HOLD THE BOILING OIL!

James Wright. Historic Building Mythbusting; Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology. History Press, 2024

There's always a hidden tunnel, isn't there? Whenever you are being shown round some old mansion, castle, church or even pub, there will be someone who tells you about the hidden tunnel.

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THEM DRY BONES

Adrienne Mayor. The First Fossil Hunters; Dinosaurs Mammoths and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press. 2022. 

You can see the Monster of Troy in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It is on a vase made in Corinth in the sixth century BC. It shows Heracles killing a monster to which the King of Troy's daughter Hesione had been offered as a sacrifice. The vase painting shows Heracles firing arrows at the beast, and Hesione hurling stones at it. 

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STUBBORN TO THE CORE

Miles Russell and Stuart Laycock. UnRoman Britain: Exposing the Great Myth of Britannia. The History Press, 2011, reprinted 2019.

'Imagine a scenario today where county boundaries suddenly become impassable. Supplies of raw materials would not be able to get to manufacturers and manufactured goods would not be able to get to customers'. When this book was written the authors probably thought imagining this would be quite hard to do but life in 2020 has made it our actual experience, courtesy of Covid 19. 

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DIGGING THE DIRT

Jeb J. Card and David S. Anderson (editors) Lost City, Found Pyramid - Understanding Alternative Archaeologies and Pseudoscientific Practices. University of Alabama Press, 2016

Archaeologists, it has been said, often find their careers in ruins. Their jobs often entail digging in the dirt for clues. Genuine archaeology involves a lot of hard work, strict procedures, and very little glamour. 
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ALL THE NEWS NOT FIT TO PRINT

Jan Bondeson. Strange Victoriana: Tales of the Curious, the Weird and the Uncanny from Our Victorian Ancestors. Amberley, 2016.

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Neil R. A. Bell, Trevor N. Bond, Kate Clarke and M. W. Oldridge. The A-Z of Victorian Crime. Amberley, 2016.

Today we have an image of the Victorian era as a sort of puritanical, tightly-laced and very restrictive period. These two books show just how wrong that impression is. Jan Bondeson will be well-known to readers of Fortean Time through his column relating stories from the pages of the Illustrated Police News, a sensationalist weekly paper, dubbed the 'worst paper in the world' by the sorts of people who happily make similar judgements about today's tabloids.
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CONNECTIONS TO ALL PARTS

J. Douglas Kenyon (editor). Missing Connections: Challenging the Consensus. Atlantis Rising, 2016.

An alternative viewpoint can lead to a fresh and more exciting way of looking at aspects of our world. Treading the normal and everyday path is reliable and reassuring, but there are times when most of us desire a twist upon our regular position. 

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TEXT AND CONTEXT

Jason Colavito (editor). Foundations of Atlantis, Ancient Astronauts and Other Alternative Pasts: 148 Documents Cited by Writers of Fringe History, Translated with Annotations. McFarland, 2015.

‘Alt Archaeology‘, or Alternative Archaeology, has been in vogue at least since at least the seventies, even before the publication of the infamous Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken.

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THE MYSTERY OF EILEAN MOR

Keith McCloskey. The Lighthouse: The Mystery of the Eilean Mor Lighthouse Keepers. The History Press, 2014.

The discovery on Boxing Day 1900 that the three lighthouse keepers on the Eilean Mor lighthouse in the Flannan Islands, part of the Outer Hebrides 20 miles (32 km) west of Lewis, were missing has become one of the classic unsolved mysteries, Britain’s version of the Mary Celeste. 
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LOST PROPERTY

Daniel Smith. 100 Things You Will Never Find: Lost Cities, Hidden Treasures and Legendary Quests, Quercus, 2014.

There is something about reviewing this book that brings on a sense of déjà vu. I seem to remember ruminating upon things that were lost a short while back on these very pages. Some things one may be able to find after all. Also things may be unobtainable because they never existed in the first place or they may not have been what they were generally perceived to be at all and we have all been looking in the wrong place.
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MYSTERIES ON FILE

David Clarke. Britain’s X-traordinary Files. Bloomsbury, 2014.

There is a perception among many members of the public that archives are rather dull, fusty places full of the property deeds of the rich, or long boring ledgers. David Clarke’s new book shows how wrong this can be. Hidden in the vaults of The National Archives at Kew, the British Library, the Imperial War Museum, and similar institutions are strange and spooky stories, stories that Clarke suggests we should call the uncanny. 
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LOST AND FOUND

Michael Pye and Kirsten Dalley (Eds.) Lost Secrets of the Gods. New Page Books, 2014.

Lost Secrets of the Gods is one of the latest offerings from the prolific New Page Books. The publishers themselves are making quite an impression in the areas of Fortean and unconventional history, although, after having reviewed a few of their releases, the quality of their authors can be quite hit-and-miss.
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A GAME OF TWO HALVES

Marie D Jones and Larry Flaxman. Viral Mythology. New Page Books, 2014.

Mythology is a much larger part of our world than many of us generally think. As readers of this site are almost certainly aware, myths from the distant past still reverberate through our world today, although most of the population, at least in the post-industrial West, are unaware of such influence and the extent to which it shapes our present, and the degree to which various myths are currently being produced and shaped.
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LOST PROPERTY

Brian Haughton. Ancient Treasures: The Discovery of Lost Hoards, Sunken Ships, Buried Vaults, and Other Long-Forgotten Artefacts. New Page Books, 2013.

This is an unusual book for these pages in that the subject matter has no ostensible connection with the paranormal or outré. It is an overview of the main archaeological finds of our time that also consist mainly of valuable and rare material.
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ARCHAEOLOGY - MILD AND WILD

Preston Peet (Ed.) Disinformation Guide to Ancient Aliens, Lost Civilizations, Astonishing Archaeology and Hidden History. Disinformation Books, 2013.

'Disinformation' has been online since 1996. Its aim is to become an indispensable source of “alternative” news and information. To this end it has also published books, of which this is the latest. There is no evident checking or validation of the stories that they host, although this looks to be an intentional policy designed so as not to prejudge any particular strand or article.
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GLASTONBURY LEGENDS

Justin E. Griffin, Glastonbury and the Grail: Did Joseph of Arimathea Bring the Sacred Relic to Britain?, McFarland & Co, 2013.

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Judith Faith, Glastonbury, the Templars and the Sovran Cloth: A New Perspective on the Grail Legends, The History Press, 2012

A steady stream of books testifies to the enduring allure of the traditions and mysteries of Glastonbury, in particular its association with the tales of the Holy Grail. Two of the latest offerings present their authors’ attempts to find the historical reality behind the myths and legends.
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SOLAR SURPRISES

Robert M. Schoch. Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future. Inner Traditions, 2012.

This is a volume that holds two surprises. The main one, which does not remain a surprise for very long, is that Dr Schoch has a theory as to why the ancient world left so many megaliths, associated gigantic structures and precious little else materially. This theory also covers some of the main global mythologies that have come down to us today.
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LOST AND FOUND

Philip Coppens. The Lost Civilization Enigma. New Page Books, 2012.

Scientists – are they always to be trusted? Philip Coppens is not so sure, and starts off his latest volume by directing us to the Glozel controversy. To greatly oversimplify and state the point of the inclusion of this in his book, the main point is that archaeologists were guilty of outright fraud. The young farmer made a discovery on his land that produced many artefacts that went rather a way back.
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THE MUMMY'S CURSE

Roger Luckhurst. The Mummy’s Curse: The True History of a Dark Fantasy. Oxford University Press, 2012

When on the 5th of April 1923, Lord Carnarvon, who had financed the archaeological excavation that had unearthed the tomb of Tutankhamen the previous November, died from an infected insect bite, the rumour went around that he had been the victim of some ancient curse.
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LOST WORLDS, LOST SECRETS

Frank Joseph (ed.). The Lost Worlds of Ancient America. New Page Books, 2012

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James A. O’Kon. The Lost Secrets of Maya Technology. New Page Books, 2012.

Since we have been told that Christopher Columbus first discovered the Americas, there has been a body of people working hard to deny it. This seems pretty much like any authoritative statement made – Elvis is not dead; Princess Diana did not perish in an accident; Osama bin Laden did not destroy the World Trade Center – someone is suddenly on hand to gainsay it. 
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ANCIENT ALIENS?

Philip Coppens. The Ancient Alien Question. New Page Books, 2011.

Oh my, what a busy book this is! From the minute you pick it up, it vies for your attention in a number of ways. The cover’s bold font is squeezed around a photograph of what looks to be a Central or South American pyramid plus four small, circular inlays of what are presumably meant to be ‘mysterious’ objects.
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