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The Unexplained (Books) - Still Viable?

What do you think of "The Unexplained"?

  • Completely redundant - bin/burn it!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Fun to read ... and add updates!

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Quite useful for odd research

    Votes: 1 16.7%
  • Unreplaceable - a "must have"!

    Votes: 3 50.0%

  • Total voters
    6
gordonrutter said:
It's worth checking secodn hand book shops they do turn up for reasonable prices - it's all down to luck.

Gorodn

(Very) occasionally I see them for sale in the 'Free-ads' papers.

S'worth a look!
 
I've not read the mags or books but do have a CDROM called The Unexplained which might have some of the material on it. I haven't actually ever looked at it and won't while I'm online as I don't trust it not to do something evil to my computer!

EDIT Have just noticed there are sound files on the CDROM, will wait til daylight to install it :eek:
 
I had the extremely good fortune of coming across 9 bound volumes of The Unexplained in a local second hand bookshop about 7 years back for around IR£16 the lot IIRC. They aren't hard back bound like a book, but don't seem to have been bound by the original buyer. The binding is by Orbis, blue with gold lettering, soft spine and cardboard type front/back. I wouldn't part with them for anything! When I was a kid the Unexplained was an unaffordable luxury to be pored over in the newsagents - we'd read bits and discuss them later! For me flicking through the Unexplained brings back fond memories of the days before the internet when we marvelled over the titles of Fortean books in mail order catalogues from England and told and retold each other stories about Borley Rectory, the Marie Celeste, Harry Price and trembled with awe as we read Cavendish's "The Black Arts" - which was passed around between us (one of the lads refused to have it in his house after his first night with it!). We were hungry for knowledge, innocent and in awe at all things paranormal. Now Google throws it all up in a click, which is great and all that but I still hanker after the old days when flicking through a copy if the Unexplained generated a real feeling of awe and esoteric wonder.
 
I was rooting round my dad's house the other day (as he's had to move into a nursing home after a(nother) stroke and I'm in the process of clearing his house) and I found six over-stuffed binders of The Unexplained (I think the complete series is crammed in there.) I had a flick through and during the nostalgia trip I recalled another slightly-Fortean partwork that I collected that I can't remember the name of - about unsolved crimes/murders etc. I must have another rummage and see if I can find that, too.

Anyone know what it was called?
 
Atch_ said:
I was rooting round my dad's house the other day (as he's had to move into a nursing home after a(nother) stroke and I'm in the process of clearing his house) and I found six over-stuffed binders of The Unexplained (I think the complete series is crammed in there.) I had a flick through and during the nostalgia trip I recalled another slightly-Fortean partwork that I collected that I can't remember the name of - about unsolved crimes/murders etc. I must have another rummage and see if I can find that, too.

Anyone know what it was called?

There was a magazine of a similar bent called the X-Factor (nothing to do with the ghastly show of the same name) published I think bi-weekly that was very similar to The Unexplained.
 
The X-Factor was a Marshall Cavendish publication. I dimly recall it on the news-stands but I never bought it new. I did pick up a few copies in Oxfam - the first five issues then a jump to issues 80 & 81. These reveal that it started in 1996 and ran at least until 2000. It was indeed fortnightly. The large print and the over-busy DTP design suggest that it was aimed at a casual tabloid readership. No doubt there are many curious snippets in there - a horrid piece on Japan's Unit 731 sticks in my mind - but browsing it always gives me a headache. :(
 
I got the full set and it was quite good - a lot of people who contributed to The Unexplained wrote articles and it was certainly better than the likes of Uri Geller's Encounters... :shock:
 
Orbis

The Orbis edition turned up at the Library Sale on Cincinnati's Fountain Square in June, 2004 at $3.00 per volume. Alas, that was far beyond my budget at the time.

But 23 of the volumes were still there on shopping bag day, and I picked up all those remaining volumes for less than $5.00.
 
I have several copies of The Unexplained, and they enjoy a prominent place in my collection of "paranormal" periodicals along with the likes of FATE, STRANGE (Mark Chorvinsky, R.I.P.), and other assorted mags. Despite they're age, and seeming redundancy, I still enjoy reading and re-reading the old articles. Something strangely charming about the mag's optimism in unravelling the mysteries it covered. Sort of like the slew of Bigfoot paperbacks issued in the '70's, whose authors assured the reader that Bigfoot would be captured and dragged-out of the forest in chains any day now.
 
ignatiusII said:
"Sort of like the slew of Bigfoot paperbacks issued in the '70's, whose authors assured the reader that Bigfoot would be captured and dragged-out of the forest in chains any day now."

I know that feeling. Back around 1949, in the early days of live television (I was eight or nine) I watched a Friday night news/discussion program featuring Ralph De Toledano, a big-league newspaper and magazine journalist who had the reputation of being something of an unofficial spokesman for the United States government.

"After talking with my contacts high in the United States government," he said, "I am now permitted to reveal to the American People that the so-called 'Flying Saucers' are definitely a secret weapon developed by the United States military. All will be publically revealed within the next few months." [This is from a 55-year-old memory but the sense is correct.]

But who would have believed at the time that "a few months" would become 373 months and counting? <g>

Semantic distinction, obviously. <g>
 
A small subset of The Unexplained was published in Brazil, also as a partwork, with the name Inexplicado; Orbis is mentioned in the copyright section. There were 31 parts, combined into two volumes. I own the bounded volumes, not the individual parts.

Here is the cover of # 30, taken from an auction site:

revista-inexplicado-n-30-D_NQ_NP_337701-MLB20372240085_082015-F.jpg

Now I am looking for a way to get the UK set with the covers, and attempting to cut the cost--for the magazines and shipping--below £500 or so, which is a bit above my league.
 
I replaced my disintegrating set (which one of the cats had been using as a loo for an unknown time before we twigged) with another bound set from ebay - I think it was £30 plus less than a tenner for s&h.

They do come up! This was about 18 months ago I think, and I checked frequently for about 6 weeks?
 
I replaced my disintegrating set (which one of the cats had been using as a loo for an unknown time before we twigged) with another bound set from ebay - I think it was £30 plus less than a tenner for s&h.

They do come up! This was about 18 months ago I think, and I checked frequently for about 6 weeks?
There is possibly a full set available right now, my problem is money. About half the cost is to ship the individual magazines to Brazil; then, to acquire the hard covers for each volume separately (I want the covers of the parts because of the letters from readers included there).

I might cut costs and bind them here without the original covers, but I do want the letters, mentioned in the Building a Fortean Library article on the partwork, from Fortean Times #331.
 
They may or may not be obsolete these days (although I don't think anything so open-minded could ever be totally obsolete), but isn't the art gorgeous! Beautiful coloured-pencil drawings that haunted the dreams of many a youngster (me included).
 
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I was amazed to find a full set of the original edition with leather binders and metal holders on Ebay. When I contacted the bloke he was a lorry driver and was delivering to the industrial estate about 20 minutes walk from our house, so I met him at our local pub and picked them up for about £20.

They are a beautiful set to own, and if you develop an interest in a specific subject it is still a good initial source of information, despite its age.
 
My dad started buying it in the late 70s or early 80s, and the collection was kept in my bedroom for years. I'm not sure whether we got the whole lot or just a very large proportion of them. I think it was thrown out after I went to University in 1989!
 
My dad started buying it in the late 70s or early 80s, and the collection was kept in my bedroom for years. I'm not sure whether we got the whole lot or just a very large proportion of them. I think it was thrown out after I went to University in 1989!
Cherish the collection, and if there are holes, fill them.

Even if you no longer want it, find a new caring home.

Edit: oh, the hardback covers can still be found on eBay. Save the cover pages of each part, for the letters section.
 
The article i always remember - probably because ive never seen it included or referenced in any medium since (I'm assuming that's a reasonable indicator it was bollocks) - was about a girl called somethng like Lucy Lightfoot. The essence of it was i think that she was romantically fixated on a statue or sarcophagal sculpture of a Norman knight, and she disappeared one stormy evening then some record regarding someone of her name or apprearance was uncovered in the historical detail of said knight, with the implication she may have somehow gone back in time.

I may have got that plotline arse over tit as they say, but they were the essential elements i recall. Even summarising it of course sounds like a fantasy short story, but in the Unexplained there were the photos of the researcher and hte statue and so forth, giving the impression this was a notable and newsworthy true mystery.

Anyone recall it?
 
The name is indeed Lucy Lightfoot, and it's a widely-cited story associated with Gatcombe Church (Isle of Wight). It occurred in the early 19th century. The knight was supposedly a Crusader named Edward Estur.

For example:

https://www.spookythings.iofw.co.uk/?page_id=231

However ...

In Ghosts: A Natural History:

https://books.google.com/books?id=3...page&q=knight statue "lucy lightfoot"&f=false

... author Roger Clarke claims the Lucy Lightfoot story was fabricated by local vicar Francis Bamford to gloss or play off an earlier tale of ghost sightings at Knightton Gorges.
 
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