Mystic Magazine.
1953-1956 Bimonthly
Evanston, IL, Amherst, WI.
Editor: Ray Palmer, Bea Mahaffey.
Publisher: Palmer Publications, Inc.
Succeeds: The Time Traveller (1932-1933); Science Fiction Digest (1933); Amazing Stories (1938-1949); Fantastic Adventures (1939-1949); Imagination (1950); Fate (1949-1988) Palmer sold his interest in Fate in 1953 to Curtis Fuller in order to start this journal, and Fuller sold that magazine in 1988)
Succeeded by: Search Magazine (Mystic Magazine renamed, October 1956-1977?); Other Worlds Science Stories (1949-1957); Science Stories (1953-1954); Universe Science Fiction (1953-1955); Flying Saucers from Other Worlds 1957-1958)—>Flying Saucers Magazine of Space Conquest (1958-1976); Space World (1960-1977, Palmer acquired in 1963); The Hidden World Science Fiction Magazine (1961-1964); Forum (1965); Ray Palmer's News Letter (1974-1975)
No. 1, November 1953-no. 16, July 1956.
$3.00 for 12 issues, 130 pp., with racy and lurid covers to lure newsstand readers.

This was yet another of Raymond A. Palmer's (1910-1977) productions, one that appears to have been closest to his own heart and interests. In the first issue, he proclaimed:

'This is a magazine of fiction . . . not based on reason or knowledge. . . . They are stories of the supernatural, of the weird, of the mysterious, of the unknown, of life after death, or reincarnation, of dreams; of vampires and witches and goblins and werewolves; of the soul, the subconscious mind, the unconscious mind, the superconscious mind; of hell, or heaven, of the devil, of super beings, of angels, of demons, of elementals, of familiars; of spirits, ghosts, phantoms, afreets, djinns; of magic, both white and black, legerdemain, illusion; of cults and secret societies; of the white brotherhood and the brotherhood of evil; of the battle between the dark and the light, the good and the bad, the living and the dead!'

As Palmer put it, 'They are tales of the things of which superstition is the only historian,' things that might be revealed, by 'scientific' scrutiny and inquiry, beyond the veil of mystery and the illusion of the everyday.

The fiction promised in the first issue declined markedly after the first four issues, and thereafter the journal offered articles on astrology (principally by Dorothy Spence Lauer), true life voyages on flying saucers, 'Venusians Walk Our Streets,' the Shaver Mystery, the 'Hoxdey Cancer Cure' by Senator John Haluska, Bridey Murphy ('a death blow to reincarnation'), etc., as well as a correspondence column ('Letters from the Undead'), short excerpts of 'strange things' from the newspapers, Palmer's mysterious predictions received from 'The Man from Tomorrow,' and numerous advertisements from the Eidetic Foundation of Fairhope, Alabama (offering practical hypnotism and time travel), AMORC of San Jose, Oahspe, the Secret Teachings of the Brotherhood of the White Temple of Sedalia, Colorado (promulgated by 'Doreal'), Premier College of Technical Metaphysics, of Vancouver, Canada, 'Lucky Talisman' ('satisfaction guaranteed'), 'One bottle of Turn-Er's will cure your dandruff, restore your hair,' etc., etc. for $5.00, Kosmon, the College of Universal Truth ('Study at home for your Ph.D. degree'), a correspondence course in astral projection, angelic revelations, and always for Venture Bookshop in Evanston, Illinois, owned by Curtis Fuller, the co-editor with Palmer of Fate and the one who bought him out when he left to start this journal.

The journal initially offered to pay for contributions but then declared its policy was not to pay: 'the truth cannot be bought.'

IAPSOP materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
IAPSOP respects people's privacy and personal data rights.