the third kind that occurred near Anolaima, Cudinamarca, Colombia, on 4th July 1969. In an issue full of arresting images, not least of which a very booby hippy on p1305 (sales must have been dropping), it's disappointing to find what appears to be a badly drawn mini-barbeque set on the cover!)
(This was also the first issue to feature international pricing on the cover, so the magazine must have found some success overseas.)

Issue 67
Saucers of Satan
New angle on the Triangle
Shades of the Ripper
Future lives recalled
Power in numbers
(The image depicts "a demonic-looking flying saucer", though I'm not sure about the "demonic-looking" part. The artist is not credited, which is a shame as the full image looks pretty cool. It looks like it should belong on the cover of a book. Perhaps it does.)

Issue 68
The real King Arthur
UFOs and the Antichrist
Disappearances explained
Howl of the banshee
Mass phantoms
(Sadly another picture by an uncredited artist, and a bit tricky to see what's going on. The image is detail of an army sleeping on the battlefield while armies of phantoms wage war in the skies, a possible sign of things to come.)

Issue 69
UFOs of the Devil
Science, art and numbers
Prisoner without a face
Future memories
Lost and found
(The image shows "the myth of the man in the iron mask - doomed perpetually to wear a heavy helmet and manacles. In reality he was not kept in fetters, and his mask was of velvet with iron clasps.")

Issue 70
The Voynich mystery
Ghosts on the march
The Ripper's shadow
Flight 19 vanishes
The Fox sisters
(The image is "an example of the script in which the Voynich manuscript is written." There's a fair amount online about this, but essentially the manuscript is a mysterious medieval book purchased by a bookseller called Voynich 100 years ago. It contains diagrams of unusual plants, most of which do not match any known species, and is written in an odd script that has defied codebreakers throughout the ages.)

Issue 71
Plagues from space
The uncrackable code
Behind the iron mask
Enter Katie King
Leaving the body
(The image is "an artist's impression of the European Space Agency's probe Giotto which, in 1986, will fly past Halley's comet." The image accompanies the "Plagues from space" article, which seems to ride in on the coat-tails of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain.)

Issue 72
OOBE experiments
Fox sisters' confessions
Telepathy without tears
UFOs and bent lights
Out of thin air
(The image is detail of a painting inspired by St Augustine's De Civitate Dei. The image shows a Sciopode (a.k.a. Sciapode), a bizarre being that could run very fast despite only having one leg that couldn't bend. And if you thought that was trippy you should see the whole picture:



Issue 73
Prophet by appointment
Standing stones mystery
People from nowhere
Is there life on Mars?
What Katie did
(The image is of Mont de la Ville, "mountain of the town", megaliths that were transported from their original setting in Jersey to Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, in the 18th Century. For more impressive images of standing stones, check out The Devils Arrows in Google images.)

Issue 74
Secrets in stone
The Katie King scandal
The experimenter effect
What did the seer see?
UFO sickness
(The image shows paths of subatomic particles in a bubble chamber. It accompanies an article that discusses whether intense thought by scientists can create self-fulfilling prophecies in their work.)

[frik51]

Hi frik. Great minds think alike!

Vampirella never really reached my darkened corner of the world so I'm not so familiar with the comic. It doesn't stop Amazon recommending the Vampirella Archives to me every time I log in, though! I might have to sample a couple of volumes in the future.

Yes, please do!
The Vampirella series features the same artists/writers as do the Creepy and Eerie books - top notch entertainment!
I'm sure you'd be terribly impressed!

sk

[TerryE]

I knew Siep would like the Creepy and Eerie collections.

Welcome Lucian!

[Lucian Poll]

Interesting, Frik. I loved Archie Goodwin's stories in the other two titles, and how the guy seemed to have a bottomless pit of stories. I also like the fact he was warned against using his real name as it had already appeared as a character name elsewhere. I'll have to tell Randy that in the "Cemetery Dance to re-open to submissions later this year" thread!

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks for the welcome, Terry. You may have seen I've started a NaNoWriMo 2012 thread. I spotted you started one last year. If you are interested this time around do hop in!

[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!)

[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]

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.

[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]

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.)

[bookworm 1]

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

[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.)

[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]

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!)