THE BIG BOOK OF MYSTERIES

Summary reports on more than 100 unexplained appearances, disappearances, natural phenomena, historical puzzles, and mass delusions.

Loose organization, not to mention the sheer number of entries, makes this heavy reading taken cover to cover but also guarantees there will be something to pique any sort of interest. Leading off with a warning to readers to be skeptical of claims from iffy sources like social media but then loading the unlikelier reaches of what follows with plenty of what-ifs and maybe-so’s, Adams pours out reports of sightings or close encounters with UFOs, sea monsters, rains of blood or fish, and ghosts to go with tallies of vanished or never-were places (Atlantis, Hy-Brasil, Veneta), strange artifacts from Nazca Lines to the Voynich manuscript, and more. Cryptids are covered, too—along with Mothman and the Jersey Devil, the author discusses a “Vegetable Man” (“It looked just like a human stick of celery!”) in West Virginia. Still, chucking in obvious (in retrospect) hoaxes like Piltdown man, he perceptively observes that the willingness to believe can trump objective reality (one of his more telling cases in point being the way placebo medications sometimes actually work). Imamura mixes diverse human figures into painted representations of creatures fictive or otherwise, atmospheric oddities, and archaeological or geological wonders.

Better for dips than dives but rich fare for fans of the odd and uncanny.