Need to know what this book was!

[abigailthespiderinthehat]

A book from the 70s/80s was recently mentioned in another thread- it comes up occasionally and it's driving me nuts. It was a book full of photos of weird creepy phenomena,including otzi the iceman, spontaneous human combustion and the cottingley fairies. I loved this book as a child although it absolutely terrified me! Any ideas what it was?

I wonder if this is it?

@abigailthespiderinthehat

I remember that book and many, many others. I had to clear parents' house out after they died and there were so many different titles. That Readers Digest title in the third post was one I used to pick up as a kid, but there was also a similar subset of about 6-8 books covering specific areas: Unexplained UFOs, Unexplained Ghosts, natural phenomena, mythical beasts, witchcraft etc. I cannot remember if they were RD or not, Usborne Books comes to mind, but I do clearly remember them. One had a picture of sheets of raining fish hitting the ground with someone fallen underneath. I remember the dark greys and blues in the image.

One of the dedicated titles was about Egypt and had Pharaohs in the title I think.

Oh my goodness, I can't remember the name of the book, but the one with the spontaneous combustion with the woman's leg used to terrify me!

Was it this one? I loved this book as a child, would browse it for hours!

Ooooo... that looks familiar

*Today 19:25 piglet81

Usborne Book of the Unexplained? (Something like that...)*

Howling laughing! Lift The Flap series!

Or even

“That’s not MY poltergeist! His tricks are too crappy!”

Winewolfhowls I bet that the picture was Raynham Hall jn essex. Ver famous pic. And probably the book was by Peter Underwood.

@Grittlelayrabbit ha ha, properly scary lift-the -flap books could be a good novelty line!

Ohhh, my best friend had Strange Stories Amazing Facts and I was OBSESSED with it!

We read it all the time, age 11 and 12 My favourites (as in the creepiest) were the Faces of Belmez

We had the marks and spencer hardback book - the human combustion picture had a waking frame in and part of a leg - think it had a crystal skull on the front - lived that book. (Also a gas fire right next to the body so even I could figure out cause and effect).

We had a book that I think was called "Phenomena"

It was quite large, although not hardback, and had lots of red and black on the cover.

Definitely had stuff about spontaneous human combustion and there was a rather gruesome photo of some charred "remains" in an armchair.

@Grittlelayrabbit yes! I just looked and it was that hall!

I remember the magazine from the 80s called The Unexplained. The first issue came with a free 7 inch single with a recording of a dead woman speaking, it was absolutely terrifying. I also remember Arthur C Clark's Mysterious World TV programme about a town where it rained frogs and poltergeists and things like that. He was always walking along a beach under a golfing umbrella for some reason.