Lucian Poll's Collection

[Ben Staad]

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

[Joe315]

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

[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!)

[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]

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.)

[Joe315]

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

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, Joe. Here's another photo covering issues 39 to 47:



As before here's a quick run through each cover:

Issue 39
Spring-heeled Jack
Lights of inspiration
The history of werewolves
Elusive Irish monsters
Incorruptable corpses
(The image is just your common-or-garden wolf, which is okay as wolves are cool.) (The story of Spring-heeled Jack, by the way, is utterly barmy. Almost a precursor to Batman in some ways.)

Issue 40
The cyborg cover-up
When the Welsh lights faded
The werewolf transformation
Fossils that do not fit
Curse of the boy king
(The image is of "an unmanned probe - not from space but from Westland, a British helicopter manufacturer." The article does have some interesting pictures of weird and wonderful experimental aircraft, including a flying wing, said probe, and a remotely piloted plane - these days all par for the course in a battle arena.) (I'd imagine.)

Issue 41
A shock to science
The 'Welsh triangle'
Secrets of the grave
Man into beast?
Egyptian magic
(The photograph: "A table levitates at a London sitting of Eusapia Palladino in 1903. Careful investigations ascribed some, at least, of her phenomena to 'some supernormal cause'.")

Issue 42
Psi: the Cinderella science
Images that bleed and weep
UFOs at Ripperston Farm
Master builders' secrets
Mystery alchemist
("The shapes, cut out of plywood, are firmly linked, but the question is how this came about. Were they ingeneously made that way or were they linked paranormally?")

Issue 43
Mind over metal
Puzzling over pyramids
The stigmatic phenomenon
The phantom universe
The jumping coffins
("Paperclips dropped into this glass ball were paranormally 'scrunched' into a fantastic shape by one of Professor Hasted's metal bending subjects.")

Issue 44
The Alaise mystery
Who are the stigmatics?
Pyramid power assessed
Welsh triangle - the facts
The legend of Fulcanelli
(The image relates to a spate of UFO sightings in Wales in the late 70's. It is an artists impression of the Coombs family's account of a UFO cirlcing some rocks near Ripperston Farm "then disappear into them as if through sliding doors". This looks like a week where the picture editor was on holiday!)

Issue 45
Secrets of Alaise
Attack by hostile UFOs?
The legendary money pit
The new view of reality
A stroll into the past
(The image is of Oak Island, Nova Scotia. The yellow areas are where the island has been excavated in the search for a fabled money pit, based on a rumour going back to 1795.)

Issue 46
Timeslip at Dieppe
American spook lights
UFO catches fishermen
Hypnosis: does it exist?
Fulcanelli's secret
(The image is an illustration of "spook lights" a.k.a. Will O' The Wisps and Jack O' Lanterns.)

Issue 47
Lead into gold
Disaster at the pit
Mysteries of migration
The healing trance
Key to reality?
(The image shows detail from an 18th century painting by Joesph Wright and fronts an article on alchemy called "The search for the Philosopher's stone".)

[peteOcha]

Great stuff! And welcome to the forum!!

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks for the warm welcome, Pete.

I'll post another set of covers tomorrow. (One of them is perhaps my favourite of the whole collection.)

[bookworm 1]

like the magazines.keep it coming.

[frik51]

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!

Hey, I got those as well!! Great set of books.
But, where are the Vampirella Archives???

sk

[Lucian Poll]

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.

[Lucian Poll]

Thanks, bookworm. I'm glad you're enjoying the collection so far. Here's another photo, this time covering issues 48 to 56:



Here's a run through the covers and images:

Issue 48
The Elixir of Life
What killed the mammoths?
French timeslips analysed
The case of 'Mary Celeste'
Money pit mystery
(The image depicts the Mary Celeste as painted by an uncredited artist. A shame as I quite like the picture.)

Issue 49
UFO photofile
The healer within
Can animals be kind?
The boy with no past
Mammoth mystery
UFO force fields
(The image depicts a mammoth, again by an uncredited artist. The picture editor must have been going through a bad patch. "The boy with no past" article relates to a boy called Kaspar Hauser who was found in Nuremberg in 1828 carrying two letters, barely able to speak and possessing no memory. I love stories like this. The Piano Man is a recent example of a similar incident that happened here in the UK around six or seven years ago.)

Issue 50
Sex and alchemy
Tesla: unknown genius
Glastonbury scripts
End of the jinx ship
UFOs over Japan
(This is perhaps my favourite cover, with a superb image sadly not done justice by my crappy photo! If I've got the link right here's a better image:



"A discharge of millions of volts at Colorado Springs. It was not Tesla's practice to use these artificial lightning strokes as reading lamps, as this picture suggests: he was photographed with flash powder and then moved to a safe distance while the current flowed and the film was re-exposed." So it's a cheat but still awesome!)

Issue 51
Odd animal senses
Who was Kaspar Houser?
Alchemy's hidden truth
The test of healing
Epidemic of vampires
(The image is a 1916 painting called The Vampire's Kiss by Biegas.)

Issue 52
Tesla's genius
The Dracula legend
Tunguska fireball
A career in ruins
Creating a ghost
(The image is of a regular forest fire, to help illustrate "a huge fireball that 'covered an enormous part of the sky' over Tunguska, Siberia ... for up to 20 miles (30 kilometers) around the site of the explosion, trees were blown down, and the intense heat of the blast set the forest alight.")

Issue 53
Tunguska: the truth
Strange Glastonbury
The curse on Killakee
CIA and the UFO cover up
The journey of the soul
(The image is, of course, the CIA's official seal.)

Issue 54
Sex with an alien
Vampires: the reality
Signals from space
Lost civilisations
Nazi occultism
(The image is one that accompanies Antonio Villas Boas' account of his alien abduction. I wonder if he's related to Tottenham Hotspur's current manager. Love that helmet, man.)

Issue 55
CIA and UFOs
Weird winged creatures
Spirit surgeon extraordinary
What happens after death
Clapham Wood enigma
(The image: "five-year-old Marie Delex was borne away by a large bird in 1838". These kind of stories also interest me. There was one here a couple of years ago about a huge owl stalking a village, posing a threat to family pets.)

Issue 56
Evil of the Nazis
The secret of the rope trick
UFOs: a Federal case
Lost cities of Asia
Remote viewing
(The image is of Mohenjo-Daro in Pakistan, an example of a huge empire that suddenly disappeared.)

[Lucian Poll]

A few more covers:



And here's a run through each issue:

Issue 57
The strange world of twins
Close-up on remote viewing
Creatures from the past
The Dufferin myth
UFOs over water
(The image is taken from The Frost Programme of 17th January 1968, which featured 300 pairs of identical twins. The article focuses on how long-separated twins sometimes find they have lead very similar lives when they meet again. One example quoted is the case of Jim Springer and Jim Lewis who were separated at birth and reared by different families in Ohio. The list of coincidences is just spooky!)

Issue 58
UFOs of the mind
Hitler ands the black arts
Two bodies, one mind
New light on evolution
Incas' hidden city
(The image is supposed to be that of two giant human-like brains sitting on a road, to illustrate an account given by two Californian guys near Palos Verdes in the early 70's. I'm no anatomist, but those don't look like human-like brains to me. They look more like they've been scooped out of Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2.)

Issue 59
Twin lives
When birdmen swoop
Where did Darwin go wrong?
The PK effect
UFOs land
(The photo is of a two-headed calf. the result of a genetic mutation. It only lived for a few days.)

Issue 60
Psychic UFOs
The vanishing ship
Return of the Tudors
The horror of Glamis
Velikovsky's comet
(The image is of the USS Eldridge, the vanishing ship from the 'Philadelphia Experiment'.)

Issue 61
PK on request
Mapping the heavens
Vanishing ship: the facts
Velikovsky debated
Is man a machine?
The image is a constellation of the southern skies as charted by a Dutch astronomer circa 1700. The image hasn't come out particulary well here. If I've got the link right here's the actual map:



Issue 62
Gods from the stars?
The mind and evolution
Menace of Soviet psi
Velikovsky assessed
Doctor of the dying
(The image is of Vishnu riding on the bird-god Garuda.)

Issue 63
Star mystery
Inside the minilab
The green children
Soviet psi secrets
Mayfair ghosts
(The cover shows a split image to illustrate the effects of psychokinesis on two leather rings that were paranormally linked together outside a minilab, which is a kind of sealed glass chamber in which all kinds of hands-free psychokinetic oddness occurs. Punch "SORRAT" into Google to find out more.)

Issue 64
Psi wars
The Bermuda Triangle
Constellation makers
Von Daniken on trial
Murder by UFO
(The image shows detail from the poster for the 1978 movie 'The Bermuda Triangle'.)

Issue 65
The Ripper murders
The legend of King Arthur
Triangle - the truth
Astronaut ancestors
Stars over Atlantis
(The image is of an illustration by Gustav Dore of Lord Tennyson's epic poem 'Idylls of the King'. Check out some of Dore's work on Google images. Absolutely stunning.)

[Martin]

The Unexplained stuff is simply amazing!