The Unexplained issue 5 - Black Holes, Spontaneous Human Combustion, UFO Technology, Sea Monstes, Kirlian Photography

 

Issue 5 cover

Issue five arrived with an iconic image of a sea monster attacking a ship to help publicise a new series of articles on the aquatic beasts. The issue contents starts with another in the series on black holes with Adrian Berry (1937-2016) taking over the writing duties to detail just how a black hole could be built. Berry was the fourth Viscount Camrose whose family owned the Daily Mail for nearly six decades. He was the newspaper's science correspondent from 1977 until 1997 and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Interplanetary Society. The article is wildly speculative and covers how, in the not too distant future a fleet a craft could cross the galaxy to build an artificial black hole one light year from the sun. 

Only the legs of Mrs E.M. remain after she died on 29th January 1958. 

Just when you thought it was safe to go into a newsagent's again... The run of Bob Rickard's essays on spontaneous human combustion conclude and go out with a bang with even more nightmare imagery that acted as catnip to school kid thrill seekers. The above image impacted many including myself. Only the legs of the widow Mrs E M remain after she died on 29th January 1958 from either falling into a fire in the grate and burning or combusting of her own accord. 

The scorching of a slim lady.

The article lays out several possible theories for the phenomena. It is noted that a high proportion of recorded incidents involved individuals who perhaps had give up on life in some ways; alcoholics, the poverty stricken, the disabled and the elderly tired of life. The idea of a 'psychic suicide' where normally controlled reserves of physical and psychical energy are suddenly released by the depressed, lonely, deprived and frightened, was derived from this observation. 

Rickard favours the theory from Livingstone Gearhart proposed in the Fortean journal Pursuit in 1975 which observes a correlation between cases and peaks in geomagnetic flux. The article provided a handy series of charts between geomagnetic peaks and individual cases to help illustrate the idea. Over four decades later and this idea seems to now have fallen out of favour. 

An intriguing set of graphs that show the possible link between a high reading geomagnetic fields and specific cases of spontaneous human combustion

Janet and Colin Bord, who had previously tackled the subject of mysterious man beasts, return to report that the ocean depths may contain creatures as yet unknown to science in the article Monsters of the Deep. The text collates several historical accounts of sea monster sightings from the 16th century onwards.

A 1790s copy of a now lost original painting marking an encounter between a French ship and an underwater beast. 

Archbishop Magnus described "a sea serpent 200 feet long and 20 feet thick that would eat calves, lambs and hogs, and would even pluck men from boats... Magnus described the sea serpent as being black, having hair hanging from its neck (or mane), shining eyes, and putting its 'head on high like a pillar'. " (Monsters of the Deep by Janet and Colin Bord, The Unexplained issue 5, 1980, p.90.)

One of the sea monsters described by Archbishop Olaus Magnus and illustrated for his 1555 tome on the natural history of Scandinavia. 

The most recent case documented by the Bords dates from 25th July, 1966 when "trans-Atlantic rower Captain John Ridgway saw a monster just before midnight... His companion, Sergeant Chay Blyth, who has since become a world-famous yachtsman, was asleep. As Ridgway rowed he heard a swishing noise and a 35-foot long sea serpent outlined in phosphorescence, 'as if a string of neon lights were hanging from it', came swimming towards the boat. It dived underneath and did not reappear on the other side,"  (Monsters of the Deep by Janet and Colin Bord, The Unexplained issue 5, 1980, p.93.)

The bright glow surrounding this gold cross as attributed to the influence of the wearer's aura. Gold is alleged to be able to retain the aura. 

The above stunning image of a cross opens Reading Between the Lines, the final feature on Kirlian photography. Writer Brian Snellgrove discusses how Kirlian photography could possibly be utilised to detect the early stages of cancer and how disturbed auras may indicate stress and anxiety. He also examines the explanations for the Kirlian effect.
1) The effect is just the result of normal electrical discharge between the subject, film and machine.
2) The effect is a representation of the energy fields, aura or bioplasmic body that surround all living things.
3) The effect shows the energies of the soul.

Snellgrove concludes his investigation and the article by stating "there seems to be a flow of energy surrounding almost all living things. But what that energy is remains unknown." (Reading Between the Lines by Brian Snellgrove, The Unexplained issue 5, 1980, p.97.)

A Kirlian image of a slice of wholemeal bread.

In the intervening decades between the article first being published and the present Kirlian photography has been the subject of both parapsychological and scientific research with many paranormal claims thoroughly rejected by the scientific community. Russian experiments showed the variation in the intensity, length and colour of the corona were down to the moisture content on the surface of the subject. Oils, sweat and bacteria were also determining factors in the vividness of captured images. The validity of Kirlian imagery to help diagnose health issues has never been accepted by science, but the process has become embedded in popular culture despite this. The artwork for David Bowie's 1997 album Earthling reproduced several photos taken by Bowie himself before and after consuming cocaine. The after photo showed a distinct increase in the intensity of the aura. 

Two illustrations by Richard Burgess depicting UFOs encountered in 1973 (below) and 1962 (above).

The issue completes with Charles Bowen's latest UFO Casebook which features encounters from 1973 and 1962. The illustrations that accompany the article, rendered in a stylised pencil or wax crayon fashion, were produced by the magazine's designer, Richard Burgess, and are consistent throughout the entire run of the magazine. I always felt they were odd personally, but perhaps this partly due to the fact that the casebooks were my least favourite feature. 

The World's Mysterious Places number five was the statues of Easter Island. This is a topic that I don't think The Unexplained every tackled, but thankfully Arthur C Clarke and his 1994 TV series Mysterious Universe helped to fill the gap over a decade later. 

The Unexplained issue 4 - Black Madonnas, ESP, UFO technology, man-beasts, hypnosis.

Issue four cover

The cover star of issue four is a Black Madonna, a mysterious religious icon, which is the first new topic covered inside. The other debuting topic is on UFO technology whilst coverage of mysterious man-beasts comes to a close. 

A Black Madonna located in Einsiedeln, Sweden

Virgins With A Pagan Past was written by Richard Leigh (1943-2007) and Michael Baigent (1948-2014) and examines the 'unofficial' counterpart to the 'official' Virgin Mary. The origins of these depictions, where the skin tones are darker or blacker than the traditional imagery of the Virgin, are obscure or lost. What appears to have happened is that the material the faces of statues or paintings were made from became darker due to aging or environmental factors such as exposure to smoke from votive candle for example. Churches took pride in these unique icons and opted to preserve the change in colour rather than attempt restoration. Over time new statues or paintings adapted this darker colouring when they were made. Believers viewed the change of colour as a manifestation of the heightened spiritual powers of the effigies. They do not see them as Madonnas that became darker over time but as having transcended into Black Madonnas, made to change colour through the will of God. 

Leigh and Baigent were the co-authors (alongside Henry Lincoln) of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982) which proposed the theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had several children. The descendants of these offspring moved to France where they integrated and married into nobility. The book became an international best seller even though it was criticised for a lack of basis in credible fact and would eventually inspire Dan Brown to pen his novel The Da Vinci Code (2003).  Leigh would later unsuccessfully attempt to sue Brown for plagiarism.  

Black Madonna in Tarragona Cathedral, Spain

Clues from Clairvoyance is the next instalment of articles about the topic of ESP and trots through the shades of clairvoyance from having a vague awareness to vivid revelations and how these incidents can lead to vital clues in some cases. Writer Roy Stemman noted the following which sums up the hit and miss nature of the phenomena.

"It has to be remembered that, for every impressive case reported in the press, there are probably a hundred or more where volunteered 'psychic' help only leads the police on a wild goose chase. Following the mysterious disappearance of schoolgirl Genette Tate in August 1978, for example, the Devon police received calls from other 200 mediums and people interested in psychic detection who believed their paranormal powers could produce useful clues."
(Clues from Clairvoyance by Roy Stemman, The Unexplained issue 4, 1980, p.66)

The next article, Spinning Through Space, is about UFO technology and outlines how UFOs might work and the kind of alien civilisations that could produce them. A highly speculative article which is underlined by the box out on why many UFOs are saucer shaped.

"The fact that most UFOs are disc-shaped rather than spherical can be explained as a design feature that allows spacecraft to operate at high speeds once they have entered the atmosphere of a planet; by flying with their edges into the wind, they can cut down the effect of air resistance almost to zero."
(Spinning Through Space by Tony Osman, The Unexplained issue 4, 1980, p.73.)

Box out offering theories on why UFOs are often saucer shaped

The final article on man-beasts sees Janet and Colin Bord present theories on just what these creatures are. It's a packed feature taking in various anomalies surrounding sightings and evidence such as some man-beasts having a lingering odour 'like a dead person', how some creatures seem impervious to bullets even when fired at short range and some bigfeet having the power to dematerialise. Theories included are also wide ranging from hoaxes to holograms, paranormal beasts to missing links. The article does not offer a satisfactory explanation or come down in favour of one theory above another. Instead it concludes by stating the issue is extraordinarily complex and deserves much more research. Sightings of bigfoot and associated hairy humanoids continue to this day and we seem no closer to solving the mystery, though I am puzzled in this era of everyone having a camera on their phone that there is so little convincing photographic or video evidence. 

When a series of articles on a topic came to a close a selection of further reading on the subject was included at the end of the text. Here several more books written by the Bords are included alongside tomes by Bernard Heuvelmans who was one of the founding fathers of cryptozoology. 

The man-beast captured in killed in 1917 on the border between Columbia and Venezuela. This is now considered to depict a species of spider monkey. 

The article on hypnosis again concentrated on past lives regression and in particular the case of Mrs Virginia Tighe (1923-1995), an American who, under hypnosis between November 1952 and October 1953, regressed over a hundred years to become an Irish woman named Bridey Murphy. Tighe was a Wisconsin native and had lived in Chicago since she was a child and had no Irish friends or relatives, but under hypnosis she talked with an Irish accent and a gave detailed account of living in Cork in the early 19th century. The claims were investigated and were the usual mixture of confirmed and unconfirmed details. When the case was reported it created a sensation with a book detailing the case released in 1956 and a film based on the book produced the same year. These had such a penetration on the public psyche that the case has now been absorbed into popular culture. In 2024 comedian Billy Crystal stated that his Apple TV series Before was inspired the case of Bridey Murphy. 

Hypnotist Morey Bernstein and Virginia Tighe

The World's Mysterious Place photo feature for the issue was a shot of the standing stones of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis. 

Callanish stones

The Unexplained issue 3 - Black Holes, Spontaneous Human Combustion, Hypnosis, Kirlian Photography

 

Issue 3 cover.

The cover of the third issue has no sample image from the inside contents. Instead we can admire the Kirlian bubble in all its glory for the first and last time. The reason for the blank space was the free gift with the issue, a set of Zener cards.

The cards were designed by the psychologist Karl Zenner (1903-1964) in the 1930s and consisted of five designs (circle, plus sign or cross, square, wavy lines, star) for the 25 cards in a pack. Zenner was a specialist in the study of conditioned response (Pavlov's dogs for example). They cards purpose was to test an individual's esp abilities in experiments conducted by parapsychologist J.B. Rhine (1895-1980) who wanted a set of images that would be free of established associations in the minds of his test subjects. In 1934 Rhine published a book, Extra Sensory Perception, which analysed over 90,000 tests he had conducted and this became a best seller. By 1937 Zener cards were commercially available and could be purchased in local newsagents. 

 The five symbols that make a pack of Zener cards.

Rhine's tests are not without controversy. The format of using cards was criticised as they could be easily manipulated in the way a stage magician can (being secretly marked for example). There was also issues with how the experiments were conducted with the potential for cards to be seen in the reflection in dividing screens, or cards to be read from slight indentations on the backs of cards. Subjects could see the person conducting the experiment and might have be able to detect facial expressions or changes in breathing. Rhine took these criticisms into account and adjusted his experiments accordingly, but was never able to achieve the impressive results of his initial set of experiments.

My now long-lost set of free cards from the issue would be taken out of storage for several years afterwards during the Christmas period in order to test drunken aunts and uncles for hidden abilities. I can safely report back no ESP was ever found in either my family or friends. In 1984, after seeing the film Ghostbusters which had a scene involving Zener cards, they were trotted out for one last round of tests before going back in the cupboard and never to be seen again. I reckon my mum did a spot of spring cleaning...

Illustration of a standard space-time chart.

The third issue began with Nigel Henbest's second article on black holes. Doorway To Beyond: Inside A Black Hole attempted to explain how the mysterious stellar objects could theoretically used as a means of instantaneous travel to other universes. Just the article summary blew my mind and the diagrams used to accompany the text really didn't help either! The main thing I couldn't get my head around was the fact that any astronaut and their vehicle would be crushed to a immeasurably small dot by the gravitational forces as it entered the black hole. What good would instant travel be if it killed you in the process? The article seemed to avoid this fact and instead concentrate on the juicy theory such as how black holes could even be time machines where journeys through them could result in the traveller emerging in the age of the dinosaurs or the far future!

Things considerably pick up with the second article on the phenomena of spontaneous human combustion, which discussed the demise of Mary Reeser, complete with an image of workmen shovelling up the charred remains! Mary Reeser was a 67 year old widow who died during the night of 1st July, 1951. The chair was sat in "burned down to its springs, there was a patch of soot on the ceiling above and a small circle of carpet charred around the chair, but a pile of papers nearby was unscorched." (The Destruction of Mary Reeser by Bob Rickard, The Unexplained Issue 3, 1980, p.47)

Dr Wilton Krogman, a forensic scientist who specialised in deaths by fire, investigated the scene and was at a lost to provide an adequate explanation for the event. "I cannot conceive of such complete cremation without more burning of the apartment itself. In fact the apartment and everything in it should have been consumed. Never have I seen a human skull shrunk by intense heat. The opposite has always been true; the skulls have been either abnormally swollen or have virtually exploded into hundreds of pieces." (Dr Wilton Krogman quoted in The Destruction of Mary Reeser by Bob Rickard, The Unexplained Issue 3, 1980, p.47) The last sentence was nothing short of a playground sensation with a heated debate on what the worst way to die - shrunken or exploded head? Kids intently inspected the photo to see if they could spot the shrunken bonce. 

Workmen clearing away the remains of Mary Reeser (shrunken skull not featured).

Krogman also provided details of how heat impacts on bones which supplied intriguing grisly details. A body burnt for over 8 hours at 2000 Fahrenheit showed no sign of becoming calcinated ashes, though a temperature of 3000 Fahrenheit can make bones melt and become pliable.  What the details of the Reeser case highlighted is the recurring effect found in many cases of SHC where the intense heat seems to be confined to a small area with nearby flammable objects untouched. Even more puzzling are the cases involving victims lying on a bed often leave light scorching to the mattress and those charred bodies found sitting on only slight singed chairs. The article describes several more cases, drawing from the writings and research of Charles Fort who suspected that SHC was connected to demonology. The third instalment on this topic, previewed in a short sentence at the end of the article,  tantalised a review of the theories of what caused such bizarre conflagrations.  

The most stimulating article of the issue was a totally new and compelling mystery to me in the form of Kirlian photography. 

Image of a whole leaf with Kirlian glow.

Same leaf with a portion cut away. The Kirlian glow still exists for the excised portion.

In 1939 Russian scientist Semyon Kirlain was repairing equipment a research lab in Ukraine when he moved his hand near a live electrode. There was a blinding flash of light and he received a minor shock as electricity sparked from the electrode to his hand. He wondered what would have if light sensitive paper was placed in the way of the spark and repeated the accident with the paper placed above his hand and in the path of the spark. When he developed the paper he was astonished to see emanations around the image of his fingertips. His research over four decades would lead some to declare that high voltage photography (now known as Kirlain photography) captured the aura given off by living things that mystics and clairvoyants claim to be able to see. One of Kirlain's experiments involved a leaf photographed whole and then with a section removed. In the photo with the cut leaf an image of the excised material appeared on the print. This phantom leaf seemed to confirm claims of clairvoyants that they can see phantom limbs on amputees.

Mr and Mrs Kirlian.

The hypnosis articles focussed on the phenomena of hypnotically regressed subjects recalling previous lives with discussion of several cases as well as giving an overview of the origins of modern hypnosis. This as a lead in to the next article in this series which presented the case of Bridey Murphy, possibly the most famous case of someone recalling past lives, which was also made into a Hollywood feature film. 

The UFO Casebook for the issue spotlighted a series of encounters, now called the Kaikoura Lights, which included footage documented by a New Zealand television news crew investigating the rash of sightings in 1978. I remember the incident created quite a buzz at the time with the incident (complete with wobbly close ups of lights in the sky) being featured on both the ITV and BBC news on New Year's Day 1979. More details and footage from 

Boxout from the UFO Casebook article which provides a possible explanation - sighting of the planets Venus or Jupiter.

The World's Mysterious Places 3 - The great serpent mound in Ohio.

The inside back cover was given to a full size of the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio in the latest entry into The World's Mysterious Places. Again no explanation of the place is given, but I now know that this 411 metre prehistoric structure built by Native American for unknown reasons.