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COMMENTS:
Voted : Collection of Victorian/Edwardian books on the paranormal
As a minor hobby, I collect Society for Psychical Research type books and journals from the 19th century into the early 20th and store them all in an oak gothic revival glass-panelled bookcase from the same era. I have a good selection from Catherine Crowe's THE NIGHT SIDE OF NATURE OR GHOSTS AND GHOST SEERS (1852) on down to the end of World War I.
I'm an agnostic and could care less about whether such things are real or not, but I love the subject matter and the very Victorian attempts to categorize and quantify it "scientifically."
I should have said "1852 edition" (my copy), because the original was printed earlier.
Not that anyone really cared...
Voted : I'll list them below
I have a cookbook written by a witch. I have a porcelain phrenology head.
I have a collection of antique children's fairy tale books, one from the 1800's. I have a street sign over my desk that says "Genius Street". I have a 17 inch high salesman's sample of a secretary desk. These are among my most unique posessions.
Voted : Animal skulls
I envy your collection, Felix. That's been an interest of mine for years.
Probably the most strangest thing in my house is a wooden icon of the Santeria/Voodoo god Elegba. I collect other religious icons as well, but that one is a little unique in that I've never seen one like it.
Second is probably the animal skulls hanging from my front porch. Living out in the sticks, I find old cow or goat skulls on occasion out in the woods, and I get deer and other skulls from hunting and from friends who hunt. My latest addition was a coyote skull from an unfortunate one that someone hit with a car last year. I hated to see it tore up by the county tractors when they mow the roadside, so I brought it home to hang up.
Voted : A Hamster Cage
The cage is still set up. But the Hamster died about six months ago. We have not gone out to get another one. Why we have not just boxed up the cage? I have no idea.
"I envy your collection, Felix. That's been an interest of mine for years."
Well, thanks, I'd started out with the Charles Fort and von Daniken type of paperbacks when I was a kid, and, as I grew older, I worked my way back. There was an amazing list of folks interested in such matters at that time: the philosopher William James, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Henry James, and even Queen Victoria apparently kept a spiritualist author on retainer (and I have a copy of his fictionalized autobiography here). The writing, expertise, and level of thought's much higher than modern "New Age" junk from the Llewelyn Press or whatever.
I just snagged a set I'd wanted for awhile, GLIMPSES OF THE SUPERNATURAL by the Reverend Frederick George Lee (1875 first edition). The second edition's all theosophical analysis and anecdotes of haunted houses and ghosts, and is quite a read.
I love to watch visitors to my home react to the contents of that bookcase. I think that I come across as so matter-of-fact and skeptical that they find it hard to believe I collect such matter or am still a skeptic despite that hobby.
Voted : A Hamster Cage
I don't really have anything out of the ordinary, I guess some videos of autopsies would be the strangest thing to some people.
^ whaaaat? I didnt' pick hamster cage, autopsy videos is my choice
Nice collection, Felix. Though skeptical myself, I lean a little more toward the belief side. But I have to agree about the newer books. Too many people now days totally ignore any scientific side that such topics may have and give everything a spiritual label. Doing that in such a field will just set it back more than what it already is.
The paranormal has always been an interest of my dad's too, so I grew up with those old paperbacks you mentioned lining the bookshelves.
Voted : Rubber Dog Poop
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