SECRETS, SHRINES AND SAUCERS

      

Joel Levy. The Secret Societies Bible. Godsfield Books, 2010.

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Anthony J. Taylor. The Sacred Sites Bible. Godsfield Books, 2010.

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William J. Birnes. Aliens in America. Adams Media, 2010.

The first two titles, although weighing in at 400 pages each, are compact but comprehensive guidebooks to their topics. Secret Societies divides its subject into two sections; firstly religious, mystical and occult, and then rather pointedly, political and criminal. Both sections are arranged roughly chronologically, from the Templars to Opus Dei and from the Assassins to the triads and the mafia.

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BACK TO THE FUTURE WITH NOSTRADAMUS

Peter Lemesurier. Nostradamus, Bibliomancer. New Page Books, 2010.

A glance on the Internet reveals that Peter Lemesurier has written many books in the paranormal field, with titles such as The Healing of the Gods and The Great Pyramid Decoded. So when I received this book for review I assumed, reflecting my own prejudices, that it would be another fairly uncritical rehash of the 'prophecies', explaining how they predicted spectacular events, which somehow always seem to have just happened.
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BEASTS OF THE EARTH - MAYBE

         

Loren Coleman and Bruce G Hallenbeck. Monsters of New Jersey. Stackpole Books, 2010.

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Gary Cunningham and Ronan Coghlan. The Mystery Animals of Ireland CFZ Press, 2010.

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Glen Vaudrey. Mysteries Animals of the British Isles: The Western Isles. CFZ Press, 2009.

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Melvyn Willin. Monsters Caught on Film: Amazing Evidence of Lake Monsters, Bigfoot and other Strange Beasts. David and Charles, 2010.

Studies of cryptozoological animals often concentrate on a few alleged examples, often from remote, little explored parts of the world, where it might be reasonably assumed that animals unknown to science exist. However as this crop of local studies shows such creatures are also reported from the backyard of the urban world.
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SURVEYING PARANORMAL AMERICA

Christopher D. Bader, F. Carson Mencken and Joseph O. Baker. Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture. New York University Press, 2010.

Its not quite apparent from the title, but this is a study based around some of the questions asked in two surveys of religious attitudes and beliefs, conducted for the Baylor University Religion Survey Project by the Gallup organisation in 2005 and 2007: (http://www.isreligion.org/programs-research/surveys-of-religion/)

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EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT VAMPIRES

J. Gordon Melton. The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead. Visible Ink Press, 2010.

Gordon Melton is probably best know to Magonia readers as the author of numerous books and papers on religious cults, particularly in the USA, and has written specifically on 'UFO Religions' such as the Raelians. An encyclopedia of vampires may seem a little out of his field, but it is clear from this book that vampire fandom has a great deal in common with the cultic milieu, 

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TRACKING THE BOY JONES

Jan Bondeson. Queen Victoria's Stalker: The Strange Story of the Boy Jones. Amberley, 2010.

'The Boy Jones' - Edward Jones - gained notoriety in the 1840s by making a series of intrusions into Buckingham Palace. At the time this was not as difficult as you might think, the Palace being run on a ramshackle system stretching back hundreds of years which seemed to have ensured that no-one was particularly responsible for anything. 
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UFO FOLK AND UFOLKLORE

Thomas E Bullard. The Myth and Mystery of UFOs. University Press of Kansas, 2010. 

In this important contribution to the UFO literature, Thomas Eddie Bullard looks at the development of the folk beliefs surrounding UFOs, how these reflect many long-standing traditions, and how they influence perceptions of anomalous experiences.

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PYTHAGORAS: MORE THAN JUST THE SQUARE ON THE HYPOTENUSE

Kitty Ferguson. Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe. Icon Books, 2010

To most people, Pythagoras is probably known only for his theorem about right-angled triangles, but Kitty Ferguson shows us that his name has been involved in many other contexts throughout the 2,500 years since his lifetime. This is despite the fact that he and his devotees were very secretive about their work and that, so far as is known, he left no writings at all. The earliest written evidence about him consists of six short fragments of text from about a century after his death, referring to earlier writings.

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BLACK BOOKS

Owen Davies. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books. Oxford, 2010.

Davies's review of the grimoire is a fascinating book, and although scholarly, it is written in an accessible and often amusing manner. It traces this form of literature back to the classical period, where the Roman Empire collected and melded the magical traditions of the Egyptian and Hebrew worlds.

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NORTHERN ECHOES: THE APPRENTICE, INTCAT AND WITCHCRAFT

Its now just about 40 years since I first joined the MUFOB mob as the apprentice. Time certainly flies. Apprentices to MUFOB were rather luckier than those on the TV programme of that name, no selling tat on Bury market under the orders of a time-warped tycoon. The job at first consisted of writing letters to the editor insulting various members of BUFORA, particularly those with fake degrees issued from a former Methodist chapel in North London.
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