1970s Reader's Digest article on JTR

[YomRippur]

This article was the first thing I ever read about JTR. Looking at it now, it has plenty of errors, but it did get me interested in the subject as a young boy, back when there was no Internet nor computers. According to the appendix, this article was sourced from Colin Wilson's "A Casebook of Murder": Page 1, 2.

The article is part of a 600-page book from 1976 titled "Strange Stories, Amazing Facts". This is also the book where I first read about things like the Easter Island statues, shroud of Turin, Anastasia of Russia, ghost faces of Belmez, Titanic and the fictional sink of Titan, etc. A very important book from my young days.

[Graham]

This article was the first thing I ever read about JTR. Looking at it now, it has plenty of errors, but it did get me interested in the subject as a young boy, back when there was no Internet nor computers. According to the appendix, this article was sourced from Colin Wilson's "A Casebook of Murder": Page 1, 2.

Maybe if you could post it the right way up. we could read it and comment....

Graham

[Simon Wood]

Hi Graham,

It makes no more sense the right way around.

To wit—



Regards,

Simon

[Howard Brown]

Thanks for that blast from the past, YK......I had that book back in the mid-70's too. Read it to death.

[YomRippur]

I rotated the Page 2 image and it should be fine now. Howard, I was still in grade school and several of my classmates had the book too. Schools teach "mainstream history", so things like JTR, shroud of Turin, the WWII crossword scare, etc., were not taught and were unknown to us before the computer and Internet age. Our grade school also didn't have much of a library. Ironically, as you must know, those subjects were the ones that fascinated us kids the most! So this 600-age tome, with its wide range of subjects, really opened our eyes to the world. Of course, the downside of Reader's Digest in general was and is that everything reads like a condensed version of the original writing, and it feels terse and brief. But for a kid that wasn't a bad thing! For those who don't know about Reader's Digest (there may be some), it is a monthly magazine of condensed versions of other magazines' articles and even condensations of full-length novels. The company also makes hardcover books, both fiction and non-fiction, that are often collections of condensed and/or rewritten writings from other sources.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

This article was the first thing I ever read about JTR. Looking at it now, it has plenty of errors, but it did get me interested in the subject as a young boy, back when there was no Internet nor computers. According to the appendix, this article was sourced from Colin Wilson's "A Casebook of Murder": Page 1, 2.

The article is part of a 600-page book from 1976 titled "Strange Stories, Amazing Facts". This is also the book where I first read about things like the Easter Island statues, shroud of Turin, Anastasia of Russia, ghost faces of Belmez, Titanic and the fictional sink of Titan, etc. A very important book from my young days.

I have the exact same book and it was also the first time I read about Jack The Ripper.

[SirJohnFalstaff]

oh well, not exactly.
This is mine.

http://pictures.abebooks.com/LELIVRE/925759017.jpg

[MsWeatherwax]

This article was the first thing I ever read about JTR. Looking at it now, it has plenty of errors, but it did get me interested in the subject as a young boy, back when there was no Internet nor computers. According to the appendix, this article was sourced from Colin Wilson's "A Casebook of Murder": Page 1, 2.

The article is part of a 600-page book from 1976 titled "Strange Stories, Amazing Facts". This is also the book where I first read about things like the Easter Island statues, shroud of Turin, Anastasia of Russia, ghost faces of Belmez, Titanic and the fictional sink of Titan, etc. A very important book from my young days.

Sign me up. I spent many happy hours as a child reading this book - it was the first time I read about Jack the Ripper too, and my other fascination 'Spring Heeled Jack'.

[YomRippur]

The problem with this book is that the table of content doesn't mention each article by title. The TOC only lists the sections, but not the articles in them. I'm curious to know how you guys had heard of this book. I did when I got a mailer from Reader's Digest advertising this book. Interestingly, that mailer had a complete listing of the articles in the book by title. I threw away the mailer sadly.

After this book, which seemed to be a success, Reader's Digest published a couple more books on mysteries and legends and things like that. And I bought them also, but none of them mentioned JTR again.

[Bridewell]

The first article I ever read on the subject was published in the now defunct "Police Review" magazine in about 1982. I'm not sure who wrote it.