Here's a frightful example of a text not reading its reader's mind.  It even predicts that you don't live in a painted caravan and stare into a crystal ball for hours (we do!) and that you aren't a mind reader (we are!).  It's a classic case of "what you say about others is what you mean about yourself."  From Baked Beans & Somtam by Rick Kirtland, 2016.

For a book that does read the reader's mind (to eerie effect), don't miss The Young Wizard's Hexopedia.

Columns of asterisks, as if depicting the mention of blood pouring freely as water.  From Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker, 1828.  By the way, we translate typography like this in our highly unusual book Annotated Ellipses.

Here's one way you can know that a goat truly does talk: when it's for the purposes of the story.  From The Loud Red Patrick by John Boruff, 1956.

Here's a title page that wonders about the identity of its own author.  Plus, note the genre, which is our own personal favorite: "serio-ludicro, tragico-comico."

How true those words are, even today.  From Good Health magazine, 1900.

Haunted mirrors are to be avoided when you visit an antiques store (unless, of course, chancing upon such objects is your very purpose).  When consulted to appraise a mirror's hauntedness, the first thing we look for is imperfections in the glass or silvering.  Notice in the unretouched photographic illustrations how a peculiar mirror has a deformity that warps the face of any Narcissus who approaches it.  A thing of horror — and beyond question profoundly haunted.  A more subtle issue we look for is a discrepancy between what is reflected and what is actually in the room.  This requires very careful looking at details within both worlds, and it can be helpful to take photographs of the mirror world from as many angles as possible so as to study them at leisure.  We then look at the back of the mirror for a manufacturer's mark (for example, "Pairpoint Mfg. Co., Quadruple Plate, June 28, 1904"), and if such a mark is upside down, the mirror has been hung "inverted," making it more susceptible to negative powers.  Knowing some history about the mirror can be crucial; for example, had the mirror previously been in a room with a dying person?  For novices, perhaps the easiest method to determine a mirror's hauntedness is to look into it at night by candlelight.  There's little guesswork in such an approach—you'll know!

Elsewhere, I have written of "the future of the past" to capture this massive spiraling model of historical thinking and interpretation. By this paradoxical expression, I mean that we need to come to terms with the simple fact that, yes, we can now read the past in ways that past peoples could not read their own presents. Our future changes the meanings of their past. But any adequate understanding of their past will also inevitably challenge our own present assumptions about the world and so change the meaning of our present. There is no straight arrow here. There is a kind of recurring time loop, a constant return to the past in order to reassess and recalibrate the present toward a different kind of future. Anyone who works seriously with historical materials is familiar with these interpretive paradoxes.

—Whitley Strieber and Jeffrey Kripal, The Super Natural: Why the Unexplained is Real [via Gordon Meyer]

Breaking News:

It sounds sensational, but it's true: Gary Numan has sent Chris Isaak straight into Hell, where Isaak is now embedded with His Satanic Majesty Himself.  Some are surprised by this, having assumed that Isaak was angelic and Numan demonic (especially given that black eyeliner and those Numanesque lyrics like, "I am the ghost that reminds Death of you," easily the spookiest line we've ever encountered).  But no — Numan is the angel, and he has sent Isaak to Hell with great panache.

Given the popularity of Isaak's entrancing song "Wicked Game" (1989), it's impossible not to believe that Gary Numan's new masterpiece "And It All Began With You" is a direct response.  There are some subtle harmonic and tonal similarities between the two songs, and to our ears Numan deliberately mimicked just enough of "Wicked Game" to make it obvious that he was sending Isaak directly to Hell.  You will recall the bleakness of Isaak's lyrics, proclaiming "I don't wanna fall in love" and ending with "Nobody loves no one."  To call Numan's response powerful or dramatic would be the understatement of the centuries.  Numan proclaims that not only does somebody love someone, but love can endure anything, in this life and well into the next world:

When you whisper my name, I'll be with you
When you reach out your hand, I'll be with you
When you walk to the light, I'll be with you
When you stand before God, I'll be with you

We have an aunt who won't stoop for a lucky penny.  Perhaps this is why.  From Kladderadatsch, 1931.  

You've heard that the art of living is the art of dying.  This book about longevity confirms it -- note the appendix on the pleasure of making a will.

"The grave is no longer voiceless.  It speaks to us with myriad tongues and in many ways."  From Psychography: Marvelous Manifestations of Psychic Power by James J. Owen, 1893.

From Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers by Don Marquis, 1916.  The text reads, "It is not enough to be merely unworldly.  One must be Other-Worldly as well, if you get what I mean.  Every time before I take up anything new I ask myself, 'Is it Other-Worldly?  Or is it not Other-Worldly?'  That is the Touchstone.  One can apply it to everything, simply everything!"

From The Crimson Cryptogram by Fergus Hume, 1902.

We spotted Tom, Dick and Harry in the wild.  From A Psychic Vigil in Three Watches, 1896.

We love this decription of different types of library books.  From the sublime novel The Demi-gods by James Stephens, 1921.

"As for the graveyard, we never saw it; we closed our eyes as we passed it."  From The Haunted Pool by George Sand and translated by Frank Hunter Potter, 1800.

You've heard of taking one step forward and two steps back.  If you take two steps forward, it's into a hole.  From New York County court records, 1918.

It's been said (if only once, according to Google) that no one can read a blank book.  Donna proves the lie in that.  Here she is, reading our blank book entitled Let's Do and Say We Didn't.