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Post by marillionboy on Jan 9, 2011 13:01:10 GMT
Has anyone else here read this book? It came out in 1988, and I remember it being everywhere, but that may have just been the case where I lived at the time, Essex, as the story is set there. I was quite young when I read it, and was absolutely baffled by its purportedly true account of supernatural events as if they were everyday occurences. I also found it very frightening!
I have wanted to re-read it for years just for fun and am delighted to have unearthed my battered old copy this morning. Can't wait to immerse myself in it again: to a teenager, it was heaven to read a supernatural thriller set in all the rural churchyards I was living near!
Two moments I remember particularly clearly: one is when the author and his psychic friend drive to a churchyard in Rettendon late at night and in the porch find a black envelope addressed to them, and open it to find a message telling them they have nine days to live. Also a moment when the psychic has a vision of the BA sitting at a desk and the BA then turns to look at him as if he's sensed his presence. Always liked that chilly moment.
So does anyone else remember this book? It is very very odd: it doesn't seem to try very hard to reassure you this all DID happen, it simply takes it as a given that you accept they do. I mean it can't be true, can it???
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Post by dem bones on Jan 9, 2011 22:43:02 GMT
Andrew Collins - The Black Alchemist (ABC, 1988) It really captured the public imagination at the time, didn't it? Can't think of any independently published paperback ever taking up so much shelf space in W. H. Smiths as The Black Alchemist did in their Stratford, E. London branch. The loose sequel, The Seventh Sword from 1991 shifted loads too, though think that one may have been professionally published? There was plenty of moaning about the book at the time. The cover was "blasphemous": 'psychic questing' was all made up: Collins and Bernard couldn't do what they said they had because - according to the SPR, various witchy types and skeptics alike - it was impossible: worst of all, they'd failed to name or even provide a photo of the BA. There's also some controversy whether the punk band Collins fronted - Disease - were anything like as "legendary" as is claimed in his biography, but that's just carping. What I liked about The Black Alchemist was, you didn't need to believe; it was better to forget that it was all "real" and just enjoy the Questers' exploits as an exciting - if, at times, incredibly convoluted - occult adventure novel. Other than the spooky episode where the Black Alchemist turns his best chilling stare on them from distance, I like the sequence where they arrive at the conclusion that his "disgusting and very dangerous form of black magic, unused for nearly two thousand years" is responsible for the violent hurricane of 1987 (if he was that evil and powerful, why didn't he just zap them with a bolt of lightening instead of wasting time on death threats?)! Then there's Toyne Newton's expose of the Friends Of Hecate, a potent black sorcery aggregate based in Clapham Wood, rumoured to be responsible for several mysterious deaths from 1972 onward. Have read Newton's initial articles on this matter in The Unexplained magazine, and, as far as I recall, he doesn't add much in The Black Alchemist, but it makes for a lively chapter.
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Post by marillionboy on Jan 9, 2011 23:58:32 GMT
Great post mate, totally agree.
I'll never forget lending it to a friend who I then asked his opinion after he'd got half way through. He said "I think Bernard might be winding him up a bit..."
I wasn't able to grasp what the BA was doing that was so terrible really, he wasn't exactly leaving bodies strewn in his wake as I recall.
I think the "legendary punk band" thing made me suspicious from the off of Collins's veracity but as you say, a gripping supernatural thriller all the same!
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Post by marillionboy on Jan 10, 2011 0:00:21 GMT
PS it was also very of its moment as there was a real upsurge of reports of devil worship and satanic cults in Essex at the time, the county having a very very eerie history of such things.
Also re Clapham Wood, I dont know if the Un explained article covered this as I'll need to look out my copies, but I do have a BBC doc from 1973 about the then disapearance of a policeman in the wood who was later found dead in inexplicable circumstances. Very strange place.
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Post by jamesdoig on Jan 10, 2011 1:51:34 GMT
PS it was also very of its moment as there was a real upsurge of reports of devil worship and satanic cults in Essex at the time, the county having a very very eerie history of such things. I was living in the UK between 1989-1993 and I distinctly recall a surge of stories about whole communities systematically abusing young kids with accusations of devil worship, satanism etc - quite bizarre. Of course, it was all rubbish - some newly developed technique of identifying abused kids that turned out to be rot. That said, the Black Alchemist looks like a great read.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 10, 2011 19:50:00 GMT
I was living in the UK between 1989-1993 and I distinctly recall a surge of stories about whole communities systematically abusing young kids with accusations of devil worship, satanism etc - quite bizarre. Of course, it was all rubbish - some newly developed technique of identifying abused kids that turned out to be rot. It was one of those weird crazes that come and go like cabbage patch dolls or something. One particularly horrible episode got me *investigating* occult titles from a Christian megastore in Holborn - staff: surly - to try and work out where these peoples heads were at. I never managed it, but what an astonishing and sometimes downright scary reading experience the Evangelical Alliance and satanic survivor "non-fiction" made for. Incredibly, many of the books had forewords provided by serving MP's, the thinking behind that being, presumably, that it would give them credibility. Dread to think how much irreparable damage was done to the several innocent families affected by these credulous buffoons.
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Post by marillionboy on Jan 10, 2011 23:23:35 GMT
I remember the book that was everywhere at the time was called Dance with the Devil, a suppoedly real life account of someone's time in a Satanist cult.
The scariest Christian literature I read was a book called Halloween: Trick or Treat and another book that claiming that reading Sherlock Holmes was sinful and that Catholicism was "Satan's cleverest trick".
Four chapters in to The Black Alchemist now and the memories are flooding back! Just passed the bit where the psychic sees a vision of a dwarf laughing at them on the mound!
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Post by dem bones on Jan 11, 2011 0:08:37 GMT
I remember the book that was everywhere at the time was called Dance with the Devil, a supposedly real life account of someone's time in a Satanist cult. Yeah, I've read Audrey Harper's Dance With A Devil yet another smash hit from Kingsway publications whose other top titles include Rev. Kevin Logan's Satanism & The Occult and Roger Ellis's unintentionally hilarious guide to what rock and pop music it is ok to listen to, Young People & The Occult. If I remember (it's been some time since I read it and I'm in no rush that right) Dance Of The Devil shares certain similarities with perhaps the most notorious Brit satanic survivor hagiography, Dorothy Irvine's From Witchcraft To Christ: My True-Life StoryThe scariest Christian literature I read was a book called Halloween: Trick or Treat and another book that claiming that reading Sherlock Holmes was sinful and that Catholicism was "Satan's cleverest trick". Please let me know if you remember the title of the latter. Sad as I am, it's gone on my wants list! Glad to hear you're enjoying The Black Alchemist the second time around.
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Post by marillionboy on Jan 12, 2011 2:57:32 GMT
Sadly I know I'll never remember it now, such things I'm glad to have blotted out, but it may have been something like The Teenage Christan Survival Guide or such like...
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Post by marillionboy on Jan 12, 2011 2:58:24 GMT
Just out of interest by the way, do you believe anything in the Black Alchemist? Or at least believe the people involved belived it?
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Post by dem bones on Jan 12, 2011 11:20:36 GMT
Just out of interest by the way, do you believe anything in the Black Alchemist? Or at least believe the people involved belived it? Not having read it in ages, it would be unfair of me to answer that, he said, all diplomatic. I read some of the interviews Andrew Collins gave at the time and came away pretty impressed. He could cheerfully accept that some might struggle to put the same interpretation on the "facts" in the case as he and his psychics, and didn't strike me as a guy going out of his way to make converts which was very refreshing. it's not really the "supernatural" that interests me anyway. my thing was always more instances of public hysteria, like the notorious "Gorbals Vampire" case of 1954, where rumours got around that some monster with iron fangs was haunting a local cemetery and next thing you know there was a near-riot going on. I don't read anything like as much on the subject as i did pre-Vault, but would recommend Jan-Andrew Henderson The Ghost That Haunted Itself - featuring the spine-chilling 'Mackenzie Poltergeist' of GreyFriars cemetery - as an absolutely riveting read. Unusually its packed with eye-witness testimonies (mostly from people who'd taken the Edinburgh Ghost Tour) and these certainly add to the fun.
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Post by lemming13 on Jan 12, 2011 11:28:28 GMT
My God, I'd forgotten this completely. I even got the sequel, I had such fun reading the Black Alchemist. I remember there being a lot of stuff around that time along the psychic questing line, as well as the standard 'occult truth' material like The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Pity it's all gone Dan Brown. Or am I missing out somewhere? Are there still such joyously odd things being published?
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Post by dem bones on Jan 12, 2011 11:39:28 GMT
Hope you don't mind, mr. marrilionboy, but have shifted your thread to its rightful place on the board to give our much-missed friend Bob 'The Duke' Rothwell something to read (it was Bob's fourth anniversary on Boxing Day, and this was always his favourite section of the board)
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Jan 12, 2011 12:50:28 GMT
This Andrew Collins, did he later write a book about how the Great Pyramid at Giza is in fact a giant steam engine? (I cannot be bothered to check right now.) I read that one! I have been, at various times, a big fan of popular esoterica of that particular kind, and it seems to me his books are among the craziest available.
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Post by Dr Strange on Jan 12, 2011 14:05:01 GMT
Just out of interest by the way, do you believe anything in the Black Alchemist? Or at least believe the people involved belived it? I haven't read this, but I did read one that had something to do with a "quest" for a green stone or something, way back in the early 80s. It was utter rubbish - to be fair, this also sounds like rubbish; but at least it sounds like it might be entertaining rubbish. Hard to say whether the authors of any of this stuff really believed or not, but Collins is still very much in the same line of business and apparently working on a re-issue of "The BA": www.andrewcollins.com/page/conference/conferencenews.htm
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