Veronica's Books: Where Weird is Welcome
"I guess there are never enough books." – John Steinbeck
No matter what layer of the Fortean onion an enthusiast might be peeling (Fortean onion??), most will agree on one thing—you can never have enough books. I speak from experience. Because of my addiction, I’m constantly on the lookout for new bookcases. The situation has only gotten worse since I discovered Veronica’s Books, an online bookstore that caters every taste within the high strangeness palate. Impressed by their extensive selection of rare and collectible literature, I promptly reached out to the woman behind it all, Veronica Link, to request an interview.
Bernie O’Connor (bernieolooksforufos@gmail.com): Hello Veronica and thank you for agreeing to speak to the readers of THE OBSERVER!
Veronica Link: Thank you Bernie, I’m happy to. “Hello everybody!”
B: How did you come to specialize in Fortean/metaphysical books?
V: Well, I was a book scout for a few years before it became a profession. I always had a love for reading but, as a young adult in southern California, I had to find a way to support my book habit. This was before book scouting became a profession. I frequented the metaphysical sections of every used bookstore I could find and, and rather organically, began to notice what kind of used books and subjects tended to have higher values, or what the most sought after categories were. I began building an inventory of items I came across while visiting bookshops, swap meets, and any other place I could find a stack of old books. This was before online book selling became a thing, so sales happened by sending handwritten quote cards by snail mail. I relocated to Washington State and continued buying for resale as well as building up my personal library. Once I decided to catalog my inventory of about 1500 books and make it available online on March 8th 2000, it was full speed ahead increasing my stock and building an online shop which now has about 24,000 titles & 78 subject catalogs from Acupuncture to UFOs.
B: Why the particular emphasis on books and magazines about UFOS?
V: Well, specializing in UFOs was born out of my own initial consumption of anything UFO-related as well as a few other areas of interest such as paranormal phenomena, astrology, and consciousness studies. My first encounter with the UFO phenomenon was after ordering a little paperback copy of The Ultimate Encounter from my high school book order form. This was the first book written about the Travis Walton encounter. I was amazed and intrigued by it at the time but it was years later when I came across Zecharia Sitchin’s The 12th Planet and Genesis Revisited which stirred my soul and made me question everything I thought I had learned in school.
B: Where do you get your vast assortment of UFO and metaphysical titles from?
V: Everywhere I find them! I used to have to go and seek out every single book—which I still do—but over the years, as people have become familiar with my store and specialties, I now get calls and emails directly from people (and former customers) who are looking to downsize their collections. People who have taken the time to build their personal collections generally want to know that their prized possessions will end up with someone who knows and appreciates their value. I have spoken to many people who have told me, much to their disappointment, that none of their relatives have any interest whatsoever in their books. They find it unbearable to think that they may one day end up in a garage sale or tossed by someone who cares nothing for such specialized books or books in general. They are delighted to know that I will give their books new life, restore them, photograph them in all their glory and make them available to a worldwide audience. I enjoy immensely being the conduit by which they find their next owner to cherish them.
B: Buying used books online can be a little sketchy. How do you buy books and how is the quality of them?
V: I am always buying good quality, hard to find materials in all areas of the paranormal and metaphysics. I have also added a handful of catalogs that are a bit out of the umbrella of metaphysics but were products of buying large estates or collections from persons whose interests spanned multiple genres. And as I mentioned above “the sellers want their books to go to people who appreciate them.” About 95% of the books in my store are used and are of excellent quality overall. Even the very old, hard-to-find classics.
B: Have you ever had a UFO sighting or encounter?
V: I can’t say that I’ve specifically had a UFO encounter myself, but I have had many experiences in the psychic, synchronistic realm—including prophetic dreams, guided visions. It is that part of the UFO phenomenon that intrigues me, especially in relation to historical accounts of unexplained lights and/or visitors from the heavens.
B: How about a paranormal experience, such as experiences with ghosts, shadow people, a very strange coincidence or other types of Fortean experiences?
V: Many meaningful and important turning points in my life have been accompanied by a synchronistic chain of events or premonition. I also have had some eerily accurate remote viewing matches with drawings of contents in sealed envelopes.
B: Since the subjects of the books you carry are so, shall we say, “weird”, has anything ever happened in your bookshop that caused you concern?
V: Well, weird books at this point is a relative term, and generally as a bookseller “the weirder the better.” One thing that gets me going is when I walk by a shelf and a particular book that’s been on the shelf for years catches my attention for whatever reason, only to get an order for it within the week. I find myself then having the proverbial “What came first...the chicken or the egg?” conversation with myself, wondering if it was a premonition that the book was going to sell, or if I had sent some kind of mental direct message to someone who happened to be looking for that book. This just recently happened again. I had four copies of a particularly obscure book in my inventory forever and suddenly, I got six orders for it. It turns out the title was mentioned in a podcast and listeners took to the internet to search for copies of it. I hated to disappoint the last two people who ordered it, but it was a very rare book.
B: Is your bookshop haunted?
V: NOT YET! I suppose if anyone ever did haunt Veronica’s Books, it would be me! (chuckle).
B: Have you ever had a particularly troubling book or occult item in your shop?
V: I do occasionally come across a troubling book while researching its content. Usually it pertains to books masquerading as nonfiction but filled with hateful, generalized fabrications. The most recent one that did not get put up for sale in my store was a small press publication that I purchased from another bookstore. It appeared to be an obscure, over-sized, conspiratorial work of fiction. Though it wasn’t very old, there were none online at the time and it took me a while to research it. As it turns out, the reason for its scarcity was that it had been banned as the hate-filled, true-life manifesto of a mass shooter who had outlined details of his future crimes and victims, many of whom he knew. That was probably the only book that I’ve ever held in my hands and absolutely didn’t know what to do with it. I definitely was not going to put it up for sale, although I suppose there could be some research value to someone such as a criminal profiler.
B: WOW! That sounds scary!
V: It was!
B: Where do your customers come from?
V: Well generally they first come across my books by searching for an individual title on sites such as Amazon, Biblio, or Abebooks. If they are avid researchers or collectors in my areas of specialty, they eventually come to realize that my store often seems to have a copy of the book they are looking for. So they end up searching out my online store directly. Or they contact me with questions about a particular item they are looking for or have seen it in my listings. My complementary bookmarks are also a source of direct contact as I include them with orders and they show a list of many of the subjects that I have catalogs in. I am happy to get orders from any of the bookseller sites I list on, but customers do save a percentage by going to my website directly: www.MysticLink.com
B: Do your online customers share their UFO and paranormal experiences with you?
V: Absolutely! I have built amazing relationships with customers over many, many years and heard lots of stories. I prefer communication by email as I can reply at whatever time I am near my desk for the day. But I have several long-time customers who do not have internet, or email, or who still like to place their order by phone and chat.
B: What would you say is the category that gets the most interest from your customers?
V: Signed material in all areas, psychic phenomena, and UFOs have always been quite popular, as have occult and astrology.
B: Is cryptozoology a big category? What about interest in Bigfoot/Sasquatch books?
V: Cryptozoology is hugely popular as well, but I don’t seem to get them in as fast as I would like. Currently I have about 280 books and magazines on the topic of Cryptozoology/Bigfoot. Whereas there are over 3,000 UFO related books and magazines. Sasquatch is also a local phenomena here in Washington State and has been adopted as a mascot by many local businesses. These popular topics have been reinvigorated by the prevalence of cable TV specials, reality shows, YouTube videos and podcasts. All of this media attention truly created a new generation of cryptid researchers.
B: What sets your book service apart from say eBay or even Amazon?
V: Each item in my store has been chosen, described, and listed by me. It is one of the increasingly rare businesses where you can actually call or email and be responded to by the owner. And heaven forbid, if there is ever a problem with an order, I can fix it. Simply put, attentive personal service. Many of the scarcer items are accompanied by photos of the actual book or, if not, one can be provided prior to ordering.
B: Do you maintain a “want list” for your customers?
V: I do have an option to create a ‘want’ for an item not currently in inventory. However, I do not have an automated notification system for matching those wants to new inventory. Being a specialist does mean that if I do come across metaphysical titles that I do not currently have, I will do what I can to purchase it for inventory when I see it.
B: How do you manage so many categories and are you knowledgeable in all of them?
V: Well, I haven’t studied every topic that I have a catalog for, but if I find a book interesting, it’s a pretty good indicator that someone else will too. I also like the collect-ability and aesthetics of a book and am a sucker for striking dust jacket art that I can rescue and preserve in archival Mylar.
B: What do you feel was the rarest book(s) or item(s) you ever handled?
V: In the past year, I sold a very rare 1950 signed, original booklet of Kenneth Arnold’s The Flying Saucer as I Saw It. The cover photo is of the iconic UFO from which the term “flying saucer” was later coined. It was difficult to let that one go but it made one of my regular customers very happy.
B: I didn’t know Arnold wrote such a booklet. That’s a rare find in itself, but the autograph makes it a real treasure and an important piece of UFOlogicial history. Lucky customer!
What’s the rarest book(s) or item(s) you have in stock now?
V: Well, “rare” is sometimes hard to define as many sought-after titles were published in fairly large numbers (not rare) but people don’t tend to give them up very often so prices are high and the demand always exceeds the availability. Other items are quite scarce and were published in very small quantities but not as many people know about them. The Manna Machine by George Sassoon and Kenneth Arnold’s Coming of the Saucers fall in the first category. Gray Barker’s newsletters, and early psychical research publications/periodicals fall into the latter category. Some very rare books have passed though the shop at one time or another. They all are extremely hard to come by, but you never know what the next estate sale or flea market will turn up.
B: Do you have any favorite UFO/Ghost/Etc., authors?
V: I’d have to go way back to authors that really ignited my interest in paranormal topics. I would put Ingo Swann (and anything else on Remote Viewing), Jacques Vallee, the aforementioned Zecharia Sitchin, Carl Jung, Arthur Koestler, and Carol K. Anthony for her wisdom and the enduring spiritual sustenance contained in her A Guide to the I Ching. On the flip side my favorite fiction series is: Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality.
B: My favorite collectible is old UFO magazines. I like them because they contain so many important articles by so many influential Ufologists that, sadly, are no longer with us. I find these issues are extremely hard to come by. Yet, you have hundreds of them. How did you collect them and how popular are they?
V: I tend to buy large collections of magazines at a time and they are the one thing that I have a substantial backlog of ‘not yet inventoried’ items on as they tend to be time-consuming to list and store. Many of these come from original publisher/researcher stock and, as you say, they are a gold-mine of interesting articles from well-known authors. They maintain popularity because many times they contain the first written mention of well-known sightings or experiments, or otherwise unique observations. Magazines continue to be a personal favorite of mine, and I have not quite been ready to give up my own private stash to my store inventory but I’m getting close.
B: Well, when you’re ready Veronica, please promise me that you’ll let the readers of THE OBSERVER know first!
V: Will do Bernie, but it may be awhile.
B: You must have a tremendous personal library.
V: I do admit to having many shelves marked “Not For Sale” but at least the number of books on those shelves is no longer expanding as I simply donate them to Veronica’s Books when I no longer have shelf space for them.
B: After all the time you’ve spent reading and researching UFOs, what do you believe they are?
V: Well, the word “belief” is not one that I really use when thinking about UFO related phenomena as it’s still a learning process. What I’ve gathered is that throughout the entirety of human history, unexplained lights, crafts, and beings with supernatural abilities that come down from the heavens and interact with humans are an integral part of the human story. Those beings have been called many things by many cultures who had different ideas of who they are, from gods to demons to extraterrestrials. They have been feared, worshiped, observed, fed, mingled with, spoken to, emulated, doubted, sacrificed for, and disobeyed. In return they have provided agriculture, food, commandments, technology, arts, sciences, civil instruction, spiritual instruction, death and vengeance, altruism, natural and other disasters, temptations, and promises of departure and return. So, what interests me is why these encounters seem inseparable from the history of humanity and how our own development of technology has changed our perception of these still unexplained experiences.
B: What’s the best way book seekers and book sellers can get in touch with you?
V: For book buyers, the best way to start is to view my inventory and place orders directly through my website: www.MysticLink.com. My preferred method of contact is via email at: mysticlink@harbornet.com. This way I can quickly respond to any special title requests or bookseller’s inquiries with a personal follow-up.
B: Now before you go Veronica, I noticed that 2025 is your store’s 25th Anniversary. That’s quite an accomplishment! Congratulations, and here’s to many more!
V: Why thank you Bernie. It’s been a fun 25 years, and I thank all my great customers for making it happen.
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