But the idea that the earth has a hollow interior was first proposed as a scientific theory in 1691 by Sir Edmond Halley (of comet fame), who also suggested that there might be life down there as well. Hollow Earth traces the many surprising, marvelous, and just plain weird permutations his ideas have taken over the centuries. Both Edgar Allan Poe and (more famously) Jules Verne picked up the torch in the nineteenth century, the latter with his science fiction epic A Journey to the Center of the Earth. The notion of a hollow earth even inspired a religion at the turn of the twentieth century-Koreshanity, which held not only that the earth was hollow, but also that we're all living on the inside. Utopian novels and adventures abounded at this same time, including L. Frank Baum's hollow earth addition to the Oz series and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Pellucidar books chronicling a stone-age hollow earth. In the 1940s an enterprising science-fiction magazine editor convinced people that the true origins of flying saucers lay within the hollow earth, relics of an advanced alien civilization. And there are still devout hollow earthers today, some of whom claim there is a New Age utopia lurking beneath the earth's surface, with at least one entrance near Mt. Shasta in California. Hollow Earth travels through centuries and cultures, exploring how each era's relationship to the idea of a hollow earth mirrored its hopes, fears, and values. Illustrated with everything from seventeenth-century maps to 1950s pulp art to movie posters and more, Hollow Earth is for anyone interested in the history of strange ideas that just won't go away.

     Meet Ray Palmer. A hustler, a trickster, and a visionary. The hunchbacked Palmer, who stood at just over four feet tall, was nevertheless an indomitable force, the ruler of his own bizarre sector of the universe. Armed with only his typewriter, the Palmer changed the world as we know it –  jumpstarting the flying saucer craze; frightening hundreds of thousands of Americans with “true” stories of evil denizens of inner earth; and reporting on cover-ups involving extraterrestrials, the paranormal, and secret government agencies. As editor for the ground-breaking sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories and creator of publications such as Other Worlds, Imagination, Fate, Mystic, Search, Flying Saucers, Hidden World, and Space Age, Palmer pushed the limits and broke new ground in science fiction publishing in the 1940s and 1950s—and was reviled for it by purists who called him “the man who killed science fiction.” In the first-ever biography devoted to the figure who molded modern geek culture, pulp scholar Fred Nadis paints a vivid portrait of Palmer—a brilliant, charming, and wildly willful iconoclast who helped ignite the UFO craze, convinced Americans of hidden worlds and government cover ups, and championed the occult and paranormal. Palmer overcame serious physical handicaps to become the most significant editor during the “golden age” of pulp magazines; he rebelled in his own inimitable way against the bland suburban vision of the American Dream; he concocted new literary genres; and he molded our current conspiracy culture decades before The X-Files claimed that the truth was out there.

    That long-out-of-print book--which discussed the most interesting reports of more than 1,000 apparently reliable witnessess--has become an underground classic and is now being reissued.

    In the early days of photography, many believed and hoped that the camera would prove more efficient than the human eye in capturing the unseen. Spiritualists and animists of the nineteenth century seized on the new technology as a method of substantiating the existence of supernatural beings and happenings. This fascinating book assembles more than 250 photographic images from the Victorian era to the 1960s, each purporting to document an occult phenomenon: levitations, apparitions, transfigurations, ectoplasms, spectres, ghosts, and auras. Drawn from the archives of European and American occult societies and private and public collections, the photographs in many cases have never before been published.The Perfect Medium studies these rare and remarkable photographs through cultural, historical, and artistic lenses. More than mere curiosities, the images on film are important records of the cultural forces and technical methods that brought about their production. They document in unexpected ways a period when developing photographic technology merged with a popular obsession with the occult to create a new genre of haunting experimental photographs.

    Witnesses describe being kidnapped by large-headed, black-eyed creatures from other worlds. Those same creatures have become popularly known as “the Grays.” There is, however, another aspect to the alien abduction controversy.Abductees very often report being followed and spied upon by military and government personnel. It is typical for abductees to see black helicopters hovering directly over their homes in an intimidating manner. Phone calls are monitored. Emails are hacked into. Strange men dressed in black suits are seen photographing the homes of the abductees. All of this brings us to the matter of what have become known in the domain of alien abduction research as “Military Abductions,” or “MILABS.”According to numerous abductees, after being kidnapped by aliens they are kidnapped again . . . by the government. These follow-up events are the work of a powerful group hidden deep within the military and the intelligence community. It is the secret agenda of this highly classified organization to figure out what the so-called Grays are really up to. And, the best way for the government to get the answers is to interrogate those who have come face-to-face with the UFO phenomenon: the abductees. Why is the government secretly compiling files on alien abductees? Is the alien abduction issue so sinister that it has become a matter of national security proportions?

    Sufferers report feeling suffocated, held down by some "force," paralyzed, and extremely afraid.The experience is surprisingly common: the author estimates that approximately 15 percent of people undergo this event at some point in their lives. Various cultures have their own name for the phenomenon and have constructed their own mythology around it; the supernatural tenor of many Old Hag stories is unavoidable. Hufford, as a folklorist, is well-placed to investigate this puzzling occurrence.

    His research appeared in four books: The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents.In these four volumes Fort organized and commented on a wild host of phenomena: flying saucers seen in the sky before the invention of aircraft, flying wheels, strange noises in the sky; correlations between volcanic activity and atmospheric phenomena; falls of red snow; falls of frogs, fishes, worms, shells, jellies; finding of "thunderbolts"; discrepancies in the schedules of comets, sightings on Mars and the moon; infra-Mercurian planets; inexplicable footprints in snowfields; flat earth phenomena, disruptions of gravity; poltergeist phenomena; stigmata; surviving fossil animals; the Jersey devil; Kaspar Hauser; spontaneous combustion; and similar weird effects.While Charles Ford never actually explained the phenomena, beyond making vague hints of an organic universe and neo-Hegelianism, through the years his following has grown. At first his work was picked up by literary men such as Theodore Dreiser, Booth Tarkington, Clarence Darrow, Havelock Ellis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Later, "Fortean themes" influenced the development of science fiction, and today his work remains the great predecessor to all extraterrestrial speculations.

    At the same time, this groundbreaking work attempts to reconcile the mythological and contemporary accounts of "little people" into a coherent picture. "For too long, we've called them 'aliens,' assuming that we represent our planet's best and brightest," writes Tonnies. "Maybe that's exactly what they want us to think."

    For thirteen months the town of Point Pleasant is gripped by a real-life nightmare that culminates in a tragedy that makes headlines around the world. Strange occurrences and sightings, including a bizarre winged apparition that becomes known as the Mothman, trouble this ordinary American community. Mysterious lights are seen moving across the sky. Domestic animals are found slaughtered and mutilated. And journalist John Keel, arriving to investigate the freakish events, soon finds himself an integral part of an eerie and unfathomable mystery...

    Recently, tales of these "monsters" have been corroborated by an increase in sightings, and out of these legends a new science has been born: cryptozoology -- the study of hidden animals.Cryptozoology A to Z, the first encyclopedia of its kind, contains nearly two hundred entries, including cryptids (the name given to these unusual beasts), new animal finds, and the explorers and scientists who search for them. Loren Coleman, one of the world's leading cryptozoologists, teams up with Jerome Clark, editor and author of several encyclopedias, to provide these definitive descriptions and many never-before-published drawings and photographs from eyewitnesses' detailed accounts. Full of insights into the methods of these scientists, exciting tales of discovery, and the history and evolution of this field, Cryptozoology A to Z is the most complete reference ever of the newest zoological science.

    Nor is it a collection of bizarre facts, though the Angel of the Bizarre might well find himself at home in it. It is not a scientific contribution, a vehicle for an exotic teaching, a testament, a document, a fable. It is simply an account - at times figurative, at times factual - of a first excursion into some as yet scarcely explored realms of consciousness. The Morning of the Magicians is a classic of radical literature, a book that has challenged assumptions and conventional knowledge for decades. It has shaken the foundations of beliefs all over the world and may be the most influential book published in the twentieth century. Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier spent years searching "through all the regions of consciousness, to the frontiers of science and tradition" and opened their minds to any fact or theory that went beyond the frontier of current theories. The result is this remarkable work, and the stream of possibilities that it contains: Do mutants exist, are they a future form of man? Does extrasensory perception reveal that human consciousness has advanced beyond its currently accepted limits? What connects the ancient art of alchemy and modern atomic physics?

    He repeatedly attempts to engage and fire on unusual objects heading right toward his aircraft, but his missile control is locked and disabled. Witnessed from the ground, this dogfight becomes the subject of a secret report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. In Belgium, an Air Force colonel investigates a series of widespread sightings of unidentified triangular objects, and he sends F-16s to attempt a closer look. Many hundreds of eyewitnesses, including on-duty police officers, file reports, and a spectacular photograph of an unidentifiable craft is retrieved and analyzed. Here at home, a retired chief of the FAA’s Accidents and Investigations Division reveals the agency’s response to a thirty-minute encounter between an aircraft and a gigantic UFO over Alaska, which occurred during his watch and is documented on radar. Now all three of these distinguished men have written breathtaking, firsthand accounts about these extraordinary incidents. They are joined by Air Force generals and a host of high-level sources—including Fife Symington III, former governor of Arizona, and Nick Pope, former head of the British Defence Ministry’s UFO Investigative Unit—who have agreed to write their own detailed, personal stories about UFO encounters and investigations for the first time. They are coming forward now because of Leslie Kean, an investigative reporter who has spent the last ten years studying the still unexplained UFO phenomenon. Kean reviewed hundreds of government documents, aviation reports, radar data, and case studies with corroborating physical evidence. She carefully examined scientifically analyzed photographs and interviewed dozens of high-level officials and aviation witnesses from around the world. With the support of former White House chief of staff John Podesta, Kean draws on her research to separate fact from fiction and to lift the veil on decades of U.S. government misinformation. Throughout, she presents irrefutable evidence that unknown flying objects—metallic, luminous, and seemingly able to maneuver in ways that defy the laws of physics—actually exist. No one yet knows what these objects are, even though they affect aviation safety and possibly national security. The phenomenon has been officially acknowledged by numerous foreign governments. For these reasons and many others, Kean concludes that the UFO problem must be more widely recognized and ultimately solved through an unbiased scientific investigation. The material presented throughout this landmark book is sobering, unflinching, and undeniably awe-inspiring, and moves us toward a goal of properly addressing this worldwide mystery.From the Hardcover edition.

    It seems the more our maps of the known world get filled in, the more we crave mysterious locations full of strange creatures.Enter Colin Dickey, Cultural Historian and Tour Guide of the Weird. With the same curiosity and insight that made Ghostland a hit with readers and critics, Colin looks at what all fringe beliefs have in common, explaining that today's Illuminati is yesterday's Flat Earth: the attempt to find meaning in a world stripped of wonder. Dickey visits the wacky sites of America's wildest fringe beliefs--from the famed Mount Shasta where the ancient race (or extra-terrestrials, or possibly both, depending on who you ask) called Lemurians are said to roam, to the museum containing the last remaining "evidence" of the great Kentucky Meat Shower--investigating how these theories come about, why they take hold, and why as Americans we keep inventing and re-inventing them decade after decade. The Unidentified is Colin Dickey at his best: curious, wry, brilliant in his analysis, yet eminently readable.

    This world-famous bestseller has withstood the test of time, inspiring countless books and films, including the author's own popular sequel, The Eyes of the Sphinx. But here is where it all began--von Daniken's startling theories of our earliest encounters with alien worlds, based upon his lifelong studies of ancient ruins, lost cities, potential spaceports, and a myriad of hard scientific facts that point to extraterrestrial intervention in human history. Most incredible of all, however, is von Daniken's theory that we ourselves are the descendants of these galactic pioneers--and the archeological discoveries that prove it... * An alien astronaut preserved in a pyramid * Thousand-year-old spaceflight navigation charts * Computer astronomy from Incan and Egyptian ruins * A map of the land beneath the ice cap of Antarctica * A giant spaceport discovered in the Andes Includes remarkable photos that document mankind's first contact with aliens at the dawn of civilization.

    Vanishing and mutilated cattle. Unidentified Flying Objects. The appearance of huge, otherworldly creatures. Invisible objects emitting magnetic fields with the power to spark a cattle stampede. Flying orbs of light with dazzling maneuverability and lethal consequences. For one family, life on the Skinwalker Ranch had become a life under siege by an unknown enemy or enemies. Nothing else could explain the horrors that surrounded them -- perhaps science could. Leading a first-class team of research scientists on a disturbing odyssey into the unknown, Colm Kelleher spent hundreds of days and nights on the Skinwalker property and experienced firsthand many of its haunting mysteries. With investigative reporter George Knapp -- the only journalist allowed to witness and document the team's work -- Kelleher chronicles in superb detail the spectacular happenings the team observed personally, and the theories of modern physics behind the phenomena. Far from the coldly detached findings one might expect, their conclusions are utterly hair-raising in their implications. Opening a door to the unseen world around us, Hunt for the Skinwalker is a clarion call to expand our vision far beyond what we know.