This below is from the paperback book Stranger than Fiction by Frank Edwards published in 1959. It's a collection of curious or unexplained incidents that Edwards collected and retold in his syndicated radio program of the same name. Edwards was one of the most widely listened to broadcasters in the country in the 1940s and '50s, specializing in investigative journalism. Later he turned his attention to Fortean type oddities such as are recorded in Stranger.
I used to be a sucker for this kind of stuff when I was a kid, believing every word. It was published in a book, wasn't it? So it had to be true. Nobody would write and publish things that weren't true. That would be wrong.
The paperback I scanned this story from my mom got from the Weekly Reader Children's Book Club, Scolastic Book Service or some other school book-order program when she was a kid. She can't remember which one. But she was enamored of these kinds of stories, too. And you know what? Now my mini me is reading it and she loves it. B-b-but but...thanks to the darned internet, she's looking up all the incidents and taking all the mystery out of them. She doesn't bother to ask her mom or her grandma if they are really true, she just asks Mrs. AI, that know-it-all smarty pants and buzz kill. Thus dieth one of childhood's pleasures: wonder. Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts.
Oh, if you want to read Stranger, you can borrow it from the Internet Archives. But for heaven's sake don't fact-check the stories. Just be a Fox Mulder and tell yourself, "I want to believe!"
