Lucian Poll's Collection

[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]

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.")

[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:

[Joe315]

Google can give you some interesting results.

[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!

[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]

I forgot about that episode.

[Lucian Poll]

Evening all. Time for me to dip my toes into The Unexplained again, this time issues 138 to 146:



And here, in time-honoured fashion, is a look through the contents:

Issue 138
Shamanism
Haunted Penkaet Castle?
Peter Hurkos challenged
Joanna Southcott's box
Betty Hill's star map
(The image is detail from "a painting from the journals of Father Nicholas Point" from the article on shamanism. "It's caption reads: 'One becomes a medicine man only after making a pilgrimage during which he [sic] prays fervently, fasts from four to eight days, and eventually receives a "sign" from a bear, a red deer, a green ram, or perhaps even a monster.")

Issue 139
How old is man?
Saucers as scapegoats?
Salem's grim legacy
Psychic dentistry
St. Joan: witch?
(The image is from an article on the origins of man. It shows a reconstruction of "skull 1470" by Meave Leakey, which was found by her husband at Koobi Fora in Kenya. "The blue material does duty for missing parts of the fossil.")

Issue 140
Practical ufology
The soul and the shaman
Ghost of Ardachie Lodge
Miracle in Tibet
Teleportations
(Not a classic cover! The image shows "one of the many unidentified objects over Montserrat." This is the mountain district of Montserrat in Spain, not the Caribbean island that was nearly destroyed by a volcano in the mid-1990s.)

Issue 141
Life: a fine balance
UFOs: who's watching who?
Ancestral arguments
The Vandy mystery
End of Ardachie
(The image is detail from the frontispiece of a Lutheran bible of 1534 and fronts an article on those who reckon the Universe was created by an intelligent being for intelligent beings to live in: the anthropic principle. It's a philosophical debate I won't go into here, you'll be glad to hear. Instead here's the full image, which, while not my bag, is striking all the same:



Issue 142
The angels of Mons
Modern witchcraft exposed
Legend of Prester John
Isa Northage - medium
Neanderthals today?
(The image is from The Illustrated London News. "Patriotic Britons in the First World War, convinced that their cause was a righteous one, eagerly seized on news that their army had received supernatural aid from ghostly archers, angels - even St. George himself." Here's the full image:



Issue 143
No angels at Mons?
Message from a drowned man?
UFOs: the great cover up?
Ghost of Fyvie Castle
Witches - and worse
(The image is a German illustration from 1555 of a witch being burnt at the stake. Goodness knows what is grabbing the other witch by the throat!)

Issue 144
Secret UFO files
The Schneider brothers
Ghost with wet boots
Prester John: found?
The dead speak out
(The image shows the Camperdown ramming the Victoria on 22 June 1893, as depicted by the French magazine Le Petit Journal. "The Admiral seemed a trifle absent-minded as he ordered his flagship to her doom. Was he also 'absent in spirit' - on a ghostly visit to his London home?")

Issue 145
Croglin vampire
Mons: who were the angels?
The mystery of mazes
English MIB threat
Birth and re-birth
(The image is an illustration from James Rymer's Varney the vampire, published in 1847.)

Issue 146
UFO picture gallery
Raymond Lodge returns
The Judge Hornby case
UFOs: an open secret?
The Schneider scandal
Can animals think?
(The image accompanies an article on animal intelligence. It is an 18th century illustration of a learned pig "well versed in all languages" and "a perfect Arithmetician, Mathematician and Composer of Musick". There were many learned pigs doing the rounds and they were mostly, if not all, owned by showmen - I reckon we can all imagine how these animals "learned" their craft...)

That's all for now. I'll post the final round of covers tomorrow.

[Lucian Poll]

How do, everyone. This is it, the last of The Unexplained covers. These photos cover the issues 147 to 157, plus a few odds and ends to wrap things up:





And here is a rundown of the contents of each issue:

Issue 147
Pied Piper - fact?
Born to be psychic?
The inventor of psi
A dolphin's world
Mirabelli
(The image is of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The illustration, along with a few others in the article, is taken from a 19th-century German book: Der Rattenfänger von Hameln. I love that word: Rättenfanger!)

Issue 148
Meaning of colour
Mazes: the inside story
The way of Subud
Freud and psi
Iridology
(The image accompanies an article on iridology - detecting illness through the markings in the iris. "A dark area and a separation of the fibres at the 'two o' clock' position in the iris of this right eye indicate an underactive thyroid gland. A 'lymphatic rosary' is also visible - a circle of patches near the outer edge of the iris, indicating congestion of the lymphatic system.")

Issue 149
Jung and psi
Who killed William Rufus?
American kangaroos
Dead soldier's tale
Bright beasts
(My photography skills fail me again, but, through the glare, the image shows a finch using a thorn to poke out a grub from a crevice in some tree bark. It "holds the thorn under once claw and eats the grub, then resumes its probing.")

Issue 150
Radionics
Pontefract's poltergeist
Livingston UFO terror
Princes in the Tower
The French prophet
(The image shows the Two Princes, a famous disappearance from the history books, as depicted in a 19th-century painting by Paul Delaroche.)

Issue 151
A female Pope?
Eugene Aram: innocent?
Zigmund Jan Adamski
More than mere pets
The miracle machine
(The image: "Pope Joan is delivered of a child in the midst of a papal procession in this 15th-century illustration from Boccaccio's Decameron." Pope Joan's papacy is believed to be between 855 and 858, though this is open to argument, as is the existence of Pope Joan herself. This made for an amusing question on a popular quiz show here in the UK called QI that revealed an unusual requirement of medieval Popes to sit on a special throne with a hole cut in the seat, so that a cardinal could put a hand through and check the pontiff for testicles. Again this is open to conjecture, but very funny nonetheless!)

Issue 152
Sacred geometry
Swedenborg's strange world
Edgar Allan Poe: murderer?
An answer to Livingston?
Roy - king of deceit
(The image is of Leonardo Da Vinci's iconic 'Vitruvian Man' from the article on sacred geometry.)

Issue 153
Magnetic people
Valentine Greatrakes - healer
Adamski: UFO drama
Sacred symbolism
World of fantasy
(The image is "a painting by a drug addict showing visions experienced as withdrawal symptoms" from an article that discusses people who live in a dream world all the time.)

Issue 154
Birth of the gods
The Western witch doctor
Pachita: psychic surgeon
The Campden wonder
A walk with death
(The image illustrates a young girl called Durdana's impression of God following a near-death experience. "When asked to describe what God looked like, she could only say 'blue'." I'm not sure where the flora comes into it, but there you go.)

Issue 155
The case for God
Faces from another world?
Krakatoa: a true story?
Twilight of the gods
Left and right brain
(The image is detail from a 17th-century painting by Peter Paul Rubens called Achilles Slays Hector. It accompanies an article on how we no longer see signs from gods and godesses - the twilight of the gods. Here's the full image:



Issue 156
The Oz factor
Reality: a Fortean view
The great psi debate
A healthy forecast?
Modern myths
(The image is a still from the 1939 film The Wizard Of Oz. The article discusses timelessness and a feeling of dislocation associated with close encounters with UFOs.)

And finally there is issue 157, which is an index of the entire 3 year run of The Unexplained. Beneath these issues you can see the glossy jacket that held issue 1, and the (folded up) poster that accompanied it. (The full poster is little more than a large advertisment.)

So that's it for this run of covers. Once again I must thank Partworks.co.uk for kindly including these loose covers with my purchase of these books. It was unexpected, beyond the call of duty and, above all, really appreciated.

I hope these covers have sparked interest in some of the topics covered. It's given me a few ideas for stories if nothing else!

[bookworm 1]

That is great!!!!!! I also like the new posts very interesting stuff.You seem very detail oriented.Makes me kind of envyous.It also makes me want to hunt down some of those magazines.

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:hat is great!!!!

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, bookworm. I loved that photo too. I thought I'd post a bit of detail on each issue as the images are currently hosted via my blog. It's a just-in-case measure. That and it was a lot of fun digging through the books and the internet for updates on the stories. You may have gathered I'm also a sucker for a good picture!

I'm glad I've tickled your interest in the magazines. I note there aren't too many doing the rounds on eBay.com but there are a number of copies of the Reader's Digest's "Mysteries of the Unexplained". While I can't say I'm a massive fan of Reader's Digest (it reminds me too much of waiting rooms) the "Mysteries of the Unexplained" book is flat-out brilliant. I'll post an image of my copy in due course, but there are some truly excellent stories in there. The account of the waxwork of Monsieur Léopold-Lépide at Turner's Waxwork Theatre damn near froze my blood when I first read it - I even read it out to my English class at school around Halloween time when I was a lot younger. (Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking too.) Great stuff!

[Lucian Poll]

Hello all! It's been a while since I've disgraced this corner of the forum, due largely to a farrago of NaNoWriMo, Cemetery Dance's submission window and that whole Christmas thing. I thought this time I'd put on a few piccies that I took around the same time as The Unexplained magazine covers, but never got off my phone 'til now.

So here's one I bought from the Apple bookstore the other month...



I see this guy's going places!

[Lucian Poll]

...and a smashing collection that I've seen advertised in the latest issue of Cemetery Dance (#68):



It's not on Apple, but easily purchasable via Kindle. (Thanks for the accept for the Facebook group by the way, C.W. Very useful and some great names in there too! )

More pics to come. I'm trying to get hold of two fairly recent back issues of Black Static and then I'll put the whole run of covers on here with an index of stories. I hope that appeals!

All the best for 2013 in the meantime!

[Lucian Poll]

As mentioned earlier, here is a brief run of covers for Black Static, the UK's premier horror fiction magazine. The bi-monthly magazine has been running since 2007 and follows a similar format to Cemetery Dance, with around half a dozen stories in each issue along with book/DVD reviews, interviews and commentaries. A special mention must go to the artwork, though, as the standard is often of a high standard.

Okay, so here is a snap of issues 1 to 6 and a list of stories you can find inside.



Issue 1
Bury The Carnival by Simon Avery
Pale Saints And Dark Madonnas by Jamie Barras
Acton Undream by Daniel Bennett
Votary by M. K. Hobson
My Stone Desire by Joel Lane
Lady Of The Crows by Tim Casson
Includes Q&A with Michael Marshall Smith

Issue 2
In the Hole by Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley
The Serpent & The Hatchet Gang by F. Brett Cox
Must See To Appreciate by Scott Nicholson
Unknown by Steve Rasnic Tem
In The Shape Of A Dragon by Melanie Fazi
Ash-Mouth by Lynda E. Rucker
Holding Pattern by Andrew Humphrey
Includes article on Mick Scully

Issue 3 (My favourite cover!)
The Pit by Alexander Glass
The Mist of Lichthafen by Seth Skorkowsky
The Sentinels by Tony Richards
The Difference Between by Ian R. Faulkner
The Morning After by Carole Johnstone
The Fantasy Jumper by Will McIntosh
The Toad And I by Matthew Holness
Includes Q&A with Sarah Langan

Issue 4
Cleaning The Western Kittiwake by Tyler Keevil
Atwater by Cody Goodfellow
Zombie by Conrad Williams
Salt by Nicholas Royle
Ye Shall Eat In Haste by Steve Nagy
This Much I Remember by Barry Fishler
Includes a Q&A with Conrad Williams

Issue 5
How Deep Is His Loneliness by Kathleen Winter
The Second Death Of Johan Klupe by Tim Casson
Night Game by Tony Richards
The Rising River by Daniel Kaysen
Winter Journey by Joel Lane
Slap by Gary McMahon
Less A Dream Than This We Know by Christopher M. Cevasco
Includes a Q&A with Jack Ketchum

Issue 6
The Better Part Of You by Simon Avery
Back On The Road by Melanie Fazi
Special Needs by Peter Tennant
En Saga by Nina Allen
All Mouth by Paul Meloy
Viva Las Vegas by Ray Cluley
Includes Q&A with Scott Sigler

[bookworm 1]

Nice adds.