[9] She attuned Chicago writer Dan Kelly to cult "kook" Francis E. Dec.[10] In the early 1980s, she was part of the Processed World (PW) magazine, then romantically involved with anti-PW and ex-SubGenius anarchist Bob Black[11] until 1987, moving with him to Boston in 1985.
Each issue focused on one topic (such as technology, sex, Japan, cars, crime, kooks, food & drugs) and featured related book excerpts, satire, collages, drawings, etc.
[3] The zine and Kossy were quoted by Discordianism co-founder Kerry Thornley (alias Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst) in his 1991 foreword to the 5th edition of the Principia Discordia,[13] reprinting the "Manifesto of the Artistic Elite of the Midwest".
Ivan Stang (who later praised[15] the collected book) and featured obscure "kooks" as well as some better-documented "cranks" such as reclusive Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko[16] in its final issue (#8, November 1991).
In Factsheet Five, the zine magazine, founder-editor Mike Gunderloy described it as "A collection of bizarre literature and semi-scholarly research on kooks: those folks who have all the answers that science and the authorities have been trying to suppress.
"[19] Research for the topic even led Kossy to attend a recruitment meeting of Heaven's Gate (when it was calling itself Human Individual Metamorphosis),[20] the group that ended in a 1997 mass suicide.
), it documented the rants and ravings of "kooks" such as Richard Brothers (Anglo-Israelism alias British Israelism), Charles E. Buon (God's Envoy to the U.S.A.), Ray Crabtree (The Philosopher King), the first biography of Francis E. Dec (Your Only Hope against the Gangster Computer God), Professor Arnold Ehret (Mucusless Diet Healing System), Joe Gould alias Professor Seagull (The Longest Book Ever Written), Jim and Lila Green (Aggressive Christianity Missionary Training Corps), Hillman Holcomb (Well Regulated Militia of Christian Technocracy), Les U. Knight (Voluntary Human Extinction Movement), alien abductee artist Paul Laffoley (Third Generation Lunatic Fringe), Alfred Lawson (Lawsonomy: The Base for Absolute Knowledge), David Linton (How Men Can Have Babies), Emil Matalik (World/U.S.
Presidential Candidate Since 1964), the MIT's crank files (The Archive of Useless Research), Rose Mokry (Jewish Poisoners Are the Sole Producers of All the Diseases, Sudden Deaths and Birth Defects), Dr. Cyrus Teed (not Cyrus Tweed) alias Koresh (Koreshanity: We Actually Live on the Inside of the Earth), black supremacist Dwight York alias Malachi Z. York et al. (Ansaaru Allah Community of Nuwaubianism), etc.
"[2] The Museum was listed in the MetroActive guide to "the most interesting, unusual, weird or otherwise alternative sites on the World Wide Web" by journalist and writer on conspiracies Jonathan Vankin, who named Kossy "the unchallenged authority on, well, kooks.
[27] In 2001, Feral House published Kossy's second full-length book, Strange Creations: Aberrant Ideas of Human Origins from Ancient Astronauts to Aquatic Apes (right after reprinting Kooks in an expanded edition).
As of August 1998, Kossy had already announced the manuscript for her second book as being finished (with a tentative title balancing between "Aberrant Anthropology" and "Nazis, Saucers and Aquatic Apes")[2] and its publication at Feral House scheduled for "Fall, 1999";[2] it would however be two more years before the actual release.
), the book documented the fringe and pseudoscientific theories of "crackpots" such as David Barclay (mankind as dinosaurs pets), Helena Blavatsky (The Seven Root Races of Theosophy), Darwin's cousin Francis Galton (inventor of eugenics against regression toward the mean), Henry H. Goddard (inventor of moronism with The Kallikak Family), Madison Grant (Nordicism and scientific racism), Finnvald Hedin (The Thorians), Brinsley Trench (UFOs from Hollow Earth), slave trader Edward Long (Polygenism: Man Comes From God, Negroes Come From Apes), Oscar Kiss Maerth (The Beginning Was the End: ape brain cannibalism), Alfred W. McCann (creationism), Elaine Morgan (aquatic ape hypothesis), Raël (creation by extraterrestrials), B. H. Shadduck (de-evolution), Zecharia Sitchin (ancient astronauts), Lothrop Stoddard (Pan-Aryanism and racial purity), Stanisław Szukalski (Zermatism: post-deluge Easter Island vs. Yetis), the Urantia Book (intelligent design by Life Carriers), George Van Tassel (Space Brothers aliens), Erich von Däniken (Ancient Astronauts from the Chariots of the Gods?
Ivan Stang remarked: "To write entertainingly for 'nonkooks' about so-called kooks, crackpots, and possible visionaries requires walking a tightrope between tolerant understanding of 'outsider' psychology and graceful sarcasm, balancing both a solid grounding in the mainstream scientific paradigm, and a healthy distrust of the status quo.