The weirdest of the weird

The Highest Strangeness Richard Freeman CFZ Press 2024 Pb, 430pp, £15.99, ISBN 9781909488724 There’s probably quite a sizeable list of people to whom this interesting and entertaining book should not be recommended: hyper-sensitive individuals, anxiety-prone bureaucrats who draw up trigger-warnings for university students and timid souls who crave a world that is humdrum, ordinary and predictable, should steer clear. Within this book Richard Freeman features his choice of reports and novel stories that should be given the “weirdest of the weird” status in the paranormal and forteana. An active cryptozoologist and inveterate traveller, he provides here what in an earlier age would be a fine collection of travellers’ tales and seafarers’ yarns, a fast-moving text examining what he terms the highest strangest cases gleaned from diverse sources including alleged factual…