Stranger Than Science

by Frank Edwards

Presents accounts of true and unusual incidents that are unable to be explained by modern science

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Paranormal, History, Occult, Short Stories, Reference

303 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Mahdi Lotfi · Rating 4 out of 5]

باید پذیرفت که دانش کنونی بشر، که با خدمات انگشت شمارش به بشریت برخود می بالد، در برابر اقیانوس گسترده شگفتی های عالم، قطره ناچیزی بیش نیست. امروزه پاره ای از دانشمندان کار خود را آسان کرده و همه رویدادهای عجیب تر از علم را در شمار پدیده های اسرارآمیز قرار داده اند و به این بهانه از پاسخگویی شانه خالی می کنند. آنان مدعی اند علم پاسخی برای اینگونه رویدادها که در فراسوی درک و فهم و دانش آنان قرار دارد، نیافته است. از این رو اینگونه پدیده ها را از لحاظ علمی مردود می شمارند. آیا علم روزی موفق به کشف همه اسرار الهی خواهد شد؟ بهر تقدیر با روند کنونی اش، راه دور و درازی در پیش دارد.
کتاب حاضر که در ردیف پرفروش ترین کتابهای جهان قرار دارد، نمونه هایی از این اسرار ناشناخته و نیروهای فراسویی به دست می دهد و به قول نویسنده آن "فرانک ادواردز" عجیبترین کتابی است که تاکنون خوانده اید. تا قضاوت شما چه باشد؟

[Marjan Ghp · Rating 2 out of 5]

از اون كتابايي كه چهارم دبستان طي يك عمليات سري در كتابخونه برادرم پيدا كردم و چنان غرق دنياي وهم آلودش شدم كه شب ها با اين اميد چشمامو مي بستم كه صبح توي يه سرزمين خيالي بيدار شم :))
هنوز هم رگه هايي از اون حالت هاي اسرارآميز و عجيب غريب و ترسناك در من و خواب هام وجود داره و هنوز هم كابوسم فرار كردن از دست يه موجود نامرئي غول پيكر با دندون هاي خون آلود و بلنده :/

نتيجه اينكه كتاب هاي مورد مطالعه بچه هاي كوچيكتون رو حتما چك كنيد :)) مخصوصا اگه اون بچه عاشق زندگي كردن توي خيالات و فانتزياشه

[Mike (the Paladin) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever been hit in the head by a rain of fish, or frogs, or flesh and blood? Has a car, or plane, or ship ever vanished before your eyes? Are you a witness to automatic writing? Maybe you're one of the people who's had what came to be known later as a close encounter of the "third" kind or had coded messages come across your radio from outer space?

No? (well maybe some of you said yes...) This is one of a number of books in a, well genre would probably annoy some, so lets call it a "category" (of books) that was/were (supposed to be) accounts of "documented" strange, paranormal or enigmatic nature.

Stranger than Science, was the title of Edwards' radio program...sort of an early Coast to Coast in the late 1950s. He wrote the book Stranger than Science,in 1959.

I read this back in the 60s the first time (this was big at the time) and enjoyed it, was scared by it, and wondered about it.....

Unfortunately "many" of these stories were "documented" in the pages of Fate magazine so the veracity of the accounts isn't exactly beyond question. Still some are from newspaper accounts, first person reports and so on, so if you enjoy this sort of thing, try to find a copy.

When I was young I loved it and ran down most of Edwards' other works. I also ran down Charles Fort's Book of the Damned and lets not forget the more recent works by John A. Keel....

Edwards was one of the era's (mid twentieth century)biggest proponents of flying saucer (UFO) investigations though this book is largely about more esoteric subjects. The stories go from rains of toads to unexplained creatures. There are all kinds of Fortean mysteries here people who "reportedly" vanished into thin air before witnesses, mold that takes over houses and can't be cleaned away, removed or defeated,invisible creatures that assault their victims as others watch. Cool read, and I take no position on it's verisimilitude. :) There are still some copies of this around...read it for fun (if nothing else).


DUM...DUM...DUM

[Fatemeh Mehrasa · Rating 4 out of 5]

کتآب متعلق به کتابخونه ی مادرم بود. روز های داغ تابستان قم تو اتاقی‌که پنجره هاش رو به حیاط بود و آفتاب روشنایی دل انگیزی به اتاقم می بخشید، با خوندن این کتاب طی شد.
فکر می کنم دوم راهنمایی بودم. شاید حدود دوازده سالگی.
به معنای واقعی کلمه عاشق این کتاب بودم((:
مرسی مامان جانم((:

[Elin MehrAsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

هو الحکیم
کتابی واقعا جالب. و خیلی مشتاقم بدونم آیا تمام مطالبی که در این کتاب ذکر شده واقعیت داره یا نه. اما وقتی مطالبش رو میخونی اونقدر درگیر مطالب و جذابیتش می شی که حتی یادت میره گرسنه ای یا چند وقته که نخوابیدی. و این باعث می شه که بخوای به خودت بقبولونی که شاید واقعیت داره.

[Evan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Frank Edwards was a purveyor of the weird, parlaying supposedly true stories of the strange into columns and radio shows and books. This collection of stories about monsters and UFOs and disappearing humans and other unexplained phenomena was written in the '50s, but I came by my paperback copy of it via the little Scholastic sheet catalogues teachers used to hand out to us in school in the 1970s, whereby we'd mark up a sheet with the books wanted from its limited selection and carry with it an envelop containing the sum total of each of the 95-cent and dollar books... Those seem like such quaint times now. It was always a good day when the books were distributed in class and I sported my little stack of usually lowbrow fare (monsters and such)...

This book entertained me hugely at the time, and freaked me out not a little. There's one story in this book that still gives me chills just by the very thought of it: about a woman being bitten by an invisible demon -- the bites marks visible to witnesses present, yet nobody able to stop the attacks.

Many of these well-woven quickie tales of terror have been discredited, but they served their purpose of thrilling and chilling.

[Masood · Rating 3 out of 5]

10-12 ساله که بودم خوره این کتاب بودم.
خیلی دوست داشتم راز بعضی مسائل برام حل بشه. به خصوص ادوین دورود ( فکر کنم) که تو مزرعه خودش ناپدید شد و تا مدت ها صدای شبح واره ای از محل ناپدیدشدنش می اومد.

[Max Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is it possible for a man to be swallowed by a whale and live to tell the story? The "scientific" answer is NO—but the correct answer is YES—.

This book is one of my favorite books, if not my favorite, period, book. I have certainly read this book more than any other book; I must've lost count somewhere. I never read it the whole way through in order; I just sortof jumped around from story to story, and as recently as 2006, there were still a few stories I hadn't read. This book is captivating; dazzling; full of wily fun; infused with a sense of childlike wonder, which it engenders in the reader; entertaining to a fault. It's one of the best books of the twentieth century.

Everybody's seen a UFO; according to the stats, one in eight Americans. Of course, the fact that I'm a skeptic takes a little of the fun out of the mania surrounding saucers, but I still get a kick out of it, and I even ran a little blog about the phenomenon a while back. Who knows?

Well, anyway, my biological father was interested in the paranormal just like me, and when he died in 1988, he left a handful of books on UFOs and related phenomena behind, not that I knew this at the age of two. We moved to Grand Manan from the mainland in 1990, and all of my dad's stuff got shoved into a trailer we kept by the barn in the backyard. One day I went out there and found them: Time-Life Books' The UFO Phenomenon , and, smaller in size but much brighter in colour, Stranger Than Science. It was a gold-mine.

If I'm a reluctant skeptic now, as a child I was anything but. Reading stories about UFOs and races of tiny men within the earth, cave paintings of dinosaurs, sea serpents and cursed cars, marine demons and spontaneous combustion, made my otherwise humdrum world come alive with possibility; the fields and woods and junker cars and gravel pits and ponds of our fifty-plus-acre property, where they once were just so, became home to all manner of beast and strange phenomenon. Stranger Than Science was the book that gave my childhood a purpose.

I was not the only person affected thus. Young adult horror author Bruce Coville gave his account in the introduction of his excellent book Bruce Coville's Book Of Spine Tinglers: Tales To Make You Shiver . I don't have my copy with me, so I can only paraphrase, but it went something like his neighbour lent him the book, and he was terrified by the story of the girl who was repeatedly attacked by something she described as a vampire, but that could not be seen by anyone else, save for the tooth marks it left all over her body. She was locked up for insanity halfway through her episode and prison guards said they saw marks being formed on her skin in front of their eyes. This was one of the stories that terrified me the most, because so far as I can tell, it actually happened. He went and talked to his neighbour about it and his neighbour was terrified by a completely different story! That's the beauty of the book, right there, in a nutshell.

Stanton Friedman, the world's, er, leading authority on UFOs, told me that he was also floored by Edwards's storytelling skills, deciding to devote his life to studying the UFO phenom instead of following a more conventional career in physics after reading Flying Saucers: Serious Business .

Anyway, the book is incredible. The stories are either entertaining and false or entertaining and true; either way, they work. Some of them are complete hogwash; for example, "P.S.: A Guest From The Universe?," which posits that the 1908 Tunguska meteor impact was actually a UFO crash, but others are totally true, like "The Treasure in the Well," which centers on the Oak Island treasure. Men as distinguished as FDR poured resources into the futile and ongoing effort to attain this pirate's treasure. My favorite story, though, is "The Cursed Car," owned by Franz Ferdinand. Just look at the opening sentence:

It was an elaborate automobile, and it figured in the deaths of 20 million people before fate finally caught up with it.

If that wouldn't draw you in, what would?

There's also another Maritime connection in the story "The Strongest Man on Earth," about the giant Angis McAskill, a Nova Scotia gentleman who could lift anything... until the day that he lifted a ship's anchor, dislocating his shoulder in a way that led to his death.

He had won the bet—but the cost was excessive. In lowering the anchor, one of the flukes struck his shoulder, throwing his dangerously off balance. The giant managed to avoid being crushed, but the fluke bruised his shoulder muscles—and the career of Angus McAskill faded rapidly.

This story is touching and more than a little sad; but then, so are all of the big-fish stories in this book: if not sad, than capable of invoking one emotion or another with their vivid portrayals of oddball events and people. The tone is honest in its hyperbole and hyperbolic in its honesty. Somehow Edwards manages to say a lot about everyday life in this synthesis of never-befores and never-agains.

P.S.—To the guy below knocking FE for borrowing from FATE magazine, he admits this right in the Introduction of the book!

Especially do I wish to thank Curtis and Mary Fuller for the invaluable permission to use the files of FATE magazine.

WTF?

[Pat Padden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember first encountering this book as a paperback that I bought on a bookmobile that came to our grade school in Riverdale, New Jersey in the early 1960's. All my life I've retained the memory of the wonderful frisson of horror the first chapter - the one about the eerie disappearance of David Lang as he was walking across an open field in full view of several witnesses - caused me. I had never considered the uncanny before, and while it frightened me, it was thrilling to feel that the world was bigger and far stranger than I thought. Nor was this the only thrilling tale between the covers of that little paperback. Ghost ships, UFOs, a vanishing village, mysterious falls of objects from cloudless skies, feral children, stigmatics, queer deaths, and wild talents - they're all there. At the age of ten, I became a passionate student of Fortean phenomenon, and re-reading this volume all these many years later, I see where several of my lifelong interests began.

[ArEzO.... Es · Rating 5 out of 5]

اين كتاب را بچگي هام خونده بودم
كتابي به واقع عجيب تر از آنچه علم اثبات مي تونه بكنه
وخيلي جالب
براي هر داستان مدرك و اثباتي گذاشتند
اما باورش سخت است
مثلا مردي كه جلوي چشماي خانوادش توي قطعه زمين جلوي خانه شان فرو ميره و تا سالها از اونجا علف هاي عجيبي مي رويه و گاهي صداي مرد مياد كه بچه هاشو صدا مي زنه
يا داستاني از يك پسر نوجوان كه اونو توي يك زير زمين خانه كلنگي پيدا مي كنند كه از بدو تولد آنجا بوده نه آدمي ديده نه صحبت مي تونه بكنه

[Shadow · Rating 4 out of 5]

میون کتاب هایه پدرم این کتاب با همه فرق داشت . معماهایی که جوابی نداشتن داستان هایی که گاهی تخیلی به نظر میرسیدن . اتفاق هایی که هنوزم که هنوزه بعد از گذشت سالها علم در توضیحش ناتوانه واقعا کتاب خیلی خوبی بود شوق و اشتیاق برای خوندنشو خیلی دوس داشتم

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

An awesome collection of the weird and anomalous! Read it back in the 70s. If it's not all real, it should be!

[Simin Yadegar · Rating 3 out of 5]

داستانهای کوتاه و واقعی از رخدادهای غیر قابل توجیه

[Ali Noroozian · Rating 1 out of 5]

پر از مزخرفات و دروغ محض

[Brian McCaffery · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this years back, likely when I was about 10 years old, I think. My father had a copy of it, and I have a great memory of lying on the living room couch with him as he read some stories from this book to me. It was an indelible memory I think because of the great experience of being read to, but also because this is where I learned about spontaneous combustion, UFOs, and a number of other phenomena, and began an interest in me from those early days.

The book has stuck with me through the years, and I had to eventually seek out a copy to own. I found a used copy, and reading through it was like being in a time machine and flashing back to those old memories of being read to as a child. For that alone, I love this book.

Reading it in 2024 is funny, there is a chapter speculating what may be on the moon, as this predates space travel (published in 1959), so that was an interesting segment of the book! Also, since then, I’ve heard these stories told in other areas, in paranormal studies podcasts, shows of that sort.

Anyway, this was a great read for those interested in paranormal/supernatural subject matter!

[E Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fun and interesting book with short accounts, generally two and a half pages, of odd happenings throughout the world. Published in 1959, a majority of the tales are from the
19th century, with a few from earlier times, and some from the first half of the 20th century.

Many were familiar, such as the story of Mary Reeser, the victim of spontaneous human combustion, the devil's footprints in England, the Loch Ness monster, and lost planes in the devil's triangle.

Many were new and all were interesting. I found the account of the suspicious dealings of Secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, around Abraham Lincoln's assassinations' intriguing. And the story of the
ship, Octavius, that reportedly made it's way through the still undiscovered Northwest passage with a crew of the dead.

I believe a certain percentage of these could very well be hoaxes, but all were entertaining.

[K.h.bb · Rating 2 out of 5]

واقعا نمی دونم چه امتیازی باید به این کتاب بدم، فقط می دونم تا مدتها، شاید سالها، بعد از خوندن این کتاب کابوس داشتم، خیلی کوچک بودم که خواهرم این کتاب رو خرید و من فضول که از گفتگوهای هیجان زده خواهرم و دوستهاش درباره این کتاب به وجد اومده بودم رفتم سراغش که کاش نمی رفتم، مطالبی که برای یه نوجوان می تونه شگفت انگیز باشه برای یه کودک هشت نه ساله با تخیل خیلی قوی رسما می تونه دهشتناک باشه، طوری از این کتاب می ترسیدم که چند سال بعد که فکر کنم یازده ساله بودم، کتاب رو به دور از چشم خواهرم بردم و نابود کردم که دیگه کابوسش سراغم نیاد، کاری که تازه چند ماهه بهش اعتراف کردم!!! البته هنوز که هنوزه بعضی از اثرات این کتاب بعد دو سه دهه همراهم هست، هنوزم رویا پردازم و پاره ای اوقات، بخصوص در تاریکی، به شدت ترسو

[JC · Rating 1 out of 5]

Edwards presents here 70 something very short stories that maybe in the 50's could have been of any interest but today are mostly ridiculous proven hoaxes.

The real problem however is that each story is hardly three-pages long, which is way too short and superficial to capture your intereset. The inclusion of illustrations or the real-life photographs that are mentioned in some of the stories could have helped greatly with immersion.

[Anita · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so this was published in 1959, and a lot of the stories seem rather quaint in their telling. That's not necessarily a bad thing (honestly, it is part of what I liked about it), but it definitely shows its age. Overall a fun little read.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 4 out of 5]

So many things we see can not be explained rationally. This book tells the tales of some of them. I have read several books in this genre and always find them exciting and a bit spooky.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honestly, I am pretty skeptical about a lot of these stories, but I found this entertaining, nevertheless.

[Don · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somewhat entertaining and an imaginative narrative on the author's part, but this completely and truly leans towards a vastly gullible reader.

[میلک شیک توت فرنگی · Rating 4 out of 5]

دوستان دیگر برای این کتاب نظرات خوبی نوشتند پس من چیز زیادی نمیگم فقط اینکه برای اینکه شب ها خوابت ببره عالی بود البته کتاب خوبی هم بود

شماره کتاب خوانده شده:۴۱

[Erik Graff · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was likely my first book of high weirdness, prior to even the flying saucer books. I devoured the seventy or so short bits about anomolies and mysteries (Hans the mathematical horse, Kasper Hauser, spontaneous human combustion, strange things in the skies and from the skies) with avidity, reading the book quickly in bed, buying every subsequent Frank Edwards book at the bookstore on Prospect near the Park Ridge, Illinois Post Office.

Frankly, it was only in going through a Google search for this cover just now that I found out that the bulk of Edward's tales were old hat, already published in Fate Magazine and broadcast on his radio program.

[Tim Meechan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is likely the first book I spent my own money for. My remembrance is ordering it through the Scholastic Book system during 2nd grade.

Thus began my life of space travel, alien beings, nuclear holocausts, the cold war spy networks, the vilest criminals and the greatest heroines/heroes. Mind bending concepts and worlds unlike any other, incredible stories of strength, faith, and perseverance. Moments where I laughed out loud, and moments where I cried the most heart wrenching tears.

What a life I have experienced, I wouldn't trade it for any other. To all of the storytellers who were a part of it, thank you.

[Christopher Sutch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of this material is abstracted from Edwards's previous book _Strangest of All_, but there is some useful and interesting information on other strange phenomena here. The book suffers from Edwards's usual faulty: the lack of documentation for his sources, but even when he's too gullible to be believed the text is an entertaining read. The book culminates, once more, with two (three if you count the Tunguska explosion, which Edwards does) chapters on UFOs. This still gives me the shivers, in light of Edwards eventual fate (whether or not there was a conspiracy to silence him).

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastically creepy, interesting, and fascinating. The stories told in this collection definitely piqued my curiosity as a kid.

As an adult, there's one story I know now as having a happy ending. That of the Filipino woman being attacked and bitten by an invisible creature with huge eyes and head, the police witnessing bite marks appearing on her arms AS THEY WERE HAPPENING.

This is recounted in yet another book, "Bitten By Devils" by the American Evangelist Lester Sumrall:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to reread this 1959 paperback just for fun. It's a nice collection of short articles (from his radio show) on the unexplained. I think they will be good to read to the grandkids when they are old enough. Even better - one can Google these events to see what the current thinking is on them.

[Arash · Rating 3 out of 5]

واقعا نمی‌دانم چرا یک شخص جلوی من را نگرفت تا این کتاب دلهره آور خرافاتی را که گوز را به شقیقه ربط می‌دهد را در ۹ سالگی و در اوج خرافاتی بودنم نخونم
باعث می‌شد حتی شب ها از ترس نتوانم بخوابم ولی انگار هدف اصلی کتاب هم همین بود و خب به هدفش رسیده است

[David Cerruti · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a high schooler in the '60s, I was fascinated by this book. I don't think i could take it seriously today.