The Danbury Press: "Vampires, Zombies and Monster Men"

Ahh, the 1970s. A time when you could just go around advertising occult volumes featuring the Sigil of Baphomet on the back cover. Is it any wonder that the Satanic Panic took hold a few years later?

Featured today is the hardcover volume titled Vampires, Zombies, and Monster Men, which was part of The Danbury Press series called The Supernatural. The Danbury Press was a division of Grolier, those nice, wholesome folks who published the encyclopedias found in school and home libraries. 

Published in 1975 and 1976, the 21-volume set included these tantalizing volumes:

• Alchemy, the Ancient Science
• Atlantis and the Lost Lands
• The Cosmic Influence
• Dream Worlds
• Enigmas and Mysteries
• The Geller Phenomenon
• Ghosts and Poltergeists
• Healing Without Medicine
• Magic, Words, and Numbers
• Minds Without Boundaries
• Monsters and Mythic Beasts
• Mysterious Powers
• Psychic Voyages
• Signs of Things to Come
• Spirits and Spirit Worlds
• Strange Cults
• Vampires, Zombies, and Monster Men
• Visitors from Outer Space
• Wisdom from Afar
• Witches and Witchcraft
• Guide and Index

I only have this one, plus Ghosts and Poltergeists and Enigmas and Mysteries, all three picked up on the cheap at a Goodwill store. They aren't particularly scarce, but most online sellers put them into bulk lots.

This hardcover volume is 144 pages and filled with photos and illustrations, about half of which are in full color. The listed author is Daniel Farson (1927-1997), whose grand-uncle, appropriately, was Bram Stoker. Colin Wilson and Uri Geller are listed as editorial consultants, and I think we should give a shout-out to the folks who designed this fine-looking volume:

• Series coordinator: John Mason
• Design director: Günter Radtke
• Picture editor: Peter Cook
• Editors: Mary Senechal, Eleanor Van Zandt
• Copy editor: Mitzi Bales
• Research: Frances Vargo
• General consultant: Beppie Harrison

The volume features two chapters on vampires and individual chapters on lycanthropy, traditional zombies, fairies, wild men in the woods and humans who proved more evil than any folkloric monster could ever be.

The interior images are a mixture of cinematic frights and pure gruesomeness from across history. A sampling includes Bela Lugosi, Edvard Munch's "vampire," Count Dracula-themed ice cream, David Farrant, the Croglin Grange vampire, actress Theda Bara, Peter Cushing & Christopher Lee (of course), Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-wolves, Peter Stumpp (spelled in the book as Peter Stubb), Michael Landon as a teen wolf, voodoo dancers, the Cottingley Fairies, the pixies of Cornwall, Richard Dadd's painting The Fairy Feller's Master-Stroke, François Truffaut's L'Enfant sauvage, serial killer Peter Kürten, Jack the Giant Killer, Elizabeth Báthory, and the unsettling closing image of Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son.

There's a lot packed in there! I suspect that an 8- or 9-year-old who got their hands on this in the mid-1970s would have had nightmares for months. Scott Davis agrees in his Amazon review: "I read through an early version of this book when I was a kid. My uncle had it. Scared the living bejeezus out of me! A great read if you like monster myths."

I'm kind of surprised that there don't seem to be any substantial articles or blog posts about Danbury Press' The Supernatural series online. If you have any thoughts or memories on this or any other volume, please leave a comment. 

And now I've fulfilled a life goal of photographing a skunk alongside the Cottingley Fairies.