The Unexplained: Great Mysteries of the 20th Century

by Jenny Randles

Paperback

Genres: Paranormal

144 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1994

About the author

British author and former director of investigations with the British UFO Research Association (BUFORA), serving in that role from 1982 through to 1994.

Randles specializes in writing books on UFOs and paranormal phenomena. To date 50 of these have been published, ranging from her first UFOs: A British Viewpoint (1979) to Breaking the Time Barrier: The race to build the first time machine (2005). Subjects covered include crop circles, ESP, life after death, time anomalies and spontaneous human combustion.

Reviews

[Debs]

The fact that each story forms its own little section is handy: when bookmarked, it’d hard to get lost – you know exactly what you stopped after and before. Some of them were a waste of time – particularly the UFO reports – clearly hoaxes. And ghost sightings should include more evidence to substantiate them as mentionable sections, given what extraneous claims they are for the known laws of physics! It only covers the 20th century, but given how technological advances boomed not before then, most plausible-enough evidence would only have been available since then, anyway.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this collection of strange mysteries of the 20th century (the book stops in 1993). Hanging Rock, Jersey Devil, Springheel Jack, phantom spaceships, alien encounters, Yeti, Bermuda Triangle, Amityville, the mystic face on Mars... if those topics appeal to you, you'll definitely should pick up this one. Here are the mysteries. Highly recommended!

[David Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book I read to research this post was The Unexplained By Jenny Randles which is an excellent book that I bought from a car boot sale. This book is fairly short at around 140 pages but tries to look at strange phenomena of the 20th Century and tries to put it in chronological order, there is a very wide range of phenomena in the book. Things like the Loch Ness Monster are included as are giant eels in Lake Manitoba which it says could in some cases be sturgeon which can grow up to 10 feet. Apparently there are people who claim to have seen something resembling a diplodocus which was one of the largest dinosaurs in a remote part of the Congo. The political situation there makes it difficult to send an expedition to verify its existence. Interestingly it is known in prehistoric times to have been a herbivore and the tribes people who have witnessed say it will kill people but won't eat them. If it was an invented story you would expect them to say it was a carnivore. Another story is of a tristar that crashed and the pilot used to appear as an apparition on other flights including one where he warned a crew member there was a problem with a plane only to disappear but averted what could have been a disaster. It also looks at what is thought to have been a nuclear explosion in a remote area in Siberia called Tunguska which no one realised was a nuclear explosion until the invention of nuclear weapons. It is thought to have been a UFO and certainly was spotted travelling around prior to the explosion. Witnesses strangely didn't generally succumb to things like cancer which you would expect which is very mysterious. Reindeer nearby did break out in sores and lessions which you would expect and trees were decimated for many miles around along with high radiation readings even years after the event. It is very fortunate it didn't happen somewhere like London or Tokyo. I really enjoyed this book which is a fascinating read and learnt a lot from it.