Introduction - Welcome to the World of The Unexplained

 Interest in occult and paranormal topics had become more widespread in the 1960s and 1970s in the UK and the USA, fuelled in part by the rise of psychedelia and people searching for alternative beliefs and ways of living, especially among the younger generation. Scarred for Life author Stephen Brotherstone, writing on this cultural blossoming, noted

"Maybe it was the post-60s comedown. Maybe it was a rejection and reflection, of the cynicism of the time. Maybe it really was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Maybe it was related to the fact that we'd just put a man on the moon, and the idea of reaching out to the stars by the year 2000 seemed to be an entirely reasonable one." (The Great Paranormal Boom of the 1970s by Stephen Brotherstone, Scarred for Life Volume One: The 1970s, Lonely Water Books, 2017, p.663).

Whatever the reasons for the public's appetite for all things Fortean it was very quickly absorbed into popular culture with the media of the era reflecting this fascination. A highpoint of this mainstreaming came in 1977 with the release of Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the publication by Usborne of the children's factual books The World of the Unknown (covering the topics Monsters, Ghosts and UFOs). This seemed to open the floodgates and it soon became the norm to be able to buy the latest mass market paperbacks on a range of Fortean subjects from petrol service stations and local newsagents up and down the land. The discerning fledgling Fortean could expand their horizons by reading a swathe of material this way.

The voracious public appetite for material about the unknown and uncanny continued unabated for several years. Arriving on the scene as the 1970s flowed into the 1980s was The Unexplained, a part work magazine published weekly between 1980 and 1983 by Orbis Publishing, that ran for 157 issues. The last edition was an index for all the previous issues. The magazine, which proved to be extremely popular, debuted in the same year as the TV series Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World and covered many of the same topics such as UFOs, ghosts, the Bermuda Triangle, sea monsters, stone circles and contact with the dead. It also introduced readers to a wider variety of the unknown by covering lesser know phenomena as well as historical characters linked to occult or unknown.  

The team of editors and authors behind the magazine came with excellent pedigree. Editor Peter Brookesmith was a prolific writer and speaker on Fortean topics and editorial director Brian Innes (who was also a former member of the jazz band Temperance Seven) had previously worked on the publication Man, Myth and Magic in the 1970s. Dr J. Allen Hynek and Professor A. J. Ellison were consultants. Hynek had classified UFO incidents into close encounters of the first, second and third kind whilst Ellison was an active researcher into the paranormal and served as President of the Society of Psychical Research. Also on board as a consultant was Colin Wilson, who had written copiously on mysticism, the paranormal and true crime, and Brian Inglis who was an Irish journalist, historian and TV presenter who had written extensively on parapsychology and alternative medicine. Many of the contributors of articles were experts in their chosen field including Janet and Colin Bord (man-beasts, earth mysteries), Guy Lyon Playfair (parapsychology and the Enfield Poltergeist which he had helped to investigate) and Jenny Randles (UFOs) to name a few. Articles from the magazine were later reprinted in book form in the late 80s by several publishers under titles such as When the Impossible Happens (1984) and Out of This World: Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time (1989). 

The Unexplained launched in October 1980 with an extensive print and television publicity campaign. The voice over for the advert boomed that "So much in our universe just cannot be explained, but just cannot be ignored. Events and phenomena past and present defy so-called rational explanation. How much do we really know? Now, week by week, a new publication examines new evidence and explores the theories." My just turned thirteen year old enquiring mind was hooked. I had to track a copy of this new magazine down...

The Unexplained was responsible for one of the most memorable episodes of terror from my formative years which came in the form of a flexi-disc given away free with the premier issue. Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead introduced EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena) with examples of captured voices. I recall playing the disc in the living room on my parents large wooden cabinet like record player with a growing sense of existential horror, the hairs on my neck bristling as voices from the beyond the grave spoke. A few nights of uneasy sleep followed as the disembodied voices would pepper my inner dialogue as I attempted to drift off. It wouldn't be the last time that the magazine would have such an impact on me...

Both sides of the disc can be listened to in the link below:

Electronic Voice Phenomenon are mysterious voices or sounds that are claimed to be recorded on electronic equipment. The technique is often used in ghost hunting and are interpreted as voices of spirits communicating through the devices. The counter argument is that the sounds are auditory pareidola (random noise interpreted by the listener as having a meaningful pattern), radio interference or recording artifacts. Listening to the static lashed, distorted and muffled voices on cold winter's night by myself all those years ago is still a vivid memory, and listening to it again recently gave me goosebumps.

The flexi-disc was actually a reissue of an obscure 1971 album entitled Breakthrough from writer Konstantin Raudive which was released to cross promote Raudive's book of the same name. The recordings narrator, Michael Smyth, owned the record label that issued the album. Thanks to being rescued from limbo by The Unexplained the record has gone on to have quite a cultural afterlife with samples being used by a diverse range of musicians and bands including Meat Beat Manifesto, Themselves and The Smiths on the end of their song Rubber Ring - "You are sleeping, you do not want to believe!".  

This blog will look at each issue of The Unexplained and detail the contents mixed with personal memories of reading them. I will also be commenting on the way some mysteries or phenomena have evolved or have even been solved (The Cottingley Fairies photos for example) in the years since the articles were first printed.

So come with me as I explore The Unexplained...