Anomalist Books

The Cryptoterrestrials is now available

Editor — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:06:07 +0000

This is a bittersweet moment. Mac Tonnies is no longer with us, but his long-awaited book finally is. The Cryptoterrestrials has now been published. It’s a short book that’s packed full of ideas. What’s important is not that they all be right, but that they stretch our minds to think beyond the idea of “aliens” as “extraterrestrials.” That’s why the book is subtitled “A meditation on indigenous humanoids and the aliens among us.” Mac had asked Nick Redfern and Greg Bishop to contribute to the book; Nick wrote the Foreword before Mac’s death, and Greg wrote the Afterword after the news of his passing. In addition, John Shirley, who has long been a supporter of Mac’s work, was kind enough to supply us with a blurb that says, in part, “The Cryptoterrestrials is the most refreshing speculation on the paranormal I’ve seen in ages…Mac Tonnies’ ﬁnal Fortean landmark is the Book of the Damned for the 21st century.” Finally, Nadia Sobin contributed the striking cover art and Mike Clelland did the wonderful illustrations that begin each chapter. In Mac’s memory, thank you, all.

An Explicit and Very Powerful Book

Editor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:41:09 +0000

On her website, Kay Wilson, the author of The Alien Jigsaw, not only reviews our book, Love In An Alien Purgatory: The Life And Fantastic Art of David Huggins by Farah Yurdozu, but comments on David Huggins’ alien abduction experiences as well. Wilson, who is an abductee herself, says that it is David, “the artist-abductee, who brings the nitty-gritty of abduction to life in the pages of this fascinating, and at times, disturbing book.” The Hybrid Beings play a major role in an abductee’s life, notes Wilson, and “David’s case is no different in this respect. What is different about this book however, is the manner in which this interaction is relayed to the reader. It is explicit and it is very powerful… It was a bold decision of the author, as well as Anomalist Books, not to censor this information and I commend their decision. The images in this book demonstrate what a prominent occurrence of abduction is really like.” Wilson ends her lengthy review with these words: “Love In An Alien Purgatory is a beautifully illustrated story of the life of an alien abductee, presented by a leading authority of alien abduction and the paranormal. It is a book every serious student of alien abduction research should have in their library.”

“A Mind Bender in the First Degree”

Editor — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:04:45 +0000

“I have to start by saying how immensely I enjoyed this book,” so begins Micah. A. Hanks’ review in The Gralien Report of Nick Redfern’s Science Fiction Secrets: From Government Files and the Paranormal. Writes Hanks: “From strange FBI tales involving the apparent paranoia of Sci-Fi writers like Phillip K. Dick, to weird parallels he draws between the terrorist attacks of 9-11 and television programs that predicted the disaster before it happened, this book is a mind bender in the first degree…The old adage ‘truth is stranger than fiction’ comes to mind often when reading this gem, and if you ever doubted it, this will be the manuscript that will finally change that perception. Read it, enjoy it, and be prepared to never see the world around you quite the same way you once did.” Sounds like Hanks liked the book, don’t you think? Considerably more reserved about the book, as expected, is Peter Rogerson at Magonia: “It is…a moot point whether any of the bizarre tales one encounters here and elsewhere are deliberately circulated by governments to baffle foreign intelligence services and to protect real secrets and scandals with a bodyguard of cranks, or as black propaganda…There is no doubt that Nick Redfern gives us an exciting read, but it has to be said that if there is a bodyguard of cranks, he doesn’t half help it along… A jolly good read but keep a full salt-cellar handy.” Of course, Rogerson fails to mention that Redfern actually points out that many of the stories do stretch credibility. Redfern, in fact, is not afraid to detail the failures, the flaws, and the character eccentricities in the stories he recounts; in no way does he suggest that all the things in the book are valid. And just what these stories represent is not a moot point.

An Interesting and Puzzling Tale

Editor — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 17:00:11 +0000

The Secrets of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club & the Airships of the 1800s, A True Story by Dennis Crenshaw with P.G. Navarro continues to get good press. Phil Barker reviewed the book for Fortean Times and said: “…a book packed with interest, coming at a junction of several fascinating areas: outsider art, early flight, coded texts, alternative technologies and even a touch of trippy steampunk. It includes a brief resume of early flight in America and elsewhere (mostly balloon-based), [and] the UFO-like “Great Airship Mystery” of 1896-7…” His final verdict on the book? An “interesting and puzzling tale of America’s early flyboys.” Elsewhere, in the Valley Advocate, James Heflin has penned an ode to the surprises one can pick up at yard sales, estate sales, and landfills (which is just how Dellschau’s now valuable notebooks were discovered) in his feature story on the book. Writes Heflin: “Crenshaw’s book on Dellschau is an authoritative source…a fascinating voyage of exploration that opened intriguing doors of possibility.”

“An Absorbing and Authoritative Read”

Editor — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:26:08 +0000

Catching up on some recent reviews from some scholarly sources…Keith Petrie, from the University of Auckland, has reviewed Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior by Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew for the Journal of Psychosomatic Research. Writes Petrie: “This book presents more examples of mass psychogenic illness and panics than you could shake a faith healer at. There are many example of the usual outbreaks at schools and factories but many other exotic ones involving slashers, phantoms, vampires, and various toxic substances. Even Bin Laden makes a cameo appearance. The book is organized alphabetically from outbreaks beginning with ‘A’ such as the Amou Barking Mania through to beyond the Zimbabwe Zombie School. In between are fascinating examples of strange collective behavior.” He goes on to note that the book has been “meticulously compiled” and ends by saying that “Outbreak! is a valuable source of material…an absorbing and authoritative read and an extremely valuable reference for anyone interested in the field of psychosomatic medicine.”

Ingenious Research Projects, Well Written Book

Editor — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:15:05 +0000

“At last, someone doing scientific studies on astrology and publishing their results,” begins Robert Marks’ review of Astrology Off the Beaten Track: A Scientific Study of Planets and Personality by Dr. Suzel Fuzeau-Braesch, who died in 2008. Marks states that “Her research projects were ingenious. She did studies on twins and world events. She even studied dogs and cows!” He ends his detailed, largely complimentary review with these words: “The book…is well written with simple, easy to read language…Of course, the work has to be throughly examined and we have to see if it can be replicated. Of so, then it provides support for the earlier Gauquelin work, and that would indicate that there might be something to astrology after all.” Marks’ review appears in the Winter 2009 issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.

“Wonderfully Thought-Provoking”

Editor — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:34:35 +0000

The reviews of The Secrets of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club and the Airships of the 1800s, A True Story by Dennis Crenshaw in collaboration with P. G. Navarro are beginning to appear. “We love this book because it tells an utterly unique story which may well be related to the UFO mystery,” writes Jim Mosely in Saucer Smear. “Or, it may not.” What’s the book about? In a review of the book in Magonia Peter Rogerson writes: “When he died at the great age of 92 in 1923, Texas butcher Charles A. Dellschau left behind a secret and a mystery. These were a series of notebooks, filled with paintings of fantastic flying machines, which only came to light when his descendants had a clearout. By a process of serendipity they came to the attention of graphic designer and ufologist Peter Navarro. By decoding and translating writings in and around the pictures, Narvarro pieced together a tale of Dellschau’s involvemnt in a secret society of inventors living in gold-rush California. He created a vivid cast of over 60 characters, and a range of Heath Robinsonish flying machines, the Aeros…They were the work of this secret group, The Sonora Aero Club, and its even more shadowy backer the NYMZA.” Were these craft connected somehow to the well-known UFO flap of 1896-1897? Magonia ends its review with these words: “Whether the audience is ufologist or art appreciator, this broken old man is leading us back into the realms of pure childhood imagination.” Moseley, near the end of his review, says straight-out: “This is a wonderfully thought-provoking book…” And he kindly commends Anomalist Books “for their fortitude in publishing books of this kind.”

“Wildly Entertaining, Absurdly Ambitious, and Astutely Critical”

Editor — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:17:58 +0000

Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior continues to generate press, including a column entitled “An outbreak of confusion: Mass hysteria, outlandish obsessions, bizarre sects: What lies at the heart of extraordinary social behaviour?” in The Guardian (UK) in August and a mention in a story called “Oh, Maya! Is 2012 the end? Film boosts doomsday frenzy” in USA Today in November. But it’s the reviews that concern us here and they have been uniformly positive. Inconvenient History calls the book “a wildly entertaining, absurdly ambitious, astutely critical, deceivingly academic and nearly definitive study of the myriad crazes, manias, panics, scares, fads, fashions and other sundry sociogenic phenomena that have made history while eluding historians.” This “Cthulhu-sized tome,” writes Nick Redfern in UFO Mystic, is not just “scholarly; but it is also highly informative, insightful, illuminating and witty… A fantastic read.” And in Cryptomundo, Loren Coleman, though not particularly pleased with the book’s handling of some subjects (”I find their black and white skeptical approach to a few of the encyclopedia’s events as being wholly too psychological-based, without any appreciation for the possible underlying factual reality to be found in some of these encounters”), nevertheless concludes that “the book is a masterpiece.” The International Cognition and Culture Institute blog found the book to be “quite an impressive endeavour that can be used for scholarly purposes (it is well referenced) and for fun (because people do weird things sometimes).” And finally, FOAFtale News, the newsletter of the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research, notes that “It is a real encyclopedia, containing some 340 articles of very variable length. The scope and diversity of the bibliography are remarkable; it includes numerous references from other languages than English. The large choice of nineteenth century French studies, mostly medical, of visions and apparitions is especially notable. Original sources are often referred to, and the quotations of Renaissance or seventeenth century books are numerous. This does not exclude modern references as will be shown in the example from Iraq…Exceptional by its scope and the diversity of its sources, this Encyclopedia is an essential work instrument for those interested in the surprising extent of non-standard collective behavior.”

Now Available: Swamp Gas Times

Editor — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:08:46 +0000

We have just reprinted Patrick Huyghe’s Swamp Gas Times: My Two Decades on the UFO Beat. It’s the same as the original Paraview Press version but with a new cover. What we didn’t have then that we have now is Colin Bennett’s sparkling review of the book that eventually appeared online at Phenomena Magazine, which, sadly, is no longer being published. Take it away, Colin: “H.G. Wells once wrote An Experiment in Autobiography, and this title is a good description of Swamp Gas Times by Patrick Huyghe. There are very few books about UFOs that put the phenomenon in a setting of the character and atmosphere of a workaday journalistic world…[Huyghe’s] vision raises the sheer thrill of our dawning realization that we are indeed living within domains of high strangeness…What makes this remarkable book special is that it relates all these matters to American journalism as it evolved over two decades. Both journalism and the UFO inhabit unstable worlds; magazines, newspapers and staff are shown as being in an almost constant state of change. Editors, private financiers, policies, all can change within a matter of months… Thus his UFO reporting is against a professional background of varying levels of ever-changing technology, the whims of rich proprietors, and a rapidly changing print and media culture, changing again in turn as regards content and style, taste, fashion, and evolving social history. We see in Swamp Gas Times the UFO as a live cryptozoological animal, grazing on information flow as it moves through many different dimensions and interpretations of media, opinion, and changing forms of fashionable taste and expression… These stories are of a world full of hairline cracks and fissures, a world constantly crumbling at the edges of the discursive investigational eye like an M.C. Escher drawing of possible impossibilities… In the face of such things, [Huyghe] manages to combine a vigorous analytic logic with a brave ability to face the utterly absurd elements in many of the experiences he describes… Here is great insight, as well as the irresistible thrill of UFOlogy…”

One of the Strangest UFO Books Ever Written

Editor — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:57:56 +0000

It “must be one of the strangest UFO books ever written,” says Bob Girard of Arcturus Books. Or painted. He’s referring, of course, to Love in an Alien Purgatory: The Life and Fantastic Art of David Huggins, which contains a well-written text by Farah Yurdozu about David’s bizarre sexual contacts with the ETs, or whoever they are, and more than 80 of David’s paintings in full color that illustrate his contact experiences. A review of the book has also appeared at at UFO Mystic: “After a fine introduction from Farah that firmly sets the scene, that relates the history of Huggins’ experiences, and that allows us to understand what it is that drives and motivates the man himself, we see his story unfold before our eyes via a large body of very skilled artwork,” writes Nick Redfern, who calls the book “as intriguing and thought-provoking as it is unique and alternative.” And James Moseley of Saucer Smear, who “introduced” us to David Huggins and knows him well, had this to say after reading the book: “Interesting is the fact that, though most ‘experiencers’ have a specific spiritual, religious, or political agenda to push on you, David does not. He seems to live a normal life…He doesn’t claim to be a guru…Does David really believe all this, or is he putting us on for some reason? Our answer: He is absolutely sincere, but of course with no proof whatever…There are only two possibilities: Either David’s experiences are solely the product of his own imagination (i.e. they are purely ‘internal’), or they are caused by an outside source (i.e. an outside intelligence of some sort, apparently beyond our present understanding). We vote for the latter…David Huggins is a kind gentle sort of a man and good friend… [He] deserves to be taken seriously. Buy the damn book!” Then there’s UFO activist Larry W. Bryant who sums up his feelings on the book in two short words: “Huggins Rocks!”