There is probably a good reason that The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster by Lyle Blackburn is the fastest selling Anomalist Book of all time. Maybe it’s because Lyle is a famous rock musician. Maybe it’s because the film The Legend of Boggy Creek made such a impression on so many people. Or maybe it’s simply because is the book is such a thorough, well researched, and well written portrait of terrifying creature. In a feature entitled “A monster of a story,” Aaron Brand of the Texarkana Gazette wrote: “A coherent, thorough and entertaining yarn about the Fouke Monster…Part of his [Blackburn's] complete portrait includes exploring Fouke culture and the genesis of monster stories that sprang up in the area…Blackburn employs his descriptive powers to set the scene and give readers an idea of the local landscape. Reading his descriptions, it’s easy to see why people may believe they see extraordinary things, whether real or imagined, down in the woods.” Even the no-nonesense Peter Rogerson of Magonia was impressed. He views Blackburn “essentially as a folklorist” and praises his approach: “Blackburn goes beyond simply interviewing witnesses and presents the stories in the context of the history and development of the area, tells the story behind the film and its influence on the cinema and the Beast’s influence on popular culture.” Rogerson calls The Beast of Boggy Creek an “excellent book.” Of course, the “choir” loves the book. too. Nick Redfern, on Cryptomundo, calls it “A major, major addition to the field of monster-hunting.” And Bob Yarger of the Texas Bigfoot Conservancy wrote: “The Beast of Boggy Creek is, besides being a first-rate piece of journalism regarding this unknown creature and the movie inspired by it, the comprehensive reference to the Fouke Monster and a thoroughly entertaining read, suspenseful and intriguing.”

We are fascinated by the use of psychic detectives and mediums to obtain information about historical events that remain mysteries—especially when what they reveal can be corroborated retroactively. And that’s just what journalist Edward Olshaker has done in Witnesses to the Unsolved: Prominent Psychic Detectives and Mediums Explore Our Most Haunting Mysteries. Now available in paperback (and soon as an ebook) for the first time, this award-winning book reads like a cross between Medium and Unsolved Mysteries. Among the cases covered are the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr., White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster, singer/guitarist Kurt Cobain, Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, CIA chief William Colby, among others. Probing the unsolved are Olshaker’s highly regarded cast of police psychics, including Nancy Myer, Robert Cracknell, and Bertie Catchings; and prominent mediums Betty Muench, Janet Cyford, and Philip Solomon. The result, says Colin Wilsonin his foreword to the book, is “a remarkable piece of investigative journalism.”

Did you catch what Brad Steiger had to say about Kevin Randle’s new book, Reflections of a UFO Investigator? “From a high school boy reading UFO books in study hall to a tireless investigator searching for some glimpse of the true reality behind the greatest phenomenon of our time, Kevin Randle shares every foot of the path he has trod as a UFO investigator. From abductions to contactees, Randle tells it the way he sees it. Known to many as one of the researchers who made us reconsider the story of the UFO crash at Roswell, I found the chapters recreating his painstaking examination of the evidence for that controversial case particularly interesting. The Willingham investigation will serve as a caution to investigators who may make their conclusions too rapidly. If a case is too good to be true, it may well be just that…too good to be true. Randle presents us with the balanced casebook of a top investigator of the UFO enigma.”  Even John Harney over at Magonia had a few good things to say about Randle’s book, mostly praising his methods of investigation and his interviewing of witnesses, and concluding that this is “a book for the serious UFO enthusiast…” And if you want yet more Reflections from Randle, check out the latest issue of UFO Magazine. You can’t miss it, as the cover of issue 158 has Randle in uniform, with a rifle across his lap. The cover line reads: “His newest book: In service to his country and to research.”

Growing up in Texas, Lyle Blackburn became fascinated with the legends, lore, and sighting reports of alleged real-life monsters. Today, the infamous frontman of the devilishly eclectic rock band, Ghoultown, has authored his first book, The Beast of Boggy Creek: The True Story of the Fouke Monster, all about the large, legendary, hairy, man-like creature of Southern Arkansas known as the Fouke monster. Over the years, the creature has been seen by numerous witnesses, including respected citizens, experienced hunters, famous musicians, and even a police officer. The encounters were often so shocking, they served as inspiration for the classic horror film, The Legend of Boggy Creek, by Charles B. Pierce. And frightening encounters with the Fouke monster continue to be reported to this day. With a foreword by Loren Coleman, the book has already drawn advance praise from people such as Nick Redfern who believes the book is “Destined to become a cryptozoological classic!”

A bunch of great reviews delivered quickly is a publisher’s dream. And that’s just what we’ve been blessed with for Consulting Spirit: A Doctor’s Experience with Practical Mediumship by Dr. Ian Rubenstein. Journalist and author of Randi’s Prize Robert McLuhan found Consulting Spirit to be “an excellent book.” His review over at Paranormalia states: “I found [Ian Rubenstein's] detailed descriptions of the inner process [of mediumship] quite useful. I also resonated with the way the author dealt with his new experiences. The tone is well judged: he is properly sceptical, in the sense of examining and questioning them, but he doesn’t let this get in the way of his curiosity. He doesn’t panic or try to suppress his intuitions. Nor does he agonise about what people might think when he develops his mediumship. He just gets on with it. In fact it surprised me how enthusiastically he embraced his new calling, while continuing his professional work…The book is breezy like a novel, written largely in dialogue, which makes it an easy and entertaining read. As I say, it’s informative about the process of becoming a medium, and I really recommend it. But more than that, it’s also an important book. Rubenstein has shown how it is possible for an ordinary non-psychic member of society, someone who in his professional work is embedded in rationalist thinking, not merely to adjust to psychic intuition when it arrives unbidden, but to learn how to use it for the benefit of others.” Be sure to read the extensive comments following the review, where Rubenstein replies to reader questions.

In his review of the book, Tom Ruffles at the Society for Psychical Research writes: ” …this is an extremely readable book. Its author comes across as completely honest, with no position to defend, but taking the reader where he sees the evidence leading him. As a person he seems very nice, sociable, and much more open about himself with patients than the doctors I have come across. There is a sense that his willingness to try new things provides a flexibility which can assist him to integrate his spiritual life into his everyday one more easily than would be the case with a person more mentally rigid…Those willing to entertain the possibility that something really is going on here will find Consulting Spirit (a great punning title) an unusual but very useful case study.”

And finally, novelist Michael Prescott has some keen insights into Rubenstein’s book as well. At Michael Prescott’s Blog he writes: “To me, books like this are in some ways more valuable than scientific studies involving control groups, double-blind test conditions, and statistical analysis. I’m not sure that any amount of laboratory data will persuade people of the reality of mediumship, but a sober, common-sense account like Dr. Rubenstein’s may succeed where tables, charts, and graphs are likely to fail. Reading his story, I couldn’t help feeling that if I were in his shoes, I would have had many of the same questions and considered many of the same non-paranormal explanations. Nothing in his book struck me as exaggerated or embellished; if anything, the author’s tendency seems to be to play down the more dramatic elements of his story. His sense of humor keeps him—and the reader—firmly grounded, no matter how apparently outlandish some of the developments in his narrative may seem…Rubenstein presents an array of supernatural phenomena in a calm, sober voice, laced with humor and occasional self-doubt. I found his story very appealing, and I think you will too.”

There aren’t many truly qualified UFO investigators these days. It takes a lot of experience, a willingness to learn from your mistakes, and a dogged determination to get at the truth. Kevin Randle is one of a rare breed. He’s been doing it for nearly half a century. He started investigating UFOs in high school and kept on doing it on the side through his years of military service (which in one case led some townspeople to think the Air Force was investigating the case when it was just Kevin on his own). How UFO investigation should be done, and how Kevin has done it all those years, is revealed in his 21st UFO book: Reflections of a UFO Investigator, just published by Anomalist Books. Other than his investigation of the Roswell case, for which Kevin is perhaps best known, others detailed in this memoir include the Carroll Wayne Watts case, the Rhodes photographs, and the Santa Rosa crash. We’re pretty much certain that you’ll be surprised by Randle’s brutally honest look back at his career in UFO research.

The good folks at Magonia don’t usually view books that treat UFOs as genuine physical phenomena with much kindness, but Peter Rogerson has some remarkably nice things to say about Grassroots UFOs: Case Reports from the Center for UFO Studies by Michael Swords (based on interviews conducted by John TImmerman). “This is raw, unmediated ufology,” writes Rogerson, “and what strikes me is how unlike the sanitized product this often is…What Timmerman has assembled is not some set of scientific or quasiscientific documents, and it would be a fools errand for someone to try and treat them as such, but a great, and very important, collection of late 20th century North American folklore…Much of what is reported here would in past times be interpreted in terms of religious experience, folk spiritualism, fairy lore or witchcraft. Only a minority really have a technological feel to them; many more are haunting stories which tell of the mysterious otherness of wild nature.” But Jerome Clark, in his review of the book in Fate magazine, would argue with Rogerson’s insistence that these reports are just folklore: “Let us make clear that these sorts of narratives are not ‘folklore.’ mere rumors, legends, fables…These are individuals’ direct experiences of what appear to be otherworldly forces. Usually assuming they happened more or less as told, they are beyond ordinary understanding.” Clark concludes his review with these words: “Grassroots UFOs is one of a kind, unlike any other UFO book you’re going to find out there. It’s definitely worth your time and attention. However you interpret its contents, it makes for thrilling reading and generates renewed wonder at exactly what’s out there and, yet more unsettlingly, what it’s doing to us.”

It’s not often that a reviewer makes that kind of statement—”the book is well worth picking up, and might even change your life”—but Micah Hanks does so in the first paragraph of his review, no less, on The Gralian Report. After doing a Google search on Robert Cracknell, the author of The Lonely Sense: The Autobiography of a Psychic Detective, he concludes: “Cracknell’s record is rather inconspicuous, but highly reputable… and if the sorts of things he mentions in his autobiography are indeed true…we damn well may have to accept he’s the best [psychic detective] anywhere.” But don’t think for a minute that Hanks is a pushover: “Even the occasional skeptic (something I consider myself to be in most cases) may find themselves unable to wrestle themselves from Cracknell’s wide-open delivery, and may begin questioning whether such extraordinary feats of psychic prowess might indeed be real after all.” Hanks then says: “But perhaps the most rewarding aspect about The Lonely Sense is the fact that Cracknell manages to keep a bright, positive outlook throughout the ups and downs, and in the end, his message is clear: anyone can do this, not just those who claim to have psychic powers…The Lonely Sense is a fine read almost any way you look at it.” After reading Hank’s review of the book, Jari Mikkola, editor of the Journal of Anomalous Sciences, read the book himself and found it to be “one of the most inspiring and candid autobiographies I’d ever read. With each page I felt as you would only do with someone you knew intimately while relaxing after a nice meal in their home. The book revealed to me a man that although he had the ability to exercise a faculty we all possess, and well I might add, he never let it go to his head.” Jari subsequently featured Cracknell in a cover story for The Journal of Anomalous Sciences. Nick Refern, who reviewed the book on Reviews of the Mysterious Kind, also had good things to say about The Lonely Sense: “It’s a brutally honest, open and highly entertaining study of the author’s life, that takes the reader from its very beginnings, his time spent in the British Royal Air Force, and to a profound experience that occurred during that same time spent with the military that sent him on the road to becoming a definitive psychic detective…Not surprisingly, Cracknell reveals that coming to grips with his surfacing powers of the psychic kind was not easy…[The book is] required reading for anyone who wants a deep, revealing insight not just into the world of psychic phenomena, but into the swirling, turbulent and emotion-filled heart of the psychic individual…”

Imagine being a doctor and having one of your patients tell you that your dead grandfather wants to tell you something. That’s what happened to Dr. Ian Rubenstein. And that was the beginning of a very strange, four-year journey for this courageous British doctor, whose skepticism was challenged at every turn. But he doggedly followed the bizarre associations, the uncanny moments of convergence, and the weird coincidences that came to pass during his apprenticeship into mediumship and applied them in his practice——much to the benefits of his patients, it turns out. What results is a warm, well-told, true story of synchronicity in medicine. “Fascinating,” says Stanley Krippner. “Remarkable,” says Guy Lyon Playfair. Read Consulting Spirit: A Doctor’s Experience with Practical Mediumship, and we’re sure you’ll agree.

Being a good writer is one thing. Being a good interviewee is another. Not all of us are blessed with both skills. But Brad Steiger and Nick Redfern certainly are, and the proof is available for all to hear and read.

First we’d like to congratulate Brad Steiger for his out-of-the-ballpark interview with George Noory on Coast to Coast AM. While Brad has been on this immensely popular radio show many times, this interview on the subject of his book Strange Guests is at the top of their list of what they call “Classic Shows.”

Listen to Brad’s “Poltergeists!“ interview here.

Congratulations are also in order to Nick Redfern, whose interview with Chris Knowles about Nick’s book Final Events turns out to be the “most-read post in the history” of The Secret Sun, a very popular blog!

Read the riveting interview with Nick here.