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Investigating the Unexplained
s/t: Disquieting Mysteries of the Natural World
Paperback
First published December 1, 1972
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About the author
Ivan T. Sanderson
111 books38 followersScottish biologist, mostly known for his writings on cryptozoology and the paranormal.
Sanderson published three classics of nature writing: Animal Treasure, a report of an expedition to the jungles of then-British West Africa; Caribbean Treasure, an account of an expedition to Trinidad, Haiti, and Surinam, begun in late 1936 and ending in late 1938; and Living Treasure, an account of an expedition to Jamaica, British Honduras (now Belize) and the Yucatan.
Sanderson published three classics of nature writing: Animal Treasure, a report of an expedition to the jungles of then-British West Africa; Caribbean Treasure, an account of an expedition to Trinidad, Haiti, and Surinam, begun in late 1936 and ending in late 1938; and Living Treasure, an account of an expedition to Jamaica, British Honduras (now Belize) and the Yucatan.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 3, 2010
The book carries a cogent sub-title: "Disquieting Mysteries of the Natural World."
I love Ivan T. Sanderson. Not only is he a committed Fortean, he is an iconoclast, with an irreverent attitude toward his fellow scientists, whom he calls "stuffed shirts," among other epithets. He is not at all passive about his Forteanism. He is an activist Fortean. I love that.
He has spent years of his life thrashing about tropical jungles looking for strange animals. And he has found quite a few.
The resistance to mysteries of the natural world is still with us. People are afraid of the unexplained. Most scientists, it would seem, run away from that which they cannot begin to explain. But not Dr. Sanderson.
I learned of "fafrotskies" from this book. I loved that word the minute I read it, before I knew what it meant. It means "something alleged to have FAllen FROm The SKY." The book includes an appendix listing a large number of documented fafrotskies. Not only frogs and fish have fallen from the sky. Would you believe bricks, snakes, nails, balls, pennies, mud, blood, crabs?
This book is a revelation.
I love Ivan T. Sanderson. Not only is he a committed Fortean, he is an iconoclast, with an irreverent attitude toward his fellow scientists, whom he calls "stuffed shirts," among other epithets. He is not at all passive about his Forteanism. He is an activist Fortean. I love that.
He has spent years of his life thrashing about tropical jungles looking for strange animals. And he has found quite a few.
The resistance to mysteries of the natural world is still with us. People are afraid of the unexplained. Most scientists, it would seem, run away from that which they cannot begin to explain. But not Dr. Sanderson.
I learned of "fafrotskies" from this book. I loved that word the minute I read it, before I knew what it meant. It means "something alleged to have FAllen FROm The SKY." The book includes an appendix listing a large number of documented fafrotskies. Not only frogs and fish have fallen from the sky. Would you believe bricks, snakes, nails, balls, pennies, mud, blood, crabs?
This book is a revelation.
January 29, 2022
Ivan T. Sanderson was among the most notable and prolific of the mid-century paranormal writers. A zoologist and popular nature writer, he spent a great deal of time exploring various unexplained phenomenon, making a particular, lasting mark in cryptozoology. Investigating the Unexplained is a typical Sanderson volume, an erudite, good-humored but rambling exploration of sundry unsolved mysteries. Sanderson seems on his firmest ground exploring cryptids like the Loch Ness Monster and other sea monsters and the Ahool, a giant bat native to southeast Asia; if his explanations for these anomalies aren't entirely persuasive, they certainly make for fun, spooky reading. Chapters on spontaneous human combustion (a paranormal nightmare that especially fascinated, and horrified Young Chris), strange things falling from the sky (which he charmingly dubs "fafrotskies") and spellcasting provide similar, quality pulp. Less interesting are his ramblings on Von Daniken-esque archaeological oddities, a non-sequitur chapter about oversized eggs and a superficial exploration of astrology. But that's not the worst: Sanderson spends a whole chapter musing on his inability to properly cut a block of wood, which blames not on his own ineptitude but an interdimensional anomaly within his home! Chapters like this give the game away; not that Sanderson is ignorant or dishonest, but that he seems temperamentally unable to entertain mundane explanations for the most banal phenomena. One hopes that most of his potential readers are more discerning.
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January 12, 2010 A actual scientist, investigating some mysteries often pooh-poohed by other scientists.
This is well written and researched, and of a much better quality than most in the genre.
This is well written and researched, and of a much better quality than most in the genre.
May 11, 2015
An uneven assortment of essays by zoologist Sanderson, although his writing is lively and erudite throughout.
Not too surprisingly he is at his strongest in dealing with matters related to his own field of expertise. The opening chapters on strange or mythical beasts are fascinating, whether he's describing his own encounter with a giant bat in the African jungle, or unravelling the real-life origins of dragons (which he first must subdivide into Far Eastern, European, and ancient Mediterranean varieties!), or proposing that lake monsters are perhaps weird, limbless amphibians called caecilians. If you have an insatiable craving to know not merely how pterodactyls flew, but what they looked like when sitting on the ground (very odd), Sanderson is your man.
Unfortunately, Sanderson is much less credible in the book's central chapters, where he takes on some alleged mysteries of ancient technology. While he is frequently scathing about the errors non-zoologists make when discussing his beloved weird beasties, he fails to see that he can be similarly ridiculous when making equally ill-informed pronouncements about matters outside his area of expertise. If, as he believes, the Egyptians were in the business of manufacturing light bulbs, there would be traces of the existence of this level of technology in the archaeological record. Just as we have found ancient ropes, tools, schematic diagrams, scaffolding and what-have-you, if Sanderson were right, we'd find bits of wire, filaments, broken light-bulb glass and generator parts, and the like. We haven't.
Sanderson sneers at specialists in pre-Columbian archaeology for occasionally being inexact when identifying the animals depicted in ancient art. This failing is evidently sufficient justification in his mind for discarding everything else that is known in their discipline, so when certain peculiar, highly-stylized bits of ancient jewelry show up in Central and South America, he summons a "real expert"--an engineer, not an archaeologist--to identify them. They are promptly declared little models of airplanes and bulldozers. Of course, first you have to rearrange the parts a bit, "square-off" other sections, add wheels, etc.
The rest of book is less blatantly unscientific, and there's an interesting chapter on spontaneous human combustion that bravely undertakes to explain the biochemistry which might underlie such a phenomenon, but I have to admit my belief in Sanderson's credibility never quite recovered from the disastrous central section of the book.
Nevertheless, the good parts here are very good indeed, and I'll be better prepared for Sanderson's logical inconsistencies the next time I pick up one of his books.
Not too surprisingly he is at his strongest in dealing with matters related to his own field of expertise. The opening chapters on strange or mythical beasts are fascinating, whether he's describing his own encounter with a giant bat in the African jungle, or unravelling the real-life origins of dragons (which he first must subdivide into Far Eastern, European, and ancient Mediterranean varieties!), or proposing that lake monsters are perhaps weird, limbless amphibians called caecilians. If you have an insatiable craving to know not merely how pterodactyls flew, but what they looked like when sitting on the ground (very odd), Sanderson is your man.
Unfortunately, Sanderson is much less credible in the book's central chapters, where he takes on some alleged mysteries of ancient technology. While he is frequently scathing about the errors non-zoologists make when discussing his beloved weird beasties, he fails to see that he can be similarly ridiculous when making equally ill-informed pronouncements about matters outside his area of expertise. If, as he believes, the Egyptians were in the business of manufacturing light bulbs, there would be traces of the existence of this level of technology in the archaeological record. Just as we have found ancient ropes, tools, schematic diagrams, scaffolding and what-have-you, if Sanderson were right, we'd find bits of wire, filaments, broken light-bulb glass and generator parts, and the like. We haven't.
Sanderson sneers at specialists in pre-Columbian archaeology for occasionally being inexact when identifying the animals depicted in ancient art. This failing is evidently sufficient justification in his mind for discarding everything else that is known in their discipline, so when certain peculiar, highly-stylized bits of ancient jewelry show up in Central and South America, he summons a "real expert"--an engineer, not an archaeologist--to identify them. They are promptly declared little models of airplanes and bulldozers. Of course, first you have to rearrange the parts a bit, "square-off" other sections, add wheels, etc.
The rest of book is less blatantly unscientific, and there's an interesting chapter on spontaneous human combustion that bravely undertakes to explain the biochemistry which might underlie such a phenomenon, but I have to admit my belief in Sanderson's credibility never quite recovered from the disastrous central section of the book.
Nevertheless, the good parts here are very good indeed, and I'll be better prepared for Sanderson's logical inconsistencies the next time I pick up one of his books.
April 3, 2014
Killer read. Great conclusion in the Epilogue.
January 14, 2025
Book was written in 1972 and is dated in that it reads like a textbook and is very difficult to read. I have read plenty of paranormal books and was looking forward to reading this, but couldn’t get more than a dozen pages in. I found myself rereading paragraphs, sentences, phrases, and then just gave up. I like the concept but the language was just too tough to get through.
July 11, 2019
This is an excellent (if somewhat outdated) book about the unexplained. The author addresses a number of unexplained subjects and Fortean phenomena in his usual clever and colorful way.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews