Daily Journal 1/12/26

Swiss author and researcher Erich von Däniken passed away this weekend at the age of 90. A controversial figure, he popularized the ‘Ancient Alien’ theory, and — along with authors such as Charles Berlitz and Ivan T. Sanderson, and Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of — was responsible for the 1970s interest in all things paranormal, supernatural, and cryptozoological.

However, unlike these others, von Däniken’s work was full of factual errors and outright fabrications, including a supposed trip he undertook to a cave in Ecuador where he claimed to have seen strange statues and a library of metal tablets left behind by ancient aliens. He later admitted to fabricating it. He also later ended up in hot water for embezzlement and other crimes.

So… yeah. Interesting and confusing legacy. On the one hand, he is responsible for introducing Gen X to these parapsychological ideas. On the other hand, he made most of it up, and borrowed heavily from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos while also swiping (uncredited) from Robert Charroux's One Hundred Thousand Years of Man's Unknown History and other sources that pre-dated his work.

(As a kid, I was much more a fan of Sanderson, a zoologist and scientist whose research was always fact-based and science-based. I hate that his work has been swept into the annals of the used bookstore dollar bins and that the reality TV “Bigfoot hunters” have become the dominant voices in the field).

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UPDATES:

Yesterday’s newsletter can be found here.

Not much left at the store now. Didn’t finish yesterday, as planned, but will definitely be finished at some point this week.