Retro Review
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‘Every Heart a Doorway’ Takes Us Beyond the End
Most of us, at some point, wished we could open a magic door and find ourselves in a wonderful Elsewhere, our own Narnia, or Where the Wild Things Are, or the 13th Reality, or Oz, or Wonderland. These and many other worlds, accessible to us through books, create rich, vibrant worlds that so many of us would like to visit, to become part of, to adventure through. Countless authors have shown us these doors, and we travel with the protagonists, sharing their struggles, their wonder, and their joy. However, there’s one thing that nearly never gets explored in these tales—what happens when they come back? When they return to our…
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The Contactees–A Strange Chapter of the UFO Age
For better or for worse, the American UFO Contactee phenomenon that began in the 1950s has colored many people’s perceptions of UFOs for the past seven decades. The movement itself has been ridiculed for the contact with Space Brothers, and the contactees have become infamous when discussed among modern researchers. However, it’s important to remember that the average person, when pressed, will remember just three contact-related events (if they remember anything at all). These are the Betty and Barney Hill abduction, Whitley Streiber’s Communion, and the Contactee movement, regardless of whether they know any specific names. (The 1953 film The Day the Earth Stood Still lends itself to the Contactee…
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You Got Some Murder in my Pop Culture! Here’s How It Happened.
Murder, of course, could be thought of as an infamous human institution—in Judeo-Christian culture, its importance goes all the way back to Cain. In ancient history, it goes back to the Egyptians and Mesopotamians. In practice, it probably goes back to that fateful dinner when Og wanted the hunk of wooly mammoth Ug was still chewing on, and Og was really, really hungry. However, in more recent times, murder has become an industry. There are murderabilia shops, biopics and documentaries, and any number of true crime tomes in circulation at any given time. Volumes upon volumes have been penned about Jack the Ripper, Jeffery Dahmer, Charles Manson, and more. The…
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American Spiritualism–Hidden History
The Haunting of America—William J. Birnes and Joel Martin, 2009 Before I begin this review, you need to know something about me. I buy books. Lots of them. Sometimes I don’t get around to reading them for years. At last count, I owned over fifty tomes on a variety of subjects from different genres that have never been read. Why don’t I read them when I get them? Let’s just say that life can be a little too interesting sometimes. However, the result of life’s intrusion is that my library has a deep backlog of books that I’m finally trying to read. I’ve seen YouTubers and websites do ‘Retro Movie…