Charles Berlitz, Teller of Strange Tales

Perhaps few people have heard of Charles Berlitz. I heard about him very early on, around 1995 — though not as the teacher and linguist he actually was by profession, but as a teller of strange tales.

Charles Berlitz frightened me more than Stephen King and Clive Barker combined with his book The Book of Strange Phenomena, which at the time was sold through a book club in Brazil — one of those mail-based clubs where people sent books to one another.

I have always loved stories involving the paranormal and the uncanny, and that was often the subject of my conversations with older people. Whenever I could, I would ask them for a story of that kind. Since I spent my childhood and early adolescence in the countryside, such stories were fairly common.

One day, I will write more about what I heard and witnessed.

But the fact is that Berlitz managed to gather everything into a single volume. From ghosts to UFOs, you could find a bit of everything in his book. And these were stories presented as true, citing names and dates for the events described.

I imagine that conducting that research must have been difficult. Back then, the internet was not the feverish presence in our lives that it is today.