The Unexplained

The book I read to research this post was The Unexplained by Anne & John Spencer which is an excellent book that I bought from a car boot sale. This book includes a cd-rom but it was missing obviously because it was secondhand.  This book is around 170 pages so is a fair length and contains lots of interesting information on strange phenomena. One thing it mentions is foo fighters which were UFO’s which used to shadow allied and nazi airforce airplanes during World War 2. The allies thought they were secret German aircraft but they were seen by both sides. Some planes would go into a dive to try and shake them off but they stayed with them. The one they calculated was travelling at 560 mph. They were like balls of fire. It’s interesting to note there have been UFO’s spotted since early times but they became much more common around the 50’s onwards. Another thing mentioned in the book is ghostly apparitions when someone has died. One example is when the poet and World War 1 Wilfred Owen died and a close relative sensed it at that precise moment. Later it was confirmed he had died at that time. Another case was in the Vietnam War when someone serving died and his partner was watching television and saw a jungle appear and the last moments in her partners life appeared on the television although nothing even remotely similar was being broadcast at that time. Someone received a phone call from an old lady he knew reminding him it was her birthday and he offered to bring up a bottle of wine which she said she didn’t need anymore. When he went to the nursing home she was at that afternoon he was told she had died that morning at the precise time she had phoned him. There was a well known medium called Edgar Cayce who is perhaps unique in that he performed thousands of seances over more than 50 years and taped every one which runs into thousands of recordings. He was a very successful medium who at the time of his death had a waiting list of more than 2 years of people wanting him to contact their loved ones. I did thoroughly enjoy this book and it is quite old as the software that is meant to be bundled with it works on a 486 computer.

Beyond Belief

The book I read to research this post was Beyond Belief which is a very good book which I bought from a car boot sale. This book is about strange phenomenon from yeti’s and almas to the legendary island of Mu to alien beings visiting the Earth. Almas are similar to the yeti but are more like prehistoric man although are covered in hair and live in the Caucasasus Mountains in the Russian republics. Mu is a legendary island that was in the Pacific and was similar to Atlantis in that they were an advanced race that died out in a cataclysmic event and gradually disappeared under the ocean. There was also reputed to be a land of Lemuria but the documents to this land that was meant to be in the Indian Ocean were mistranslated and reputedly were about astrology. Nevertheless some influential people like the psychic Madame Blavatsky have argued it existed and have even written books about. There seems less evidence for the existence of Lemuria than either Mu or Atlantis. An interesting phenomenon in the book is USO’s which are unidentified submarine objects and some of these can fly as well as go underwater. Quite a lot of government agencies around are interested in this phenomenon and take it quite seriously. People have seen craft travelling at high speed just under the water and producing a wave as it goes. Many of these are people like sailors and are unable to identify these craft and some people have seen strange alien creatures coming out of these craft. There have also been occasions where people have seen UFO’s land and been attacked by the beings. One person even died the next day. I did really enjoy this book which is written by a team of writers and an editor. It presents a lot of unusual phenomenon a lot of people haven’t heard of.

Mysteries Of The Unexplained

The book I read to research this post was Mysteries Of The Unexplained which is an excellent book which I bought at a car boot sale. This book is published by Reader’s Digest and has no author but has been compiled by a team of editors who have taken excerpts from newspapers and books etc and made this book from them. The book is around 310 pages and covers a wide variety of different phenomena. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot from it. There is a story of 60 million year old human footprints apparently evading a dinosaur except of course humans and dinosaurs didn’t exist at the same time. There is the Jersey Devil and a similar creature exists in Africa and they are a giant flying creature that is ferocious and have teeth. There is also the Mothman depicted in the film The Mothman Prophecies which occur at impending disasters and resemble a half moth, half human hence the name. Apparently when Chay Blyth and a companion rowed across the Atlantic they were menaced by a giant serpent. There are said to be serpents in some of the American Great Lakes as well as Loch Ness. In the case of Loch Ness a giant creature was spotted on a radar. This book looks at other types of phenomena like spontaneous combustion where a body ignites at such a high temperature there is very little left of their body and we know bone only melts at a very high temerature. Interestingly the surrounding area is almost untouched and a couple of factors are if a person loses their temper or if drinking. I don’t know why they are factors and very little is known about it. There is also a story of a steamer called the Iron Clad that was pulling barges laden with goods down a river in the USA in the 19th Century and the steamer vanished and the barges were cut loose and found floating down the river. The crew and the steamer were never seen again. There is a more famous but similar story in the Mary Celeste which was immortalized in a story by Conan Doyle. The ship had been deserted in a hurry but for some reason the life boats were still there and the ships papers and cargo had been left. There have been quite a few similar incidents. I recommend this book.