The Goblin Universe (Xanadu, 1986) seeks to tie up the loose ends in our perception of reality - or at least our imagined perception of reality. It was this book which lit the blue touch-paper in my mind and triggered a particular curiosity which remains with me to this day.
Holiday's research tackles all manner of unexplained phenomena - matters which are more often than not trivialised or shunned by mainstream science. Described as a cryptozoologist, Holiday was not averse to considering those questions which attract the most ridicule from the establishment. From UFOs and Trooping Fairies to accounts of apparitions and reincarnation, he applied a strict empirical precision to his work - a quality which leaves us with something of a quandary. For the extent of his scientific rigor makes his final conclusions all the more intriguing.
At the time of Holiday's premature death in 1979 his last manuscript was still a work in progress; or at least that's how Holiday saw it. His friend, the renowned writer, philosopher and criminologist Colin Wilson viewed
things rather differently. He decided that Holiday's work was ready to go to print and, prefaced by an introduction by Wilson himself, The Goblin Universe finally saw the light of day seven years after Holiday's passing. Crucially, this book became the last piece in a puzzle trilogy which its author had been steadily constructing for more than a decade.
Holiday's investigations into apparently paranormal happenings first saw literary expression in his 1968 book The Great Orm of Loch Ness. His observation-based approach saw him test his theory that the alleged creature might indeed be a physical phenomenon of some description, simply waiting to be classified and catalogued.
His subsequent book The Dragon and the Disc (Sedgwick and Jackson Ltd, 1973) follows a similar track but extends its remit to include various Loch Ness Monster analogues, such as the Peiste of Connemara, and the alleged existence of UFOs dating back to the Bronze Age. In exploring these matters Holiday struck an empirical cul-de-sac, however. The more he considered the possible answers to the