MYSTERIES, MARVELS & NIGHTMARES

by Jill--Ed. Mason ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1986

A collection of 41 unusual and bizarre true stories about New Englanders, selected from past issues of Yankee magazine. Mason categorizes her tales as ""Unsolved Mysteries,"" ""Heroes and Daredevils,"" ""Sudden Disaster"" and ""Strange Tales."" In this collection, the ""Strange Tales"" and ""Unsolved Mysteries"" suffer most from their enforced company. These include famous UFO sightings and psychic phenomena often treated at greater length elsewhere. The reader's questions can barely arise--much less be convincingly answered--in the five pages or so allotted to each ""true"" story's presentation. The most well-known of these is the Betty and Barney Hill kidnapping by extraterrestrials who took them aboard their UFO, studied them, then removed their memories of the event. Three hours missing from the Hills' lives were recovered under separate hypnotic sessions in which they relived identical stories. Other witnesses in the area also testified to UFOs that evening, while the Hills' psychiatric tapes have been stored in the Library of Congress under restricted classification--all of which is still fairly feeble support. The outstanding story of heroism is that of the father of an autistic child who hears on the news that another autistic boy is lost in the White Mountains between New Hampshire and Vermont, decides that his special knowledge of autism will be invaluable, and sets out on his own to Fred the missing child. After great travail, he at last finds the injured child himself--who speaks to him! and now has continued to speak. Another tale--a real hair curler--tells of a man who wades through tons of deep, steaming, liquid asphalt spilled from a jackknifed truck to rescue the driver crushed under the steering wheel and literally boiling to death from the spill. Still another tells of a man who rescued a dead girl drowned when a car plunged into a frigid river--and who then revived her because her sudden death had left a core of thermal heat still in her body. Several air disasters are retold, some involving truly marvelous recoveries. A box of gingersnaps for the bathroom.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Yankee

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION