New Book Reviews
By Brent Raynes
Real Encounters,
Different Dimensions, and
Otherworldly Beings
By Brad Steiger and Sherry Hansen Steiger
Visible Ink Press
43311 Joy Road, #414
Canton, MI 48187-2075
2014, 383 pages, $19.95 US, $21.95 CAN
ISBN: 978-1-57859-455-9
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
The Steiger’s Real Encounters is another comprehensive, thought-provoking masterpiece of encyclopedic proportions written by this daring and pioneering duo of the paranormal world. This lavishly illustrated, pictorial and in-depth exploration of this planet’s wide variety of reported non-human entity encounters clearly reveals the deep complexity and mystery surrounding such controversial stories. Venturing outside the debilitating belief systems and structures imposed by narrowly focused intellectual and mainstream perspectives, the Steiger’s instead go off the proverbial known grid, well outside most people’s typical comfort zones, and embark upon a wide-reaching search for answers that take us beyond more familiar and contemporary territory to include a vast background of significant global and historical data as well.
As an example, modern mainstream “nuts and bolts” ufologists tend to have a very narrow tunnel-vision focus wherein abducting extraterrestrial “greys” and their much talked about activities have taken center stage over the “mixed bag” of other alien types, activities and apparent motives for which most find it truly incomprehensible, if not downright impossible, to adequately wrap their minds around. The “big picture” certainly defies most intellectual attempts to make any final and concretely rational sense and logic of these convoluted enigmas that have so long haunted mankind and his world. The infant science of ufology is only one single human frame of reference for which no doubt hundreds upon hundreds of variations exist to subjectively define and explain these high-strangeness intrusions into our otherwise culturally sanctioned and scientifically fixed causal reality that the majority of us only think we know.
The Steiger’s tour de force exploration of our enigmatic, not fully explained world-at-large takes us to the very outer edges of our known universe and well beyond what modern science has thus far been able to truly and fully comprehend adequately. Choosing to simply call it “the Other,” Brad and Sherry Steiger have tracked down countless first-hand accounts of this mysterious presence from men and women all over our world. These mind-boggling, documented encounter reports include authenticated cases describing everything from the legendary Mothman, the Men-In-Black, Bigfoot, the Grays, fairies, angels, demons, etc., etc. The list can just go on and on, but as the Steiger’s deftly show the commonalities are there inspite of the widely differing frames of reference and interpretations.
“In this book we present the thesis that the aliens, angels, spirit guides, demons, and gods or goddesses encountered by unaware, yet somehow receptive percipients may actually be the product of a multidimensional intelligence that masks itself in physical forms that are more acceptable to humans than its true image – if it does, indeed, have a perceivable form at all,” the Steiger’s reveal in their revealing introduction to their book.
Going even further off the grid, the Steiger’s accepted a number of testimonials and contributions in their book from other researchers and experiencers, including the well-known UFO author Sean Casteel who shared how his own alien encounter experience catapulted him into the field of ufology. Then too there is my friend Sandy Nichols’s strange “Stick Man” experiences, unexplained footprints (once following a “Spirit Box” session at his home), and a contribution from me that contained details of a paranormal investigation that included my own use of the “Spirit Box” and even interviews with “ghost hunters” who shared with me their own personal Bigfoot and elemental-type encounters.
In the book, we can see how Brad and Sherry both, throughout their lives, were personally drawn deeper and deeper into the innermost dimensions of these experiences, just like the many testimonial accounts they share from so many other people. For instance, there is Sherry’s personal close calls with death and her powerful dreams of geometric shapes that followed. All of this caused her to engage deeply into near-death studies and to research fractal geometry, applying her experiences and studies to create a highly influential multimedia presentation entitled “Sacred Geometry: The Nature of Life,” a presentation that awakened often profound and intense memories and emotional reactions with many viewers, including Brad himself, who saw designs that closely paralleled geometric images that he recalled from his own childhood near-death experience. With Brad, the Other appeared early on to him when he was a young boy on an Iowa farm when he saw an “elf” peering in the kitchen window. Since then, through the years, there have been mysterious spheres of light, human-like apparitions, UFOs, poltergeist type activity, and other familiar trappings of the inexplicable world of the paranormal – of the mysterious “Other.”
If you would like a much deeper and richer introduction into this twilight realm between the known worlds of establishment science and religion, the Steiger’s have certainly prepared an excellent assemblage of thought-provoking material for all of us to ponder and reflect upon much further.
Lost Race of the Giants:
The Mystery of their Culture, Influence,
And Decline throughout the World
By Patrick Chouinard
Foreword by Paul Von Ward
Bear & Company
A division of Inner Tradition International
One Park Street
Rochester, Vermont 05767
2013, 224 pages, US $18.00
ISBN: 978-1-59143-148-0
Reviewed by Brent Raynes
For untold centuries there have been numerous stories, myths and legends of a race of giant people from almost every culture on our planet. Our modern mainstream science has always treated such accounts with great disdain, as something unworthy of serious consideration and completely lacking in any genuine factual substance. Nonetheless, the stories and reports (including many alleged archaeological discoveries of 10 to 12 foot tall skeletons) have persisted.
In this book, author Patrick Chouinard, former producer of Archaeology TV, editor in chief of The New Archaeology Review, and the author of Forgotten Worlds, tackles these neglected and controversial tales and issues seriously and headlong. The conclusion that he ultimately reaches not only finds credibility in such stories, but he additionally fuels even further fire to this controversy when he also concludes that these giants were not only the true earthborn race but that they were in open conflict with genetic manipulating extraterrestrial gods/ancient aliens and even looks at the notion that the legendary Atlantis may have been a massive floating city or spaceship. Without question official mainstream archaeological science isn’t going to be too eager and moved to accept any of the evidence and theories that Chouinard presents. It simply doesn’t reflect their established and vested positions and beliefs on such issues and matters. However, this author has amassed a considerable wealth of material for the unbiased and open-minded reader who hasn’t been academically indoctrinated to strict, dogmatic perspectives of perception. I feel that his points and conclusions deserve thoughtful consideration and review, irregardless of what academic toes may get stepped on in the process. True science, after all, is unafraid to fly in the face of popular opinions and prior established viewpoints.
