Anomalist Books

Relevant, Scholarly, and Well Presented

admin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 22:02:50 +0000

Fatima Revisited: The Apparition Phenomenon in Ufology, Psychology, and Science is now getting the attention of reviewers and the results are very positive indeed. Malcolm Robinson, of Strange Phenomena Investigations (SPI) in the U.K. writes: “This book is different, very different; it’s not your normal one author who has penned this work, no siree. This book has been written by a number of ‘different authors’ each of whom bring to bear their own take on what happened back in the Portuguese village of Fatima back in 1917… This book is a marvelous potpouri of theory, speculation, fact, and wonder…” And Bob Rickard, who praised the two previous volumes in the trilogy, Heavenly Lights and Celestial Secrets, likes Fatima Revisited as well. He writes in the latest issue of Fortean Times, “To anyone interested in anomalous events that bridge the objective and subjective worlds” this book is “essential reading….Fatima Revisited is a multidisciplinary collaboration [that shows] that quality studies of paranormal phenomena are being published.” Where? At Anomalist Books, of course!

Now Available: The Tujunga Canyon Contacts

admin — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:19:03 +0000

The Tujunga Canyon Contacts tells the true stories of five young women “abductees” who lived in and near Tujunga Canyon, northeast of Los Angeles, and who were all linked by more or less intimate personal relationships. The abductions and related events, which took place over a period of more than two decades, were first investigated by UFO researcher Ann Druffel for five full years, and later by Druffel and parapsychologist D. Scott Rogo together. Many of the abduction details first revealed in the Tujunga Canyon case have been confirmed in the hundreds of cases that followed it. First published during the peak of the 20th century’s UFO abduction epidemic, The Tujunga Canyon Contacts shows an openness of mind about what abductions could be that would be largely absent from abduction works that followed it. This edition of the classic work contains the two new chapters prepared for the updated version of the book. During this updating of the story, Druffel first realized that abduction scenarios can be fended off by strong-willed, confident experiencers, since three of the five young women intuitively discovered, and used, various “resistance techniques” to fend off, and eventually end, the harrowing attacks.

Now Available: There’s Something in the Woods

admin — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 21:12:14 +0000

I’ve had the pleasure of editing several books by Nick Redfern since he moved to the United States in the summer of 2001. One of the books I edited while I was the editor-in-chief of Paraview Pocket Books was Nick’s Three Men Seeking Monsters. That book not only stirred up a lot of interest by film producers, but marked the beginning of a series of further books all recounting his adventures in pursuit of monsters. I did not have the pleasure of working on the second volume, Memoirs of a Monster Hunter, which was published by New Page Book, but I’m back at the helm with his latest book in the series, There’s Something in the Woods: A Transatlantic Hunt for Monsters and the Mysterious. What’s in the woods, you ask? Bigfoot, for one. And Phantom black dogs. Werewolves, too. And giant mystery birds. Then toss in some haunted woods, spooky cemeteries, crop circles, and crashed UFOs, and you’ve got Nick Redfern’s latest road trip across two continents for all things cryptozoological or otherwise mysterious. In this latest volume Redfern defies all the laws of self-preservation and offers himself as bait in the face of the unknown – to learn, if indeed, There’s Something in the Woods. Enjoy.

An Unbearable Strangeness

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:03:12 +0000

Some people are wondering if An Alien Who’s Who is a put-on. It’s not, but we’ll be the first to admit that what it presents –summaries of human contact with named extraterrestrial aliens – is hard to swallow. How should one process this kind of material? As it happens, author Michael Prescott recently tackled the subject of unbearable strangeness on his excellent blog. He wasn’t referring to this book in particular, but to all the stories of bizarre, unexplainable phenomena out there, which he finds “a bit unsettling.” He suggests three ways of understanding this material, “none of which is very palatable,” he admits. But it seems to us that these are the only choices we have, particularly when coming to grips with the material in An Alien Who’s Who by Martin Kottmeyer. Says Prescott: “The first possibility is that these weird claims are true, in which case reality is bafflingly and perhaps frighteningly strange. The second possibility is that these claims are false, in which case there is a great horde of otherwise normal people who believe things that are, in fact, crazy. This, too, is rather bewildering and scary; it means the human race is largely insane; psychosis is rampant; we are surrounded by nuts, and may be nuts ourselves. Then there is the third possibility, the one I personally find most likely – namely, that some of these things are true, and some are not, and a great many occupy a wide swath of gray area, an ambiguous borderland where the labels ‘true’ and ‘false’ are not easily applied. And this is, in some ways, the most disturbing prospect of all, because it suggests that we can never be quite sure what is real and what isn’t. We can make educated guesses, we can say that one case seems valid and another seems bogus, but we can’t really know and we could be quite wrong.”

Now Available: Fátima Revisited

admin — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:36:56 +0000

The long-awaited third and final volume of the highly praised Fátima Trilogy is now out. Fátima Revisited: The Apparition Phenomenon in Ufology, Psychology, and Science was compiled by Fernando Fernandes, Joaquim Fernandes, and Raul Berenguel; and translated from the Portuguese and edited by Andrew D. Basiago and Eva M. Thompson. It includes a Foreword by William J. Birnes and an Introduction by Ralph Steiner. In this anthology, an international panel of leading scholars subjects the legendary apparitions to the scrutiny of modern scientific analysis. Various points of view are examined: Could there be a simple physiological explanation for the experience? Was mind control involved? Were the witnesses in altered states of consciousness? Or was it all related to the UFO contact experience? The list of contributors is impressive. They include anthropologist SCOTT ATRAN, psychologist IRENE BLINSTON, psychotherapist JANET ELIZABETH COLLI, anthropologist RYAN J. COOK, physicist ERIC DAVIS, historian DAVID M. JACOBS, human consciousness pioneer STANLEY KRIPPNER, and astrophysicist JACQUES F. VALLÉE – all from the U.S.; engineer FERNANDO FERNANDES, historian JOAQUIM FERNANDES, psychologist VITOR RODRIGUES, psychiatrist MARIO SIMÕES, and researcher RAUL BERENGUEL – all from Portugal; as well as the British neurophysiologist FRANK McGILLION, the Belgian physicist AUGUSTE MEESSEN, the Brazilian psychotherapist GILDA MOURA, and the Canadian neuroscientist MICHAEL A. PERSINGER.

“A Terrific Read”

admin — Thu, 15 May 2008 20:22:24 +0000

Extreme Expeditions: Travel Adventures Stalking the World’s Mystery Animals by Adam Davies is getting a lot of thumbs-up reviews. The first to appear was entitled “Monsters! Booze! Jungles! Guns!” at Nick Redfern’s blog, There’s Something in the Woods… Wrote Nick: “If you’re looking to find out what really goes on behind-the-scenes during the course of a quest for monsters in exotic locales, then this is most definitely the book for you…Easy to read, packed with adventure, intrigue, humor and (of course) monsters, Extreme Expeditions is a book that’s entertaining, informative, memorable and instructive…” Then came Matt Bille’s review, entitled “A terrific read,” in Matt’s Sci/Tech Blog. The book, wrote Bille, “is not your average cryptozoology book. Davies spends a minimum of time rehashing old evidence and instead tells a rollicking first-person adventure tale…The book is a jaunty, sometimes profane tale of colorful but basically sane people making a sincere, sometimes dangerous effort to solve zoological mysteries.” Bille liked the book so much, in fact, that he wants Davies to do an encore: “I look forward to a sequel, if Davies survives his future expeditions long enough to write it.”

“Total Mystification”

admin — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:49:59 +0000

William Corliss, who publishes the wonderful Sourcebook Project volumes, also runs a small mail order bookstore. He’s very picky about the books he selects, but he did select Strange Company: Military Encounters with UFOs in World War II by Keith Chester to headline his May-June 2008 book list. Here is what he had to say about the book: “Usually we avoid the never-ending flood of UFO books, but we have always been puzzled by the so-called “foo fighters” that mystified World War II-pilots in all theaters of combat. Their reality is supported in Chester’s book by over 100 baffling sightings by well-trained observers. Chester’s book is thoroughly researched. There is a strong foundation of 138 sightings of strange lights and even “structures” from 1931 to 1945. Most came from aircraft crews from both sides during the 1939-1945 conflict. A fascinating [sighting index] enhances the textual descriptions by displaying in one place the incredible variety of unexplained phenomena. No fewer than 520 notes give the book even more details, as do photographs of official reports and correspondence. All displaying total mystification!”

Aura Rhanes, Motag, and the Other ETs

admin — Thu, 01 May 2008 23:31:29 +0000

The new issue of the British magazine Alien Worlds features Nick Redfern’s review of Martin Kottmeyer’s new book, An Alien Who’s Who. “Kottmeyer has done something that few authors seldom do,” writes Redfern, “he leaves his own views and beliefs at the door, and instead provides the reader with entertaining – and otherwise very hard to find – summaries on alleged other-worldly entities that have supposedly been manifesting before select members of the Human Race for decades. Kottmeyer relates their bizarre, unverifiable and at times completely false tales, prophecies and warnings. And, in a roundabout way, he amply demonstrates that for all the attempts to legitimise Ufology as a serious science, it is still a subject that is packed with odd and unusual characters with weird names and even weirder motivations…An Alien Who’s Who is vital reading for anyone and everyone that wants to learn more about some of the strange, other-worldly beings said to have visited our planet and whose exploits, without Kottmeyer, would otherwise be lost to the fog of time.” Did he like it? Try this: “Martin Kottmeyer’s book is damned good fun and highly informative.”

Now Available: Extreme Expeditions

admin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:41:03 +0000

We’ve never met Adam Davies but from all indications he seems to be as nice a guy as you’ll ever meet. And there’s no question that when it comes to hands-on cryptozoology, he’s got a passion for it like no one else in the world. He doesn’t claim to be an expert on the subject; in fact, he defers to people like Loren Coleman and Karl Shuker when it comes to actual knowledge of the cryptids themselves. But we don’t know of anyone else who spends just about all their vacation time — and much of their discretionary income — traveling to some of the world’s most inhospitable and unexplored places looking for mystery animals such as the mokele-mbebe, Nessie, Selma, orang pendek, Almas, and the Mongolian Death Worm. Congo? He’s been there more than once. Sumatra? Ditto. Mongolia? Check. And Norway and Scotland, too, though we’re not claiming these are either inhospitable or unexplored! You’ve probably seen Adam on documentary programs on television and his discoveries have made headlines in newspapers around the world. Quite remarkable for a mild-mannered Civil Servant in the UK, wouldn’t you say? But don’t let your guard down. His new book, Extreme Expeditions: Travel Adventures Stalking the World’s Mystery Animals, is a very raw travel adventure. The warning label we put on the book might strike you as humorous and in a sense it is. But it’s all true. “FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY: Foul language, excessive drinking, sexual situations, and encounters with some creatures of the natural world that would scare young children and more than a few adults as well.” Enjoy.

Now Available: An Alien Who’s Who

admin — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:21:17 +0000

We have just published what may be the most unusual reference book of all time: a who’s who of reported extraterrestrials–-nearly a thousand of them. That’s right. SETI is still searching for the existence of aliens, but we already have their names. Ashtar, Xyclon, Teletron, Sananda, Umaruru–-so many names, so many aliens. Who can keep track of them all? Thankfully, you don’t have to. An Alien Who’s Who has done it for you. The indefatigable Martin S. Kottmeyer has sifted through the writings of hundreds of UFO contactees, ufologists, and experiencers to bring to you not only their names, but also their views on God, Earth’s future, eternity, politics, and how we should run our lives. Seriously. Or not. Includes an Alien Who’s Where, a long essay on when Venusians were cool, a foreword by Greg Bishop, illustrations by Charles Berlin, and more.