World's Most Mysterious People

Did Rasputin, the mad monk of Tsarist Russia, possess supernatural powers? Who was the mysterious prisoner in the Bastille who has gone down in history as "The Man in the Iron Mask"? Did he possess a priceless secret which Louis XIV desperately wanted to learn? Victorian Britain was terrorized by a weird super-athlete known to the popular press of those days as "Spring-heeled Jack." Was he just an eccentric gymnast, or could he have been an alien? Who or what was the mysterious man known as the Count of St. Germain whose abnormal powers seemed to defy both time and space - and is he still with us today? What strange powers of prophecy did Coinneach Odhar, the famous Brahan Seer, really possess? Was Benger Saunie, the enigmatic Priest of Rennes-Le-Chteau, one of the last guardians of a secret older than the Sphinx? Could the sinister Aleister Crowley have been merely a pathetic victim of self-deception and his own inflated ego, or did he really possess magical powers? What amazing secrets did electrical engineer Nikola Tesla control? Gurdjieff - one of the most amazing men of his time - has never been fully understood: what was the true meaning behind his strangely ambivalent messages? Was Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky a genius with strange paranormal powers, or merely a charlatan and a sensation-seeker? Francis Dashwood of Medmenham Abbey, leader of a sect of the wildest debauchees who roared their way across the eighteenth century, was an expert in the Black Arts. All of these strange, mysterious, and intriguing characters - and many others - are described, examined, and analyzed in The World's Most Mysterious People.

This is a collection of remarkable and mysterious people, from all ages and places - including our own. Some the authors have met, others were researched carefully from reliable archives. Some are Canadian, others are from the US, the UK, and all over the world. All are mysterious; all are intriguing; all are worth studying. Can anyone learn to use mysterious powers like theirs? To update what a great thinker once said: "The proper study of people is other human beings." And the more mysterious those human beings are, the more we shall learn from studying them.

Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe live in Cardiff, Wales. They have investigated the world's unsolved mysteries for more than 30 years and are the authors of 13 bestselling books published by Dundurn Press, including The Oak Island Mystery and Mysteries and Secrets of the Templars. Lionel is famous internationally for his many highly acclaimed TV programs dealing with various aspects of mystery and the paranormal. Lionel is president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena and of the British UFO Research Association. Patricia is his wife and co-researcher.