Plates for the Paper-Back Version

Second Set Of Plates

Above One of the 'Giant Balls' of Costa Rica Was it sculpted by nature or the ancients?

Left Carcasses of cattle lie where the gas overtook them around Lake Nios

Lake Nios, Cameroon, where 1,700 people and countless animals died as a result of breathing poisoned gas.

Sandra Mansi's photograph taken from the shores of Lake Champlain in 1977. Does it show the monster?

The leathery turtle: as big as a small car.

Mirages can magically transform workaday objects - here, ferryboats on Puget Sound in the United States. Effects vary according to atmospheric conditions. In the first picture the ships portholes are elongated and its hull obliterated. In the second, it has disintegrated into a row of floating towers and everything below the bridge has disappeared.

No picture in this book has a more compelling fascination than the photograph of the dead sailor buried beneath the Artic ice for 140 years. The hands, manicured, immaculate as though they had just recently scrubbed the planked and caulked deck; the eyes open as if in life; the teeth shining. Only the forehead and nose show the blackening of frost. Lost in mysterious circumstances: Petty Officer John Torrington of the Franklin expedition.

Arthur C. Clarke watches a volunteer cross burning coals during an experimental firewalk at the University of Colombo Medical Faculty, Sri Lanka.

The happy hook-hanger. The secret lies in a positive mental attitude and the careful distribution of his weight over several hooks.

The peaceful farmlands of southern England are the setting for the latest mystery to intrigue UFO investigators: more a case of 'What are they?' than 'Where are they?'. Every summer since 1980, huge and apparently perfect circles of flattened corn have been found in the midst of otherwise undisturbed crops. A cluster at Cheesefoot Head, Hampshire, in 1986 included bizarre double rings.

Many UFO buffs believe they are the tracks or overnight 'nests' of alien spacecraft, but one leading meteorologist argues that the circles are made by a rare phenomenon known as a 'fair weather stationary whirlwind'. This occurs when a whirlwind becomes trapped in one particular spot by a hill or escarpment. Some whirlwinds have several vortices, hence the 'clusters'.

| TOC |