Review: Wood Knocks – various authors

I have made my views on the creature known as Sasquatch plain in other articles for this blog. I have made it clear that I think that at least some of the giants people are seeing in the woods are kin to the Faery and do not belong completely to this world. In the parlance of modern paranormalists, I think Sasquatch is an inter-dimensional being that is capable of walking into our world and back out of it, pretty much at will.

That said, I greatly admire the work of the people who actually go into the woods looking for the creature and who spend their time talking to witnesses, setting camera traps and even flying drones hoping for a glimpse of the elusive ‘booger’. While I think that a lot of them just might be tilting at windmills, it is still admirable that they have the strength of their convictions and are willing to walk their talk.

The new anthology from Leprechaun Press, Wood Knocks, Volume 1: A Journal of Sasquatch Research is a collection of articles from the sorts of people who have devoted their lives to exploring the strange and especially to looking for cryptid creatures such as the Sasquatch. The anthology is an easy read, at just over 200 pages, so do not expect extensive or detailed articles, but it is packed with information that new and experienced Sasquatch aficionados will find interesting and informative.  In my view, the cover art by Sam Shearon is worth the price of the book, all by itself.

The meat of the book is quite good as well.  Whether we are talking Sasquatch amongst the First Nations people (David Weatherly) or hunting the Orang-Pendek in Sumatra (Richard Freeman) or talking about the presence of Sasquatch in Wisconsin and its surrounding areas (Linda Godfrey), the writing is, with one notable exception, crisp and there are cases in the book that I had not heard of, side by side, with some of the old standards. I enjoyed this chance to ‘touch base’ with the work of many authors that I admire and some that I did not know.  Freeman’s article on the Orang-Pendek made me think that the Sumatrans may have a genuine undiscovered species in their midst.

Having said that, there is one article in the anthology that is a confused, rambling mess and could have easily been cut from the line up with no damage to the work. As I noted above, readers will be able to discern this one quickly and will have to decide for themselves whether the tidbits of information in the article are worth the pain of reading the disjointed ramblings of someone with entirely too much research and not enough space to present it cogently.

I would have been quite happy if that article had been cut and the other writers given more space to present their research. I had the feeling, in several of the sections, that the authors had a lot more to say but were unable to do so due to the editorial pen or space limitations or both. This is a real shame since, as I mentioned, there is quite a lot of original research amongst the articles. I would have been particularly interested to see Micah Hanks spin his thoughts on abductions out further and Nick Redfern’s article on infrasound was interesting but too short.

Wood Knocks is noted as volume 1 of a journal of Sasquatch research. If this is going to be a continuing series of works then the series is off to a good start and, with some minor tweaks, I can see such a series becoming a respected reference amongst those Sasquatch researchers willing to flex their minds a bit and look at new ideas, even if they do not agree with them.

Book Review: Strange Intruders

Strange Intruders
Author: David Weatherly
Order from this website, no e-book available to my knowledge

I happened to catch a podcast interview with this author and thought, after listening, that I might check out this book. I had high hopes for the text since Mr. Weatherly’s biography includes the following:

“David has also studied shamanic and magical traditions with elders from numerous cultures including Europe, Tibet, Native America and Africa . . .”. The text goes on to elucidate Mr. Weatherly’s energy work credentials as well as mentioning his study with Taoist masters and so forth. I hoped, therefore, that the author might approach his subject from a more magical point of view.

Unfortunately, for me, Mr. Weatherly seems to have left most of his magical/shamanic credentials at the door while writing this book. I will not, however, give the book a negative review simply because it did not meet my standards for magical theorization.

My personal feelings aside, Strange Intruders is an interesting book that covers a wide range of paranormal topics of the “things that go bump in the night” variety ranging from the djinn to Grinning Men to psychic vampires. I am not quite clear on why the author chose the topics that he did but he presents interesting facts, history and case studies related to all his chapters.

Mr. Weatherly writes in a personable and engaging style and, unlike some writers, he does not belabor his points. His writing is smooth and concise but I did find myself wishing for a little more substance as he went along. This work was obviously intended as a summary of a wide range of topics, and it accomplishes that goal admirably, but I would have loved to hear more about some of the topics. I know, for example, that Mr. Weatherly has written on the Black Eyed Children (a topic in this book). I think it would be quite possible to write a book about any of the topics included in Strange Intruders. Perhaps that is the writer’s intention but, for a paranormal geek such as myself, each chapter of the book was something of a tease. I constantly found myself wanting more and that may have been the author’s intention.

For those of you that are research oriented, the book has a nice bibliography that will provide beginning sources for many of the topics covered in the chapters. I am sure that I will be making use of that book list at some point, since it is obvious that Mr. Weatherly actually does some research for his books rather than simply relying on the Internet and popular sources.

While I was disappointed that Mr. Weatherly did not seem to bring his magical and energetic explorations of these topics into the mix, except peripherally, I did find his presentation of theories about the various entities to be even handed and not aligned to just one point of view. I would have been happier to hear him say, “In my experience, X . . . but others have theorized Y”; however, I do not know what editorial or personal limitations he might be working under.

In all, I recommend Strange Intruders. For those with little to no background in the paranormal, the book provides an interesting overview of a number of phenomenon that scare people on a fairly regular basis. For the more experienced paranormalist, the book introduces topics that might not be familiar to the reader or, if they are, will certainly provide some new information on those topics. Mr. Weatherly has done a nice job of putting together a compendium of things that go bump in the night without writing a boring dictionary. I hope that he continues his research and brings us more in-depth coverage of some of these topics.