Tag Archives: Bantam Books

Rim of the Pit

Rim of the Pit
Hake Talbot | Bantam | 1965 (first published 1944) | 170 pages

A séance ends in murder in Hake Talbot’s snowbound, locked-room style mystery.

Spiritual medium Irene Ogden, along with a motley assortment of family members and colleagues, attempts to reach her late husband through a séance at his remote country manor. A series of inexplicable manifestations rattle the group during the session, culminating in Irene’s brutal murder. A search of the house fails to uncover the presence of any outsider, and a trail of footprints leading from the murder scene abruptly disappears in the snow.

Rogan Kincaid, a gambler with a notorious reputation, serves as the amateur sleuth of the gathered guests. He struggles to piece together the growing number of clues pointing to Irene’s late husband as the murderer. Two other guests, a university professor and a Czech former magician, engage in a running debate on the possibility that supernatural forces are responsible for Irene’s death.

Part of the enjoyment of the story comes from the ever-shifting balance between rational explanations with real world motivations and other-wordly encounters, as characters continually posit and debunk theories to account for the beguiling pieces of evidence. At several points, many of the guests become convinced that the culprit is even able to fly, constructing a series of logical arguments to support their conclusion.

The supernatural elements set this story apart from other classic whodunits or impossible mysteries. The séance sequence is particularly chilling, as the disembodied head and hands of Irene’s late husband materialize above the astonished seated guests. The snowy cabin in the woods that confines the action also lends an eerie and evocative backdrop to the phantom–and possible wendigo–that haunts the proceedings. Characters trudge around in blizzard conditions, following tracks in the snow while being menaced by threats seemingly just out of clear sight.

Rather than the typical gathering of the suspects, the resolution takes an unexpected final turn, as Kincaid suggests an unconventional (and highly illegal) solution to presenting the case and all its unbelievable individual elements to the police.

Jaws

Jaws
Peter Benchley | Bantam | 1974 | 309 pages

Too young to dream that my parents would ever take me to the screening of Jaws when it opened in theaters in the summer of 1975, I nevertheless managed to persuade my mother to buy me the Peter Benchley novel. Presented in a wire-mesh basket at the supermarket (possibly a Piggly Wiggly) check-out next to the impulse tabloids that shoppers browse while waiting in line, the Bantam paperback drove itself into my consciousness like the apex predator surging upward on the book’s cover. Since I couldn’t see the movie, I simply refused to be denied the book, which I consumed greedily (and somewhat haltingly, since it was clearly above my recommended reading level, if for content and subject matter rather than vocabulary) in a few sittings over the weekend.

How does the book hold up upon rereading after forty-plus years?

First, an obvious but critical disclaimer: This is not Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. However you feel about the director, his lack of subtlety or ham-fisted sentimentality, Spielberg’s consummate skill as a filmmaker and mastery of the techniques of the medium are fully on display in the film, even though he was only in his mid-twenties at the time of production. Jaws, the movie, not only established the foundation (for better, or for worse) for the summer blockbuster, but detonated a full-blown pop-cultural phenomenon.

Benchley’s novel lacks the bullet-proof construction and expert pacing of the film, allowing ample time to wallow in the melodrama of resort town life, with its perpetual tug-of-war between the tourists and the townies. The strained marriage between Chief Martin Brody, an Amity local, and his bored wife, Ellen, a former summers-only tourist who now longs for her lost lifestyle, occupies the emotional core of the novel. Even Matt Hooper, the ichthyologist from Wood’s hole, serves more as a catalyst for rekindling Ellen’s past life than as an agent for the study and capture of the shark plaguing the waters off Amity. 

Not that the book lacks suspense. The early chapters involving the fateful skinny dipper, Christine Watkins, and a doomed young boy on an inflatable raft deliver thrilling, visceral sequences. Lean, economical prose details the movements of the shark, signalling the fateful outcome of the encounters long before the victim becomes aware of the threat. Another attack, in shallow water barely at wading depth, is described via a third-person account, but still resonates with a primal horror, as the victim is repeatedly hit while onlookers attempt to pull him from the surf.

In contrast to the contemporary environment of “Mega”, “Super”, or “Ultra” prefix marketing hyperbole, it’s interesting to note that the monster shark terrorizing the swimmers of Amity is referred to simply as “the fish”.

The middle chapters tend to drag, including a long dinner party that underscores the tension between the Brody, his wife, and Hooper, but at the expense of further stalling the narrative. The overall pacing suffers another blow with the subsequent chapter, detailing Ellen Brody’s affair with Hooper. Awkward at best, their illicit encounter degenerates into wince-inducing territory as Ellen reveals some regressively outdated and offensive (by today’s standards) erotic fantasies to Hooper during their seductive tête-à-tête. The specifics surrounding the application of spray-on deodorant and the logistics of Ellen’s panties are probably not the best subjects for rumination while waiting for the great fish to resurface.

The story is completely transformed in part three, however, after Brody hires Quint, a laconic local fisherman, to catch and kill the shark. Although the melodrama from the mainland continues in the onboard tension between Brody and Hooper, the focus intensifies as the intrepid shark-hunters set out in Quint’s boat, the Orca, setting the stage for an epic struggle for the bragging rights atop the food chain. Quint is a compelling character, although his seemingly sudden obsession with the shark becomes a shorthand substitute for Captain Ahab from Moby Dick, a reduction that culminates in a haunting, even if overly familiar, image of his final demise.

Incidentally, I would return to that supermarket a few years later, age 11, and beg for the purchase of yet another impulse checkout display: Alan Dean Foster’s movie tie-in novelization of Star Wars. That one I took home and immediately read cover to cover, twice.

The Mind Thing

The Mind Thing
Frederic Brown | Bantam Books | 1961 | 149 pages

“…he was not deliberately cruel, but simply had no empathy at all except for others of his own kind…”

Exiled from its home planet, an alien entity lands in rural Wisconsin. Alone, but determined to seek out the knowledge necessary to engineer a return voyage, it possesses the ability to enter the mind of any nearby sleeping creature. The alien takes total control of the body it hijacks, only returning back again to its small, shell-encased original form with the death of its host.

The possession of a teenage boy, sleeping off a midday tryst in the woods, kick-starts a series of body-hopping jumps through mice, dogs, birds and eventually other humans, all in an effort to occupy the right host to further the alien’s agenda. Once finished with the purpose of the possession, the alien discards its host body by killing it. Cats jump into the mouths of vicious dogs, birds fly into the earth, and old farmers put guns to their heads.

Through the self-destruction of a dog host, the alien encounters Doc Ralph Staunton, a vacationing MIT physics professor who will ultimately become its adversary. Rushing under the wheels of his passing car, the possessed dog’s demise sets Staunton on a course of investigating the strange suicides—both animal and human—seemingly plaguing the small Wisconsin town.

The Mind Thing is not, however, structured as a mystery. The hypothesis of a body-jumping alien is crafted in an amusingly rapid fashion, first posited by Amanda Talley, a part-time stenographer (and full-time science fiction reader) assisting Staunton with his notes. Through a series of briskly unfolding chapters, the alien comes closer and closer to an ultimate showdown with Staunton, whose mind and body it wants to possess.

“...he now knew that he had been right in assessing the value of the cat as a host perfect for spying…”

A preliminary battle of the wills occurs when the alien takes the body of a small gray cat in order to observe Staunton in his remote farmhouse. Staunton, ruminating on Talley’s extraterrestrial musings and already suspicious of the many animal deaths surrounding the human suicides, traps the cat inside, keeping it for a few days to watch for any signs of unusual behavior. 

This game of cat-and-professor sets the stage for the final contest between the pair, with Staunton later trapped in the house and realizing that he must not go to sleep. The rapid serial possession and disposition of various deer, bulls and bird species during the climax feels like a flash-forward to the when-animals-attack horrors of the seventies, but does not derail the story into unintentional humor.

Although peppered with the sudden deaths of its bodily hosts, the essence of the horror does not derive from the violent actions of the alien, but from its cold indifference. The mind thing is not intrinsically evil or even malicious, it simply does not view humans as anything more than a means to an end. Immune to the suffering of its victims, both field mouse and human alike exist only as convenient vehicles to be manipulated for its own purposes, then discarded. Although certainly not on a scale of the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, The Mind Thing shares the same intrinsic horror of an alien perspective utterly devoid of consideration towards humanity.

For a genre entry of its era, the characters depicted offer a surprising depth and amount of poignancy. However briefly sketched, the victims and those others affected—the teen lovers, unhappy farm wives, and struggling shop owners—are detailed with an unexpected level of compassion, which contrasts sharply with the alien’s complete lack of empathy.

Staunton and Talley make an appealing pair of paranormal investigators, and although their relationship falls short of any implied middle-age romance, it would be easy to imagine the pair post-Mind Thing, traveling the country together in search of further adventures.

Sign of the Labrys

Sign of the Labrys
Margaret St. Clair | Bantam Books | 1963 | 139 pages

Science fiction and witchcraft mix in this post-apocalyptic quest that reads like a progression of video game levels, although written over a decade before the appearance of the earliest gaming consoles.

After a yeast-based plague kills ninety percent of the human race, a handful of survivors have created the foundation of a subterranean civilization in a series of underground bunkers originally designed for shelter from a nuclear war. An aftereffect of the plague causes the survivors to experience a sense of growing revulsion in the prolonged presence of other people.

Sam Sewell’s life of menial labor–arbitrarily moving boxes back and forth between warehouses—is interrupted by an usual visit from the FBY (Federal Bureau of Yeast). FBY Agent Ames somehow suspects Sewell of knowing the whereabouts of Despoina, a mysterious woman who may have the key to the cure for the yeast virus still infecting underground survivors of the plague. 

Sam’s search for Despoina ultimately drives him deeper and deeper underground, with each new sub-level introducing him to unexpected vistas, strange residents and deadly traps. He encounters a beach front simulated out of hewn rock, a migratory wave of lab rats filling the corridors in a synchronized cycle, and a specially-clad decontamination crew freezing anyone suspected of harboring a yeast infection. 

A few instances of bubbly pox aside, this tale skirts the boundaries of conventional bio-horror. The yeast component and the fungal subsistence of the survivors sets it aside from the expected genre tropes, but the burgeoning intrusion of magic breaks all the conventions.

“Wicca are people who know things without being told.”

Sam develops an affinity towards Despoina, who is revealed to be the high priestess of a Wiccan cult. Sam’s own unlikely connection to Wicca unfolds through knowledge he seemingly unlocks at random, sketchily explained as ancestral memories bubbling up into his consciousness. At convenient moments, he displays previously unknown talents in mind-control and telepathy. These deus ex machina escapes tend to undermine the suspense of individual scenes by pulling out the rug from underneath the novel’s established parameters.

To reach the innermost level of the underground maze (a command center office conceived for use by the President of the United States during a nuclear attack), Sam discovers and initiates a matter transmitter, a forerunner to the Star Trek molecular transporter, to beam himself to his final destination—undeterred even by a series of dramatic test failures.

“Too bad we can’t really fly on broomsticks.”

After struggling with the laborious downward trek through multiple setbacks, dangerous pitfalls and hostile occupants, Sam would be perfectly reasonable to ask himself the question, “Why didn’t I know about this sooner?”

Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, cited the book (among a rather lengthy list of other titles) as an inspiration for the game [thanks, Wikipedia!], acknowledging the latent role-playing DNA embedded in the text.

Brand of the Werewolf | Doc Savage #5

Brand of the Werewolf | Doc Savage #5
Kenneth Robeson | Bantam Books | 1975 | 138 pages

Taking a transcontinental train to his uncle’s remote Canadian cabin (for a brief respite from his adventures in fighting against evil), Doc Savage and his gang of super-scientist companions are the target of a strange, silent attack. An odd trio of other passengers—the “swarthy” Señor Oveja, his ravishingly beautiful daughter Cere, and the “girl-faced” El Rabanos—set a trap to frame Doc for a similar attack, and subsequently, for the murder of the train’s conductor.

Disappointingly, this entry in the action series does not settle into a parlour mystery set aboard a speeding train. Soon, Doc and his friends are off the train, following Oveja and company to uncle Alex’s cabin, where the senior Savage has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Overseeing the remote estate is Doc’s cousin Patricia, a beautiful young woman who shares the bronze hero’s statuesque build and metallic coloring. 

Unfortunately, Patricia’s Native American household staff falls victim to the cheap stereotyping so common in the Doc Savage series. Patricia’s handyman, Boat-face, speaks almost exclusively with offensively bad retorts of “Him bad medicine” or “Him heap big coward.” Patricia actually punches him in the eye for being insolent, toppling him out of their canoe. Meanwhile, Boat-face’s “squaw”, Tiny, is a rotund woman who constantly chases him around with a raised rolling pin.

Patricia herself is also a sadly underdeveloped character. Sharing few of her cousin’s superhuman traits, she mostly seems to exist in order to provide a victim in need of the occasional rescuing. In one sequence, Doc incapacitates her with a specially applied nerve pinch, and bodily carries her to safety tucked under his arm.

The story is replete with the expected action sequences, as Doc eventually battles a criminal gang in a race toward an unlikely pirate treasure. Monk and Ham trade quips, and compete to win over the attention of Patricia (whose notable physical resemblance to Doc may posit an unintentional question surrounding the true object of their attraction). Doc’s other team members produce an unexpected amount of gear from luggage intended to support a fishing trip, while all paths finally converge on a shipwreck in an underground cavern.

The resolution relies too much on a multitude of actions performed by a key character, but the circumstances of his death ultimately defy the very logic of those actions.

…and most unforgivable of all, Doc never wrestles a werewolf, as promised on the cover.

The Polar Treasure | Doc Savage #4

The Polar Treasure | Doc Savage #4
Kenneth Robeson | Bantam Books | 1965 | 122 pages

A map tattooed on the back of a blind violinist leads Doc and his crew on a chase for lost treasure in the frozen wastes of the uncharted Arctic.

After attending a concert (featuring a classical piece he wrote anonymously), super crime-fighter Doc Savage thwarts an attempt to assault the orchestra’s blind violinist, Victor Vail. The criminal ringleader spouts enough nautical gibberish (“Sink ‘im, mateys! Scuttle ‘im! Well, keelhaul me!”) to his henchmen during the attack that Vail recognizes the voice from his tragic past. 

Fifteen years previously, Vail was among a handful of survivors aboard the Oceanic, a passenger ship that was lost among the arctic icefields off the coast of Greenland. Although his wife and daughter were purported casualties, Vail himself mysteriously had no recollection of the actual sinking. Unaccountably blacking out just prior to the disaster, he awoke afterwards with a strange, stinging sensation on his back, carried away with a small band of the surviving crew members. Vail recognizes the salty voice of his attempted kidnapper as belonging to a leader of an opposing faction of that crew, whose men instigated a violent internal struggle before splitting off from the others.

After Doc discovers the Oceanic carried a wealth of gold and jewels as its cargo, he embarks on a race against two rival gangs in order to beat them to the treasure, and uncover the true fate of the ship and its passengers. Although Doc’s five super-genius companions disappear for a time, they have enough time to engage in the trademark adventures of the series: plentiful instances of fisticuffs, gunfights, and gadgetry that propel each short burst of a chapter to the next. 

Long Tom (the electrical wizard) fiddles with the radio set, Renny (the engineer) beats down doors with his gigantic fists, Johnny (the archaeologist) assesses the group’s chances with the local terrain and population, while Monk (the chemist) and Ham (the lawyer) exchange enough corny insults to put an old married couple to shame. Ham and Renny even engage in a brawl with the walrus-like captain of a polar submarine that prefigures Doc’s own fight with an actual polar bear. 

SPOILER: he virtually punches it to death.

The implicit racism of the era that unfortunately informs many of the characterizations in the series is also demonstrated in this installment. The eskimo fighters are almost universally referred to as fat, greasy, or foul-smelling, and one attacker is specifically derided as a “greasy eater of blubber.”

Doc’s abilities and goodwill are nearly limitless, and he even takes time to perform a miraculous surgery on Vail, completely restoring the sight the violinist has been without since birth. However, an offhand remark suggests that his surgical skills are also directed to more dubious concerns, at least to modern sensibilities. Rather than sending his apprehended criminals to the police, Doc admits to sending them to a secret, extralegal installation in upstate New York, where advanced brain surgery modifies their behavior and facilitates a medical restraint from future criminality.

As Renny would say, “Holy cow!”

Meteor Menace | Doc Savage #3

Meteor Menace | Doc Savage #3
Kenneth Robeson | Bantam Books | 1972 | 140 pages

“A screaming comes across the sky.” 

[Stop.] That’s Gravity’s Rainbow. [Restart.]

A cosmic blue light and shrill whistling comes across the sky, rendering those unfortunate witnesses on the earth below into brainless automatons. That’s Meteor Menace, third entry in the Doc Savage series of proto-super hero adventures originally written in the thirties.

About as far from Pynchon post-modernism as possible on the page, the two-fisted, globe-trotting action series functions as a travelogue of sorts; only the food is always terrible and the locals are less than civilized.

While dedicating a hospital in South America, Doc Savage — multi-disciplined super genius, international crime fighter, and all-around astounding physical specimen — is approached by the beautiful young Rae Stanley in an appeal to aid in the rescue of her father. Professor Stanley, a world-renowned astronomer, disappeared in the wilds of Tibet on a mission to research a legendary blue meteor that reputedly struck somewhere in the desolate wastes of the high Himalyan plateau. 

Before fully investigating Rae’s plea for help, Doc and his five-man crew of super-scientists–Johnny, Renny, Long Tom, Monk, and Ham–come under attack by a group of Tibetan mercenaries, who all seem to speak in a stereotypical jet of colloquialisms (“Lower the box, offspring of silly partridges!”). The group’s leader is Shrops, a cockney Englishman who whose own speech is characterized by an affected dialogue style (“Not ‘arf bad o’ you t’ let me com hup.”). Shrops control over the Tibetans stems from his power to summon the Blue Meteor, an aeronautical anomaly that reduces those in close proximity to gibbering idiots.

Doc and his crew become such unwitting victims after the meteor passes overhead, until unexpectedly awakening from their meteor-induced stupor in a small house in Tibet. Maneuvered by Shrops to find and eliminate his former crime-lord boss and rival, Mo-Gwei (modestly self-titled “The Devil-faced, Master of the Blue Meteor, and Future Master of All Mankind.”), Doc’s sojourns into the Tibetan interior will bring him to the source of the Blue Meteor, while ultimately uncovering the secret surrounding the fate of Rae’s father.

In each chapter, Doc advances through an escalating series of scrapes, abductions, rescues, brawls and gunfights, all providing a modest set of cliffhanger action along the way. However, with his amazing strength, resourcefulness, and something akin to a utility belt full of remarkable (for the time) devices, Doc’s ability to overcome any danger is never really in question.

Meanwhile, a fancy set of purple-striped pajamas offers a pinnacle of comic relief.

The Man of Bronze | Doc Savage #1

The Man of Bronze | Doc Savage #1
Kenneth Robeson | Bantam Books | 1975 | 170 pages

“There is not a thing he can’t do, I reckon.”

Fisticuffs! Shootouts! Airplane dogfights! Proto-typical superhero Doc Savage and his band of adventure-seeking super scientists propel themselves through what amounts to an origin story, all told in a breathless style simply describing the action. With exclamation points! Lots of exclamation points!

After surviving an attempt on his life by an unknown, red-fingered assassin, Doc discovers a bequeath by his late father, granting him a significant land holding in the Central American country of Hidalgo. Doc’s father instilled an unmatched drive and sense of discipline in his young son, whose years of mental and physical training have developed his mind and body into an unprecedented paragon of human perfection. That very perfection also undermines almost all suspense, because Doc will surely pull upon his unlimited knowledge of chemistry, biology, archaeology, engineering, law, medicine, or surgery to overcome any obstacle in his way, not to mention his seemingly superhuman physical prowess.

Doc’s team of all-star scientific experts—Johnny, Renny, Long Tom, Ham and Monk—are rarely called upon to exert their (alleged) collective genius, reduced to providing support by punching walls, firing off pistol rounds, ribbing each other, or shouting exclamations.

“We’re sitting pretty!”

“Knock on wood, you lunk!”

“Fooey–we’re lost!”

Originally written in the thirties, the story displays the inherent racist and colonial attitudes characteristic of the day. Condescending views towards Latin America, lazy or corrupt local citizens and officials, and an endless stream of swarthy villains all contrast the perfection of our intrepid band of white explorers. Even the gold resources of a lost kingdom are all served up to these new conquistadores in their pursuit of global adventures. Lacking details regarding his heritage, Doc’s status of exemplar of his race is still curious, particularly given his dark (albeit metallic) complexion; Chalcolithic-American, perhaps?

After accepting Doc’s naturally bronze skin and golden eyes, perhaps the most difficult question to answer remains, “What’s the story with his waterproof hair?”

The Hephaestus Plague

The Hephaestus Plague
Thomas Page | Bantam Books | 1975 | 217 pages

Once you crack the chitinous shell of disbelief, the Hephaestus Plague delivers a skittering, insectile variation on the animals-run-amok theme so prevalent in seventies ecological horror.

Following an anomalous earthquake in a small North Carolina town, a previously unknown type of beetle issues forth from a newly-created fissure in the earth. Completely blind and equipped with an impenetrable shell, this throwback species living underground since prehistoric times also possesses a unique anatomical feature — two flint-like back legs capable of sparking fire. As a series of fatal fires spreads along the east coast, reclusive entomologist James Parmiter leads the academic drive to find a way of stopping the insects and their apocalyptic threat to society.

The details of the beetle’s cross-country march (via the tailpipes of cars) and their fiery reign of destruction are delivered in an almost clinical, detached state of observation. This sense of removal from affairs starkly contrasts Parmiter’s growing obsession with the beetles and the mystery surrounding their reproductive process. Withdrawing into the dingy confines of his basement laboratory, Parmiter arguably descends into madness as he conducts breeding experiments, first to unlock any potential vulnerabilities, but later to unknown ends.

After Parmiter successfully cross breeds the fire beetles with a common domestic species, events unmoor from any pretense of clinical foundations and take a firm detour into the realm of weird science. Swarming over his experimental notes and listening to his voice, the beetles develop an understanding of language, communicating with Parmiter by assembling words through formations on the wall: “Parmiter”, “No”, and eventually, “Kill”.

Parminter’s relationship with his experimental beetle Goldback recalls the special animal bonding formed with the rat from Willard, with Goldback following Parmiter from his bowl and listening attentively from his perch on the windowsill. Parmiter’s fog of madness obscures his motivations to the degree that his goal is uncertain. Is he attempting to stop the plague of beetles, or facilitating it?

A brief flirtation with body horror, after Parmiter’s lab assistant develops odd symptoms following a bite on the hand, ultimately leads nowhere, although another transformation akin to an interspecies amalgamation is later hinted. The expected heebie-jeebies in a purported insect horror are also mostly absent until the finale, when a character pushes knee-deep through a swarm of beetles.

Bigfoot

Bigfoot
B. Ann Slate & Alan Berry | Bantam Books | 1976 | 171 pages

“Jane Goodall said the Bigfoot subject was fascinating and wished us all good luck.”

Comparable to a contemporary embedded journalist in a war zone, co-author Alan Berry joins Warren and Lewis Johnson, brothers and seasonal hunters, in their Sierra Nevada cabin to record their recurring encounters with a group of communicative, if ultimately camera-shy, sasquatch.

The resulting accounts, recorded over a period of several stays in the cabin, are the most traditional Bigfoot tales in this purportedly non-fiction compendium of facts regarding the “Bigfoot Mystery.” The creatures skirt the perimeter of the brothers’ camp, vocalize in what seems to be an attempt at communication, bang sticks against nearby trees, and leave behind astonishingly large, quasi-human footprints. Other than a fleeting glimpse of a dark shape entering the woods, however, the beasts remain elusive to actually being sighted by the men in camp.

The scope quickly expands to other obsessions of seventies pop-culture, first with the contributions of two persons “gifted with extrasensory perception (ESP)”. The psychics claimed to find a telepathic link with the Bigfoot group, revealing the interpersonal [inter-bestial?] dynamics of what amounts to an extended family unit of the creatures visiting the Johnsons’ cabin and surrounding area.

Other anecdotes follow, detailing the various close encounters unsuspecting people have experienced with the foul-smelling, rock-throwing, upright-standing hairy beasts who vanish as quickly as they appear, leaving behind only a pattern of gigantic footprints (with a variously documented number of toes). Psychic phenomenon resurfaces later, with a teenager in Southern California claiming a telepathic-hypnotic link (or “mind-grab”) with the creatures, seemingly intent on summoning him away from his fellow campers for unknown purposes. Even more reports of the occurrence of hypnotic suggestion surrounding Bigfoot sightings lead the authors to speculate on the nature of Bigfoot’s ability to telepathically camouflage his appearance, even to the degree of rendering himself invisible.

“What’s wrong with Jim? Is he on something?”

Conspiracy theories also begin to swirl around Bigfoot’s appearances. A potentially proto-human skull found near the Johnson cabin suspiciously disappears into the netherworlds of academic bureaucracy, after it is submitted to the anthropology department at UCLA for analysis. A number of sightings in remote forested areas are accompanied by reports of inexplicable underground mechanical noises, suggesting some sort of subterranean conspiracy on a grand scale.

But the ultimate expression of the supernatural fascinations of the era is the alleged link between Bigfoot and Unidentified Flying Objects. Various episodes of strange sightings, from lights in the sky to saucers or cigar-shaped metallic objects, correspond with confrontations with gigantic, hairy creatures. During one such Bigfoot-UFO encounter, a key witness to the events seemingly became possessed, issuing warnings of mankind’s imminent destruction of the planet.

“If they have been seen near UFOs, I would prefer to assume that the occupants of the UFO were just looking at the Sasquatch, or vice versa.”

The confluence of all the individual wacky elements propels this straight-laced, footnoted and annotated reportage into hyper-absurd overdrive. A telepathic, oft-invisible anthropological throwback working in conjunction with visitors from outer space (or another dimension) who may gain benefit by a conspiratorial league of underground facilities—perhaps the only element missing is a sighting in the Bermuda Triangle.

[Full Disclosure: The Loch Ness Monster is also briefly referenced.]