The World of the Unknown

All About Monsters (World of the Unknown Series)
Author: Carey Miller
EMC Pub: Jan 1978 / ISBN: 0884364674

Several years ago, Mark and I had a conversation about some wonderfully illustrated childhood books that we enjoyed reading at our local public library. To the best of my memory, the books were simply titled, Monsters and Ghosts.

These books captured my imagination with fascinating stories that ranged from mythological monsters to eerie black and white photographs of "real" ghosts. I spent countless hours studying the numerous illustrations. One story in particular that appealed to the both of us was the English legend of the Lambton Worm.

After our talk, I wanted to buy these books so I used Amazon's advance search feature using the only two pieces of information that I could think of, a probable title name and a publication date before 1985. Thousands of results came up so I took the dreary task of scanning through dozens of page results to see if an image of the cover would jog my memory. After searching and emailing a few potential Amazon affiliates, I gave up. But I never did forget it.

Every few years I would be reminded of the books and do a Google search for the Lambton Worm, only to come up empty. However, last week I decided to use a Google image search and found a familiar looking illustration of a spiked-armored wearing knight fighting the Lambton worm. This was obviously scanned from the elusive book! Although the image was posted on a Tumblr blog with no reference to the source, it did contain a headline and copy of the story. I quickly searched again using the headline and was able to find the proper book title, The World of the Unknown, from Google's Books service.

All About Ghosts (World of the Unknown Series)
Author: Christopher Maynard
EMC Pub: Jan 1978 / ISBN: 0884364690

Searching The World of the Unknown resulted in several successful hits including probably the best known source of the books, the Haunted Closet blog, where the author scanned both the Monsters and Ghosts books from his own copies.

So is it still possible to buy these vintage books today? Fortunately the short answer is, yes. But the EMC hardcover version first published in 1978 looks to be the most difficult and expensive version to find. This Amazon reviewer gives some helpful advice to those like myself who are looking.

The EMC version of UFO's currently starts at $142 used. Not bad for a book that retailed for $7.95 new! I might end up buying the more readily available, and much less expensive, 1989 republished version. I've read that it's identical in content to the EMC version, but comes as a paperback with a different cover image.

It's nice to know that other bloggers share the same memories as myself in regard to these titles. As someone mentioned, they really do have a 1970's In Search of... feel to them.

All About UFO's (World of the Unknown Series)
Author: T. M. Wilding-White
EMC Pub: Jan 1978 / ISBN: 0884364682