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82 Articles

EDITORIAL CAPUCINE DESLOUIS It’s over half a century since Frank Herbert’s SF epic Dune appeared in print and captured the imagination of readers around the world, many of whom will doubtless be looking forward to seeing Denis Villeneuve’s new film adaptation this autumn. FT founding editor Bob Rickard counts himself among the hallowed ranks of Dune fandom, and in this issue he not only previews the new movie but digs deep into the book’s surprising origins. While some of its ecological concerns – the 1960s ‘dunification’ of the Oregon coast was one of the issues that got Herbert thinking about desert planets – have a striking contemporary resonance, it was Herbert’s research into some of the odder corners of the Abrahamic religions that Bob explores in his article (which, as…

It’s over half a century since Frank Herbert’s SF epic Dune appeared in print and captured the imagination of readers around the world, many of whom will doubtless be looking forward to seeing Denis Villeneuve’s new film adaptation this autumn. FT founding editor Bob Rickard counts himself among the hallowed ranks of Dune fandom, and in this issue he not only previews the new movie but digs deep into the book’s surprising origins. While some of its ecological concerns – the 1960s ‘dunification’ of the Oregon coast was one of the issues that got Herbert thinking about desert planets – have a striking contemporary resonance, it was Herbert’s research into some of the odder corners of the Abrahamic religions that Bob explores in his article (which, as eagle-eyed readers will…

While China has been transfixed by the elephants trekking across Yunnan (FT407:4), Europe has spent the summer distracted by the antics of Wally the wandering walrus. Normally confined to the Arctic Circle, walruses do not usually venture as far south as the British Isles, but in mid-March one was spotted by Alan Houlihan and his daughter Muireann basking on on Valentia Island, County Kerry, Ireland. “The size of the thing was astronomical. It was the size of a big bull,” said Houlihan. “He disappeared into the sea for a while, and he then came back and put himself on a rock for a good couple of hours. It was fantastic.” The next day, though, there was no sign of the creature, and Marine biologist Kevin Flannery of Dingle Oceanworld Aquarium…

A DIGEST OF THE WORLDWIDE WEIRD STRANGE DAYS WHERE'S WALLY? Wandering walrus embarks on European summer tour, complete with merch While China has been transfixed by the elephants trekking across Yunnan (FT407:4), Europe has spent the summer distracted by the antics of Wally the wandering walrus. Normally confined to the Arctic Circle, walruses do not usually venture as far south as the British Isles, but in mid-March one was spotted by Alan Houlihan and his daughter Muireann basking on on Valentia Island, County Kerry, Ireland. “The size of the thing was astronomical. It was the size of a big bull,” said Houlihan. “He disappeared into the sea for a while, and he then came back and put himself on a rock for a good couple of hours. It was fantastic.” The…

Since it was made public in 1965, the Vinland map has been mired in controversy. It was claimed to be a 15th century map that shows the east coast of North America, drawn before Columbus discovered the continent and informed by Norse exploration; but despite high-profile endorsements, there have always been doubts as to whether it was genuine. Besides showing the American coast, the map shows Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as Greenland, and possibly Japan. The map first came to light in 1957, bound with a mediæval text called Hystoria Tartarorum (usually translated as Tartar Relations) when it was offered to the British Museum by two book dealers, Irving Davis and Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry. The museum declined to buy it, but de Ry then sold it for…

THE CIRCLE GAME

While crop circles are well past their early-90s peak as a phenomenon, they seem to be having a bit of a moment in 2021. New Zealand singer Lorde (right) announced her recent Solar Power album with a video featuring the album’s logo as a crop circle (left); it was in fact created in the UK at Walker’s Plantation, near Broad Hinton, Wiltshire. Meanwhile, the video game phenomenon Fortnite has also been foreshadowing its next major iteration with a prominent in-game crop formation, which also had a physical manifestation at Uffcot, also in Wiltshire (right). Gamesradar.com, 4 Jun 2021, cropcircleconnector.com, 15 Jun 2021.…

THE CIRCLE GAME

STRANGE DAYS THE VINLANDMAP Controversial chart is finally revealed as a deliberate fake Since it was made public in 1965, the Vinland map has been mired in controversy. It was claimed to be a 15th century map that shows the east coast of North America, drawn before Columbus discovered the continent and informed by Norse exploration; but despite high-profile endorsements, there have always been doubts as to whether it was genuine. Besides showing the American coast, the map shows Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as Greenland, and possibly Japan. The map first came to light in 1957, bound with a mediæval text called Hystoria Tartarorum (usually translated as Tartar Relations) when it was offered to the British Museum by two book dealers, Irving Davis and Enzo Ferrajoli de Ry. The…

GHOSTLY PHALLUS Among New Orleans’s many supernatural attractions is the supposedly haunted John Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar, lit only by candlelight and named after a local 18th century pirate. While attending a hen party at the venue, ghost hunting podcasters Corinne Vien and Sabrina Deana-Roga took a number of photos in the hope of capturing supernatural presences. On examining the pictures later, they found that they had not captured any phantom figures, but, speaking on their podcast, Vien said: “We did not catch a photo of anyone’s face, but we did capture a penis.” While, as far as we can tell, a photo of an incorporeal penis is unique in the annals of ghost hunting, the Urban Dictionary defines “ghost penis” as “a clumpy fold in your pants that looks like an…

THE CIRCLE GAME

THE CIRCLE GAME While crop circles are well past their early-90s peak as a phenomenon, they seem to be having a bit of a moment in 2021. New Zealand singer Lorde (right) announced her recent Solar Power album with a video featuring the album’s logo as a crop circle (left); it was in fact created in the UK at Walker’s Plantation, near Broad Hinton, Wiltshire. Meanwhile, the video game phenomenon Fortnite has also been foreshadowing its next major iteration with a prominent in-game crop formation, which also had a physical manifestation at Uffcot, also in Wiltshire (right). Gamesradar.com, 4 Jun 2021, cropcircleconnector.com, 15 Jun 2021. ARTURO HOLMES / GETTY IMAGES…

THE CIRCLE GAME

Awarded every year by the Annals of Improbable Research, the IgNobel Prize rewards research that makes people laugh, then think. Previous years have seen the prize go to papers that involved homosexual necrophilia in ducks, the physics of dripping teapots and showing Star Wars films to locusts,. The 2021 crop is no less startling and diverse. Handed out by real Nobel laureates, although in an online ceremony thanks to Covid, this year’s IgNobels rewarded researchers from 24 countries on six continents. Winners of the 10 prizes included Commander John A Mulrennan (retired) of the US Navy, who received the entomology prize for eradicating cockroaches on submarines with a powerful organophosphate insecticide. The ecology prize went to researchers from Spain and Iran for a paper entitled “The Wasted Chewing Gum Bacteriome”, which…

STRANGE DAYS GHOST PHOTOS Girls’ nights in and out yield a spectre at the feast and an incorporeal penis INSTAGRAM / TWO GIRLS ONE GHOST GHOSTLY PHALLUS Among New Orleans’s many supernatural attractions is the supposedly haunted John Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar, lit only by candlelight and named after a local 18th century pirate. While attending a hen party at the venue, ghost hunting podcasters Corinne Vien and Sabrina Deana-Roga took a number of photos in the hope of capturing supernatural presences. On examining the pictures later, they found that they had not captured any phantom figures, but, speaking on their podcast, Vien said: “We did not catch a photo of anyone’s face, but we did capture a penis.” While, as far as we can tell, a photo of an incorporeal…

UNSETTLING TOYS

FT has periodically featured haunted dolls and other items (see, for example, FT326:10-11), but Brian Jillson and Sara Derrickson have turned the problem into a business. Their Portland, Oregon, company Unsettling Toys provides a service that will remove and rehome any haunted, possessed, or just fundamentally unsettling toys that people might want to get rid of. Their website says: “We appreciate that not every toy is suited for every family. A doll who changes rooms, or a fluffy bear who stares may be a delight to some, and a horror for others. We take pride in matching unsettling toys with people who appreciate their ‘quirks’.” They also offer substitution services saying: “In some cases, a child or pet may be attached to an unsettling toy that needs to be removed…

UNSETTLING TOYS

STRANGE DAYS IGNOBELS 2021 Upside down rhinos, defensive beards and fat, corrupt politicians… Awarded every year by the Annals of Improbable Research, the IgNobel Prize rewards research that makes people laugh, then think. Previous years have seen the prize go to papers that involved homosexual necrophilia in ducks, the physics of dripping teapots and showing Star Wars films to locusts,. The 2021 crop is no less startling and diverse. Handed out by real Nobel laureates, although in an online ceremony thanks to Covid, this year’s IgNobels rewarded researchers from 24 countries on six continents. Winners of the 10 prizes included Commander John A Mulrennan (retired) of the US Navy, who received the entomology prize for eradicating cockroaches on submarines with a powerful organophosphate insecticide. The ecology prize went to researchers from…

UNSETTLING TOYS

STRANGE DAYS UNSETTLING TOYS Need to find a new home for a creepy doll? Help is at hand… PHOTOS COURTESY UNSETTLING TOYS.COM FT has periodically featured haunted dolls and other items (see, for example, FT326:10-11), but Brian Jillson and Sara Derrickson have turned the problem into a business. Their Portland, Oregon, company Unsettling Toys provides a service that will remove and rehome any haunted, possessed, or just fundamentally unsettling toys that people might want to get rid of. Their website says: “We appreciate that not every toy is suited for every family. A doll who changes rooms, or a fluffy bear who stares may be a delight to some, and a horror for others. We take pride in matching unsettling toys with people who appreciate their ‘quirks’.” They also offer…

UNSETTLING TOYS

CLASSICAL CORNER

264: GREAT SEXPECTATIONS (Abundance of translated sources in Fant & Lefkowitz’s Women’s Life in Greece & Rome, 1982, and Lattimore’s Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, 1962) Gay Marriage, LGBTQI, E-Harmony/Tinder, Trolling/Tweeting, Seeking the Perfect Mate – what have these to do with the ancients or our master Fort? Marriage and its constituents aren’t topics of Fort’s books – no pertinent references in Henry Schlanger’s Index. But, a frequent theme of his short stories, e.g. “Ruckus”, listed and readable on Mr X’s website. Fort (1896) married English servant Anna Filan (aka Filing), who survived him until 1937. No children. According to first-hand testimonies, a union of opposites that worked. A “bustling little hostess” (Aaron Sussman), she was outgoing, privy to their neighbours’ doings, and dragged Charles away from his clippings for nightly…

CLASSICAL CORNER

A MONTHLY EXCAVATION OF ODDITIES AND ANTIQUITIES DISTANT COUSINS • A cranial fragment and jaw of a previously unknown ancient human species have been found near Ramla in Israel, dated to between 140,000 and 120,000 years BP, and named the “Nesher Ramla Homo type”. This individual – with no chin and very large teeth – might represent the last surviving population of Middle Pleistocene Homo, precursors of Neanderthals and our own species. Researchers speculate that early members of this hominin group were present in the Near East some 400,000 years ago and resemble “pre-Neanderthal” groups in Europe. Analysis of stone tools associated with this group shows they had fully mastered technology until recently linked only to Neanderthals and H sapiens, suggesting cultural interaction. Nesher Ramla Homo was an efficient hunter of large…

CLASSICAL CORNER

CLASSICAL CORNER FORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED BY BARRY BALDWIN 264: GREAT SEXPECTATIONS (Abundance of translated sources in Fant & Lefkowitz’s Women’s Life in Greece & Rome, 1982, and Lattimore’s Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs, 1962) Gay Marriage, LGBTQI, E-Harmony/Tinder, Trolling/Tweeting, Seeking the Perfect Mate – what have these to do with the ancients or our master Fort? Marriage and its constituents aren’t topics of Fort’s books – no pertinent references in Henry Schlanger’s Index. But, a frequent theme of his short stories, e.g. “Ruckus”, listed and readable on Mr X’s website. Fort (1896) married English servant Anna Filan (aka Filing), who survived him until 1937. No children. According to first-hand testimonies, a union of opposites that worked. A “bustling little hostess” (Aaron Sussman), she was outgoing, privy…

CLASSICAL CORNER

Beyond the g factor

Intelligence is a powerful but elusive quality, easy to recognise but difficult to define, perhaps the most important factor in distinguishing humanity, but the least understood. While researchers are getting closer to grasping what it is and how it works, their discoveries do not always make for comfortable reading. The nature of intelligence has always been a topic of debate and there has never been a satisfactory, agreed-upon definition. In 1923 American psychologist Edwin Boring famously stated that “Intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests”, which at least simplifies matters. In the 1980s, researchers led by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argued that there was no single intelligence, but that we all possess several different types, not only the obvious ‘logical-mathematical’ variety but also ‘musical’ and ‘bodily-kinæsthetic’ intelligences among others. Intelligence tests combine…

Beyond the g factor

ARCHÆOLOGY PAUL SIEVEKING looks at new evidence of ancient humans, giant monsters and Neanderthal art A MONTHLY EXCAVATION OF ODDITIES AND ANTIQUITIES DISTANT COUSINS • A cranial fragment and jaw of a previously unknown ancient human species have been found near Ramla in Israel, dated to between 140,000 and 120,000 years BP, and named the “Nesher Ramla Homo type”. This individual – with no chin and very large teeth – might represent the last surviving population of Middle Pleistocene Homo, precursors of Neanderthals and our own species. Researchers speculate that early members of this hominin group were present in the Near East some 400,000 years ago and resemble “pre-Neanderthal” groups in Europe. Analysis of stone tools associated with this group shows they had fully mastered technology until recently linked only…

Scott and the supernatural

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), and we may look forward to a year of events and celebrations of the great writer and all his works – at least in some quarters. A glorious multi-spired memorial to Scott stands proudly a short distance from Edinburgh Waverley railway station, like a ‘Shape of Things to Come’ style rocket. Begun in 1844, it was completed in August 1846 with a formal dedication ceremony attended by great numbers. It is the second largest memorial erected to any writer extant anywhere in the world (the largest is in Cuba), reflecting just how revered Scott once was in the eyes of earlier generations. The current visitor information plaque displayed at the monument pays tribute to him as the…

Scott and the supernatural

Beyond the g factor

SCIENCE DAMNED DATA, NEW DISCOVERIES AND RADICAL RESEARCH Beyond the g factor DAVID HAMBLING looks at our current understanding of intelligence… and what the future may hold Intelligence is a powerful but elusive quality, easy to recognise but difficult to define, perhaps the most important factor in distinguishing humanity, but the least understood. While researchers are getting closer to grasping what it is and how it works, their discoveries do not always make for comfortable reading. The nature of intelligence has always been a topic of debate and there has never been a satisfactory, agreed-upon definition. In 1923 American psychologist Edwin Boring famously stated that “Intelligence is what is measured by intelligence tests”, which at least simplifies matters. In the 1980s, researchers led by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argued that…

Beyond the g factor

THE CONSPIRASPHERE

FUNNY PECULIAR The vexed issue of anti-Semitism has haunted the Conspirasphere for an unconscionably long time. It’s an issue I have found hard to reconcile and engage with as I have trawled through the history and ecology of conspiracy theory; perhaps because so little of the grand narrative actually depends on the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy to bolster its aims. The original grand narratives (Robison, Barruel) did not concern themselves with anti-Semitism; the targets of their theories were the secret societies: the Bavarian Illuminati, the Jacobins and, subsequently (and perhaps paradoxically, as Barruel was himself a Jesuit) the Jesuits and the Freemasons. In fact, the first stirrings of theories linking the ills of the world to the influence of Jewish people came from the Establishment, and it was not until…

THE CONSPIRASPHERE

TEXTING DEMONS Catholic priest Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, 70, who claims to carry out up to 20 exorcisms a week in the Washington DC diocese, says that demons have now worked out how to send text messages to taunt people they have possessed, their families and priests attempting to exorcise them. He said: “We have had three cases in which demons have texted the team and or the family of the possessed person… Two of these cases were the most difficult cases we have had so far, and the third involved a pious family with priestly and religious vocations among the children.” According to Rossetti, all these cases involved “high value” targets and involved powerful senior demons. One message read “Her torments start now, priest… all night. We will make her bleed”,…

Scott and the supernatural

GHOSTWATCH KEEPING AN EYE ON THE HAUNTED WORLD Scott and the supernatural ALAN MURDIE explores Sir Walter Scott’s Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft HERITAGE AUCTIONS This year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), and we may look forward to a year of events and celebrations of the great writer and all his works – at least in some quarters. A glorious multi-spired memorial to Scott stands proudly a short distance from Edinburgh Waverley railway station, like a ‘Shape of Things to Come’ style rocket. Begun in 1844, it was completed in August 1846 with a formal dedication ceremony attended by great numbers. It is the second largest memorial erected to any writer extant anywhere in the world (the largest is in Cuba), reflecting just…

Scott and the supernatural

NEWS FROM THE CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL GARDEN SCOTT MARDIS On 30 July 2021, I learned from his brother Jesse, via Facebook friend and Lake Champlain monster researcher Katy Elizabeth, that fellow Champ researcher and Facebook friend Scott Mardis had passed away on 28 July, following surgery to an infected leg. He was 57. Scott was based in Florida, but he and I had been friends on Facebook for many years, and he had kindly made much lake monster and plesiosaur information available to me during my preparation of various writings over the past decade. God speed, Scott, RIP, and may you now know the truths regarding Champ and all of the many other cryptids that we discussed, and which the rest of us still seek. www.cryptozoonews.com/mardisobit/ PAUL BOTTRIELL On 18 August, I received word from Lena…

THE CONSPIRASPHERE

THE CONSPIRASPHERE Why is it that some denizens of the Conspirasphere have to ruin a perfectly good conspiracy theory by resorting to anti-Semitism, asks NOEL ROONEY FUNNY PECULIAR The vexed issue of anti-Semitism has haunted the Conspirasphere for an unconscionably long time. It’s an issue I have found hard to reconcile and engage with as I have trawled through the history and ecology of conspiracy theory; perhaps because so little of the grand narrative actually depends on the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy to bolster its aims. The original grand narratives (Robison, Barruel) did not concern themselves with anti-Semitism; the targets of their theories were the secret societies: the Bavarian Illuminati, the Jacobins and, subsequently (and perhaps paradoxically, as Barruel was himself a Jesuit) the Jesuits and the Freemasons.…

THE CONSPIRASPHERE

MONKEY BUSINESS

MONKEY RIOT In Lopburi, Thailand, the city centre was brought to a standstill by a massive brawl between rival troops of crab-eating macaques, an unexpected side effect of the Covid pandemic. The monkeys live in large groups both on the streets and in the city’s temple complexes and are usually amply fed by tourists visiting the city. With Covid drastically reducing tourist numbers, the monkeys have been feeling the pinch. The riot began when monkeys from the Phra Prang Sam Yot temple complex ventured out into the streets in search of food. When one of the temple monkeys picked up an empty yogurt carton, it attracted the ire of the street monkeys, who saw it as an intruder onto their territory, and fell upon the “invaders”. This precipitated a vicious brawl…

MONKEY BUSINESS

STRANGE DAYS SATAN PLACE Washington exorcist fights tech-savvy demons, Spanish bishop possessed by love, and the Satanic Temple’s ‘sacramental’ abortions TEXTING DEMONS Catholic priest Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, 70, who claims to carry out up to 20 exorcisms a week in the Washington DC diocese, says that demons have now worked out how to send text messages to taunt people they have possessed, their families and priests attempting to exorcise them. He said: “We have had three cases in which demons have texted the team and or the family of the possessed person… Two of these cases were the most difficult cases we have had so far, and the third involved a pious family with priestly and religious vocations among the children.” According to Rossetti, all these cases involved “high value” targets…

FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

HERO RAT [FT400:10] Magawa, the African giant pouched rat who last September was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal – sometimes described as the George Cross for animals – for his “life-saving devotion to duty”, has retired at the age of seven. Malen, his handler, said the rat was “slowing down” with age and she wants to “respect his needs”. Magawa was part of an initiative by the Belgian charity Apopo to train the animals, known as HeroRATS, to detect landmines. In his five-year career Magawa sniffed out 71 landmines and many other unexploded munitions in Cambodia. Malen said: “Magawa’s performance has been unbeaten, and I have been proud to work side by side with him.” The rat will remain with the charity for a few more weeks to “mentor” new recruits…

FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

STRANGE CONTINENT

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE Europe suffered from catastrophic weather in an unprecedented way this summer. First came heavy downpours on 4 June, in Hennef, Germany, which I personally lived through: it rained so hard that underground crossings for cars were flooded, and some roads between villages were completely washed away. On 24 June 2021, it hailed so much that glaciers made up of fast-moving layers of egg-sized hail rushed through the flooded streets of Tübingen, also in Germany. Five people were seriously injured in the region and Stuttgart airport had to close. Houses were also inundated in Munich, Frankfurt, and the regions along the Rhine. In the Czech Republic, 50,000 homes were without electricity, and a house at Plze burned down after being hit by lightning. www.welt.de, 24 June…

STRANGE CONTINENT

ALIEN ZOO KARL SHUKER mourns two major figures in cryptozoology who were both longstanding friends NEWS FROM THE CRYPTOZOOLOGICAL GARDEN SCOTT MARDIS SCOTT MARDIS On 30 July 2021, I learned from his brother Jesse, via Facebook friend and Lake Champlain monster researcher Katy Elizabeth, that fellow Champ researcher and Facebook friend Scott Mardis had passed away on 28 July, following surgery to an infected leg. He was 57. Scott was based in Florida, but he and I had been friends on Facebook for many years, and he had kindly made much lake monster and plesiosaur information available to me during my preparation of various writings over the past decade. God speed, Scott, RIP, and may you now know the truths regarding Champ and all of the many other cryptids that…

MONKEY BUSINESS

STRANGE DAYS MONKEY BUSINESS Hungry monkeys run riot, female macaque breaks the glass ceiling, and a strange legend from Kesey country MONKEY RIOT In Lopburi, Thailand, the city centre was brought to a standstill by a massive brawl between rival troops of crab-eating macaques, an unexpected side effect of the Covid pandemic. The monkeys live in large groups both on the streets and in the city’s temple complexes and are usually amply fed by tourists visiting the city. With Covid drastically reducing tourist numbers, the monkeys have been feeling the pinch. The riot began when monkeys from the Phra Prang Sam Yot temple complex ventured out into the streets in search of food. When one of the temple monkeys picked up an empty yogurt carton, it attracted the ire of the…

MONKEY BUSINESS

TERRY DOBNEY I first met Terry Dobney in 1993: we had a lengthy discussion about the ancient BSA motorbike that he was sitting on outside the pub in Avebury. Born in 1948, Terry grew up in the military town of Aldershot, with parents who had both served in the war. Motorcycles were the great passion of his youth, as he progressed from Teddy Boy, to Rocker, to Hell’s Angel. As a 16-year-old engineering apprentice he had a near-fatal motorbike accident; he later joined the Army but was soon discharged because of his prior injuries. Terry worked with motorcycles throughout his professional life. In the early 1980s he was an ambassador for the Russian Dnepr company, touring the USA with one of their motorbike and sidecar combos and visiting potential dealers. He ran…

FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

STRANGE DAYS FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS Hero rat retires, killer historian sentenced, and the US grapples with Havana Syndrome HERO RAT [FT400:10] Magawa, the African giant pouched rat who last September was awarded the PDSA Gold Medal – sometimes described as the George Cross for animals – for his “life-saving devotion to duty”, has retired at the age of seven. Malen, his handler, said the rat was “slowing down” with age and she wants to “respect his needs”. Magawa was part of an initiative by the Belgian charity Apopo to train the animals, known as HeroRATS, to detect landmines. In his five-year career Magawa sniffed out 71 landmines and many other unexploded munitions in Cambodia. Malen said: “Magawa’s performance has been unbeaten, and I have been proud to work side by side…

FORTEAN FOLLOW-UPS

FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA

VERY SCARY FAIRIES It is perhaps the single scariest British fairy encounter. The year is 1757. Four children are playing in a field in Denbighshire. The children (three girls and a boy) are aged seven, eight, 10 and 15. The experience was recorded by the youngest, Edward Williams (1750-1813). Williams – who would become a celebrated Methodist preacher – wrote two difference accounts: one for the proto-fortean collector Edmund Jones, when Edward was in his early twenties; and the other as an autobiographical reminiscence much later in his life. The two accounts are remarkably similar. The children were playing in a field outside Bodfari when they became aware that, about 70 yards from them, a group of humanoids were dancing. The account begins jarringly with these figures suddenly turning up out of…

FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA

Seeing and believing

UFO DREAMS In her previous column (FT410:31) Jenny Randles discussed the importance of dreams in relation to our perception of reality, and how we all live in a bubble universe of our own making. Such thoughts are reinforced in an article by Robert Lanza MD on the Psychology Today website. He notes that as we go about our everyday lives we automatically process information from all our senses to create our concept of reality, and this is usually separated from the realm of our nocturnal dreams. According to Lanza, in dreams we effortlessly “turn pure information into a dynamic multidimensional reality.” Biocentrism, using the principles of quantum theory, claims that similar processes also go on in our waking lives, but are conditioned by the presence of networks of observers who shape…

Seeing and believing

STRANGE CONTINENT

STRANGE DAYS STRANGE CONTINENT ULRICH MAGIN rounds up the latest weirdness from Europe, including a summer of extreme weather A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE Europe suffered from catastrophic weather in an unprecedented way this summer. First came heavy downpours on 4 June, in Hennef, Germany, which I personally lived through: it rained so hard that underground crossings for cars were flooded, and some roads between villages were completely washed away. On 24 June 2021, it hailed so much that glaciers made up of fast-moving layers of egg-sized hail rushed through the flooded streets of Tübingen, also in Germany. Five people were seriously injured in the region and Stuttgart airport had to close. Houses were also inundated in Munich, Frankfurt, and the regions along the Rhine. In the Czech Republic, 50,000…

STRANGE CONTINENT

The eye of the beholder

Have you ever seen a UFO? If not, why not – especially if you are interested in these things? That is a question you may never have asked yourself, but I think that you should. It might help us understand what lies behind this baffling phenomenon, because it goes to the heart of what seeing a UFO really means. My inspiration for this question was the ufologist who first got me interested in the potential relationship between UFOs and science, Jacques Vallée. In one of his many telling insights on the subject, Vallée noted: “Just because a message comes from Heaven doesn’t mean it isn’t stupid.” A strange thought; but it’s undeniable that we have tended to ‘deify’ the big cases of the UFO mystery and those witnesses who describe the most…

The eye of the beholder

STRANGE DAYS NECROLOG This month, we salute Avebury’s Arch Druid and Keeper of the Stones and wave goodbye to a longstanding promoter of ufology’s wilder shores STEVE MARSHALL TERRY DOBNEY I first met Terry Dobney in 1993: we had a lengthy discussion about the ancient BSA motorbike that he was sitting on outside the pub in Avebury. Born in 1948, Terry grew up in the military town of Aldershot, with parents who had both served in the war. Motorcycles were the great passion of his youth, as he progressed from Teddy Boy, to Rocker, to Hell’s Angel. As a 16-year-old engineering apprentice he had a near-fatal motorbike accident; he later joined the Army but was soon discharged because of his prior injuries. Terry worked with motorcycles throughout his professional life. In the…

FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA

STRANGE DAYS FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA SIMON YOUNG FILES A NEW REPORT FROM THE INTERFACE OF STRANGE PHENOMENA AND FOLK BELIEF VERY SCARY FAIRIES It is perhaps the single scariest British fairy encounter. The year is 1757. Four children are playing in a field in Denbighshire. The children (three girls and a boy) are aged seven, eight, 10 and 15. The experience was recorded by the youngest, Edward Williams (1750-1813). Williams – who would become a celebrated Methodist preacher – wrote two difference accounts: one for the proto-fortean collector Edmund Jones, when Edward was in his early twenties; and the other as an autobiographical reminiscence much later in his life. The two accounts are remarkably similar. The children were playing in a field outside Bodfari when they became aware that,…

FAIRIES, FOLKLORE AND FORTEANA

THE SHORTENING OF THE WAY

Every other year, I re-read Frank Herbert’s Dune books1 because I thoroughly enjoy their richly crafted, imaginative worlds and always find something new in their intelligent writing. Now we also have a fresh film adaptation, this time directed by Denis Villeneuve (reviewed p.66), who is also overseeing a companion TV series Dune: The Sisterhood. The engine of Dune’s main story arc – the mysterious process or person Herbert calls Kwisatz Haderech – is introduced early on in an encounter between Leto (Duke of House Atreides), his concubine Jessica (mother of the boy-hero Paul) and Liet Kynes (the Imperially-appointed planetologist to the ultra-dry world of Arrakis).2 The story of Dune begins some 20,000 years into our future and Paul Atreides is no ordinary lad. He is the product of a eugenics programme spanning…

THE SHORTENING OF THE WAY

ARTHUR C CLARKE’S MYSTERIOUS WORLD

PART 2 Welcome back. Last month, we looked at the first six episodes of Arthur C Clarke’s famous 1980 documentary series and asked what, if anything, we had learned about the programme’s “mysteries” in the intervening years (FT410:32-39). We saw how several archæological mysteries had been resolved one way or the other with the help of modern techniques and new scientific evidence, which allowed us to sift real wonders (the Antikythera mechanism) from the fake (the Mitchell Hedges skull). 1 And while we’ll never have all the answers when it comes to the identity and motivation of the people who cut the Nazca lines or the Uffington Horse, the questions at least make sense and the possible answers feel human and relatable. Meanwhile, the cryptozoological mysteries left us with more of a challenge.…

ARTHUR C CLARKE’S MYSTERIOUS WORLD

Seeing and believing

UFO FILES / SAUCERS OF THE DAMNED Seeing and believing NIGEL WATSON surveys the latest sightings and ufological news from around the world UFO DREAMS In her previous column (FT410:31) Jenny Randles discussed the importance of dreams in relation to our perception of reality, and how we all live in a bubble universe of our own making. Such thoughts are reinforced in an article by Robert Lanza MD on the Psychology Today website. He notes that as we go about our everyday lives we automatically process information from all our senses to create our concept of reality, and this is usually separated from the realm of our nocturnal dreams. According to Lanza, in dreams we effortlessly “turn pure information into a dynamic multidimensional reality.” Biocentrism, using the principles of quantum…

Seeing and believing

The eye of the beholder

UFO FILES / UFO CASEBOOK THE REAL-LIFE X-FILES The eye of the beholder JENNY RANDLES suggests that “seeing” a UFO is about being in the wrong place at the right time Have you ever seen a UFO? If not, why not – especially if you are interested in these things? That is a question you may never have asked yourself, but I think that you should. It might help us understand what lies behind this baffling phenomenon, because it goes to the heart of what seeing a UFO really means. My inspiration for this question was the ufologist who first got me interested in the potential relationship between UFOs and science, Jacques Vallée. In one of his many telling insights on the subject, Vallée noted: “Just because a message comes…

The eye of the beholder

SCARY STORIES FROM SCUNTHORPE

When calling for witness testimonies concerning ‘The Ruskington Horror’1 (see FT401:32-38, 402:38-43), I was surprised to receive a story from Scunthorpe, which is an industrial town 45 miles (72km) away from Ruskington, in the north of the old county of Lincolnshire. But what a story it was! Such is the serendipitous nature of fortean research that I found myself chasing spectres amongst the famous steelworks (the local football team is not nicknamed The Iron for nothing.) This article details responses to the call that I made following on from the story2 – but I should, of course, begin at the beginning with that initial story. THE SCOTTER ROAD SPECTRE In 1999, 20-year-old Katie was living at home in Scunthorpe. Her bedroom window looked across Bristol Road to the main Scotter Road, which…

SCARY STORIES FROM SCUNTHORPE

THE SHORTENING OF THE WAY

THE SHORTENING OF THE WAY With a new Dune movie in cinemas and a TV series in the offing, BOB RICKARD dons his still-suit and probes the origin of Frank Herbert’s protagonists – the Kwisatz Haderech – and their mysterious ability to transcend space and time. Every other year, I re-read Frank Herbert’s Dune books1 because I thoroughly enjoy their richly crafted, imaginative worlds and always find something new in their intelligent writing. Now we also have a fresh film adaptation, this time directed by Denis Villeneuve (reviewed p.66), who is also overseeing a companion TV series Dune: The Sisterhood. The engine of Dune’s main story arc – the mysterious process or person Herbert calls Kwisatz Haderech – is introduced early on in an encounter between Leto (Duke of House…

THE SHORTENING OF THE WAY

BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY

“Life after death will hardly be worth calling life if it remains merely static. That is one reason why nobody believes any more in the playing of harps.” So writes our chosen author, the late Paul Beard – reminding one of the excellent Rabbi Isodore Epstein, who in his Judaism similarly scorned the idea that the hereafter might be spent “in sheer idleness”. Judaism as a whole is really rather vague, undecided even, about whether there actually is an afterlife, and modern Christianity doesn’t seem to have come up with a decent alternative to the harps, as far as we know. Beard’s compact book, on the other hand, is pretty definite about the work we should expect to do on the ‘other side’, regardless of our Earthly religious predilections. Indeed,…

BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY

The Return of the King

SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM The King isn’t dead. Or so countless eyewitnesses would have us believe. Not a day goes by since Elvis Presley’s demise in 1977 that someone hasn’t spotted the ageing rocker in a branch of Walmart or sunning himself in some exclusive resort. Yet for all the theories that insist upon Elvis’s continuing corporeal presence, a hundred more cite psychic or ghostly interactions that offer proof of Elvis’s immortal soul. A chat with Presley’s shade has been claimed by TV ghost hunters, tourists and Presley family members alike, with Priscilla claiming to catch up with her deceased former spouse on a regular basis. One of the oddest responses to the King’s passing came two years after his death and 4,362 miles (7,020km) from Memphis, when a…

The Return of the King

ARTHUR C CLARKE’S MYSTERIOUS WORLD

REVISITING ARTHUR C CLARKE’S MYSTERIOUS WORLD Just over 40 years ago, unsuspecting ITV viewers were taken on a sometimes terrifying tour of the planet’s anomalies – from “the missing apeman” to “the Skull of Doom”. RYAN SHIRLOW hits the rewind button and reappraises a classic of fortean television. PART 2 Welcome back. Last month, we looked at the first six episodes of Arthur C Clarke’s famous 1980 documentary series and asked what, if anything, we had learned about the programme’s “mysteries” in the intervening years (FT410:32-39). We saw how several archæological mysteries had been resolved one way or the other with the help of modern techniques and new scientific evidence, which allowed us to sift real wonders (the Antikythera mechanism) from the fake (the Mitchell Hedges skull). 1 And while…

ARTHUR C CLARKE’S MYSTERIOUS WORLD

SCARY STORIES FROM SCUNTHORPE

STRANGE FENOMENA A LINCOLNSHIRE CASEBOOK #5 SCARY STORIES FROM SCUNTHORPE ROB GANDY continues his exploration of Lincolnshire weirdness, heading to the north of the county and the steel town of Scunthorpe, where he finds that this centre of modern industry is a surprising hotspot for anomalous activity, well supplied with strange spectral presences, hospital apparitions and phantom jaywalkers… When calling for witness testimonies concerning ‘The Ruskington Horror’1 (see FT401:32-38, 402:38-43), I was surprised to receive a story from Scunthorpe, which is an industrial town 45 miles (72km) away from Ruskington, in the north of the old county of Lincolnshire. But what a story it was! Such is the serendipitous nature of fortean research that I found myself chasing spectres amongst the famous steelworks (the local football team is not nicknamed The…

SCARY STORIES FROM SCUNTHORPE

“Time is no stream to get fixed in”

At the outbreak of World War II, Alun Lewis (born 1 July 1915), joined the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers, though soon after changed his commission to an infantry battalion. Lewis died unexpectedly on 5 March 1944 while stationed in Burma, during a military campaign against the Japanese. He was 28 years old. Official reports written by the Army court, perhaps fearful of upsetting his family, and due to religious taboos, charitably claim that Lewis died accidentally – he stumbled off a hill and his firearm discharged and caused a fatal injury – though in fact all that is known is that he was discovered outside the latrine, freshly shaven, with a bullet wound in his head and a revolver in his hand. Six hours later, he succumbed to his…

“Time is no stream to get fixed in”

The body, real and imaginary

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM The Body Fantastic Frank Gonzalez-Crussi MIT Press 2021 Pb, 264pp, £24, ISBN 9780262045889 Sometimes you can grasp the essence of a book by its cover. Frank Gonzalez-Crussi’s The Body Fantastic is adorned by anatomical drawings – the bones of a human leg, the stomach of a wombat – juxtaposed with illustrations of the natural world, both real and mythic, from a frog to a squid, to a mermaid. This arrangement might sound peculiar at first, but it proves to be a perfect visual representation of the author’s view that the idea of “the body” flits between the real and imaginary. Inspired by the ideas of French poet and philosopher Paul Valéry, the author sees the body as more than just something to be gazed on in…

The body, real and imaginary

BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY

THE HIEROPHANT’S APPRENTICE PRESENTS BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY NO 61. A GRACIOUS GUIDE TO THE AFTERLIFE “Life after death will hardly be worth calling life if it remains merely static. That is one reason why nobody believes any more in the playing of harps.” So writes our chosen author, the late Paul Beard – reminding one of the excellent Rabbi Isodore Epstein, who in his Judaism similarly scorned the idea that the hereafter might be spent “in sheer idleness”. Judaism as a whole is really rather vague, undecided even, about whether there actually is an afterlife, and modern Christianity doesn’t seem to have come up with a decent alternative to the harps, as far as we know. Beard’s compact book, on the other hand, is pretty definite about the work we…

BUILDING A FORTEAN LIBRARY

Time in Maps From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era Kären Wigen & Caroline Winterer eds University of Chicago Press 2020 Hb, 231pp, £34, ISBN 9780226178590 Although we tend to think of maps as a way of representing space, we actually use them for much more, including the depiction of time. In Time in Maps, Kären Wigen and Caroline Winterer collect nine papers that look at different ways in which cartographers and others have tried to use maps to depict history and prehistory. In the book’s first section William I Ranking argues that modern maps can represent change over time effectively. The next two papers focus on maps from early modern Asia: Kären Wigen discusses the ways in which historical mapmaking in Japan played an important role in statecraft, as well as addressing local…

A liminal archipelago

The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest Paul Kincaid Gylphi Limited 2020 Pb, 235pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781780240886 Christopher Priest is arguably the most fortean science fiction writer of all – though as this study of his work makes clear, he stopped identifying himself as an SF writer decades ago. Some critics have labelled his work slipstream or even magical realism – or, as SF critic and longtime fan Paul Kincaid says, it’s in “a liminal territory… genre that doesn’t really obey the rules of genre”. Priest’s novels are all about uncertainty. “This unreliability of reality is one of the defining characteristics of Priest’s work”; he doesn’t ever use the word, but this is absolutely fortean territory. For non-SF fans Priest is probably best known for writing The Prestige, which the film of the same name is…

A liminal archipelago

The Return of the King

FORUM The Return of the King KATE CHERRELL recalls Elvis Presley’s postmortem visit to Watford… SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM The King isn’t dead. Or so countless eyewitnesses would have us believe. Not a day goes by since Elvis Presley’s demise in 1977 that someone hasn’t spotted the ageing rocker in a branch of Walmart or sunning himself in some exclusive resort. Yet for all the theories that insist upon Elvis’s continuing corporeal presence, a hundred more cite psychic or ghostly interactions that offer proof of Elvis’s immortal soul. A chat with Presley’s shade has been claimed by TV ghost hunters, tourists and Presley family members alike, with Priscilla claiming to catch up with her deceased former spouse on a regular basis. One of the oddest responses to…

The Return of the King

Shuker Nature, Vols 1 & 2 Karl PN Shuker Coachwhip Publications, 2019 Pb, 400+pp each, £16. ISBN 9781616464677 & 9781616464837 By all accounts (even his own) Dr Shuker is a prolific writer, so anyone interested in his cryptozoological articles (more than 600 at last count) might not be able to keep up with the sheer variety of his publishing venues. Here is the remedy; a two volume compilation of self-selected “significant” material from a decade of publishing his ShukerNature blog on the Internet. The range of topics is astonishingly wide and lavishly illustrated, covering recent discoveries, legendary beasts and amusing inventions from the scientific archives and journals of explorers to modern surveys and commercial exploitation. They include Polynesian cats, whip scorpions, giant insects, mysterious hominids, duck beavers, locust dragons, varicoloured tigers, striped seals, sea-monkeys,…

“Time is no stream to get fixed in”

FORUM “Time is no stream to get fixed in” Welsh poet Alun Lewis met an untimely death in WWII, but enjoyed a post-mortem career via the automatic writing of novelist Elizabeth Berridge. ERIC HOFFMAN looks at a strange episode from literary history. At the outbreak of World War II, Alun Lewis (born 1 July 1915), joined the British Army Corps of Royal Engineers, though soon after changed his commission to an infantry battalion. Lewis died unexpectedly on 5 March 1944 while stationed in Burma, during a military campaign against the Japanese. He was 28 years old. Official reports written by the Army court, perhaps fearful of upsetting his family, and due to religious taboos, charitably claim that Lewis died accidentally – he stumbled off a hill and his firearm discharged…

“Time is no stream to get fixed in”

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE EDITOR AT DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM Dune Dir Denis Villeneuve, US 2021 On general release The anticipation for French Canadian producer-director’s Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has been huge. I am delighted to say the film does not disappoint. Frank Herbert’s widely-acclaimed novel of 1965 is a history of the future of mankind spanning several millennia, set out in six novels (see pp34-41). While ignored by the sentinels of highbrow literature, the series left an important and extensive cultural legacy, influencing countless films, games and stories up to the present. However, expectations for the 1984 film version by Alejandro Jodorowsky and David Lynch were dashed by the chaos of a production in which little of Jodorowsky’s promised vision survived. Richard Rubinstein, who had owned the ultimate rights since 1996, licensed the use of its…

Paranormal Caught On Camera Blaze As has been noted before in these pages, one of the inevitable results of so many people carrying phones capable of capturing unconvincing fortean footage is a proliferation of programmes that aggregate such clips and present them with varying degrees of criticality. Paranormal Caught On Camera exemplifies this approach, hitting every motif we’ve come to expect: “From poltergeist activity to lights in the sky, these first-hand accounts just might turn sceptics into believers!”; or, in some cases, the reverse, but this isn’t really considered. The individual episodes are resolutely cookie-cutter in format: starting with the nowclassic portentous intro: “Does THIS shocking footage really show A DEMONIC ATTACK?” – just think of the mileage Shatner would get from that line – complete with highlights from the forthcoming episode…

The body, real and imaginary

REVIEWS / BOOKS The body, real and imaginary Ross MacFarlane delights in an erudite yet playful exploration of the rebelliousness and unpredictability of the human body TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM The Body Fantastic Frank Gonzalez-Crussi MIT Press 2021 Pb, 264pp, £24, ISBN 9780262045889 Sometimes you can grasp the essence of a book by its cover. Frank Gonzalez-Crussi’s The Body Fantastic is adorned by anatomical drawings – the bones of a human leg, the stomach of a wombat – juxtaposed with illustrations of the natural world, both real and mythic, from a frog to a squid, to a mermaid. This arrangement might sound peculiar at first, but it proves to be a perfect visual representation of the author’s view that the idea of “the…

The body, real and imaginary

Polite debate Nigel Watson reported on the suggestion that the ancient aliens thesis was inherently racist because it refused to acknowledge the ability of people of colour to construct impressive edifices [FT409:32]. Now, while I don’t deny that some aficionados of ancient aliens may be bigots, for me, as someone who has followed the genre ever since von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods was serialised in a Sunday newspaper back in the 1960s (as ‘Was God a Spaceman?’), I never got a sense that racism was a significant factor. Rather, it seemed to be driven by a desire to embarrass plodding, conventional historians by showing them how ‘outside the box’ thinking could revolutionise their areas of expertise. And there was also the seductive mixture of ancient history and aliens. Furthermore, Stonehenge…

REVIEWS / BOOKS Marking time James Holloway explores how the passage of time is revealed in maps through the ages Time in Maps From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era Kären Wigen & Caroline Winterer eds University of Chicago Press 2020 Hb, 231pp, £34, ISBN 9780226178590 Although we tend to think of maps as a way of representing space, we actually use them for much more, including the depiction of time. In Time in Maps, Kären Wigen and Caroline Winterer collect nine papers that look at different ways in which cartographers and others have tried to use maps to depict history and prehistory. In the book’s first section William I Ranking argues that modern maps can represent change over time effectively. The next two papers focus on maps…

A liminal archipelago

REVIEWS / BOOKS A liminal archipelago An authoritative thematic study of a supremely fortean novelist is let down by its structure, finds Jay Vickers The Unstable Realities of Christopher Priest Paul Kincaid Gylphi Limited 2020 Pb, 235pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781780240886 Christopher Priest is arguably the most fortean science fiction writer of all – though as this study of his work makes clear, he stopped identifying himself as an SF writer decades ago. Some critics have labelled his work slipstream or even magical realism – or, as SF critic and longtime fan Paul Kincaid says, it’s in “a liminal territory… genre that doesn’t really obey the rules of genre”. Priest’s novels are all about uncertainty. “This unreliability of reality is one of the defining characteristics of Priest’s work”; he doesn’t ever…

A liminal archipelago

I witnessed this sea mirage (not sure if it’s actually a Fata Morgana) on the horizon of Southsea Beach, Hampshire, at about 6pm on 18 July 2021. Some of it was on Hayling Island. In all of my 40 years of living in Portsmouth I have never seen this phenomenon before. Glitch in the Matrix? Rob Shaw Portsmouth NOTE: A Fata Morgana is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. The Italian term translates the name of the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay (‘Morgan the Fairy’), due to a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land conjured up by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths.…

After the publication of the Space Liberace story [FT408:32-39], I found more evidence of the Liberace space/UFO connection. A programme from a 1979 Liberace concert at the Garden State Arts Center (now called the PNC “Pittsburgh National Corporation” Bank Arts Center) in Holmdel, New Jersey, shows Liberace under what looks like a futuristic UFO-shaped building. The title of the programme is “Stairway to the Stars”. The other image is from a vintage postcard of the arts centre looking like a UFO landing. Could this be more proof of Liberace’s extraterrestrial origins? Canoga Park, California…

REVIEWS / BOOKS ALSO RECEIVED WE LEAF THROUGH A SMALL SELECTION OF THE DOZENS OF BOOKS THAT HAVE ARRIVED AT FORTEAN TOWERS IN RECENT MONTHS… Shuker Nature, Vols 1 & 2 Karl PN Shuker Coachwhip Publications, 2019 Pb, 400+pp each, £16. ISBN 9781616464677 & 9781616464837 By all accounts (even his own) Dr Shuker is a prolific writer, so anyone interested in his cryptozoological articles (more than 600 at last count) might not be able to keep up with the sheer variety of his publishing venues. Here is the remedy; a two volume compilation of self-selected “significant” material from a decade of publishing his ShukerNature blog on the Internet. The range of topics is astonishingly wide and lavishly illustrated, covering recent discoveries, legendary beasts and amusing inventions from the scientific archives…

It Happened to Me…

Further strange episodes My mother’s family came from Mullingar in southern Ireland, and in the late 1950s she used to take my sister and me for three to four weeks in the summer. My father would follow on later. My grandparents had a farmhouse just outside the town. One evening when I was aged about six we had gone to visit my aunt who lived a 10-minute walk from my grandparents. I decided to walk back to the farmhouse. I crossed a vast field and reached the driveway to the farmhouse. The driveway was quite long, 80 to 100 feet (24-30m). There was a solid high hedge to my left and farm buildings to my right. I must have walked half way down when something stepped out from the hedge and…

It Happened to Me…

REVIEWS / FILMS Spice of life We’ve waited over 50 years for Frank Herbert’s epic novel to receive the cinematic treatment it deserves – and Denis Villeneuve and his team have delivered the goods TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE EDITOR AT DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM Dune Dir Denis Villeneuve, US 2021 On general release The anticipation for French Canadian producer-director’s Denis Villeneuve’s Dune has been huge. I am delighted to say the film does not disappoint. Frank Herbert’s widely-acclaimed novel of 1965 is a history of the future of mankind spanning several millennia, set out in six novels (see pp34-41). While ignored by the sentinels of highbrow literature, the series left an important and extensive cultural legacy, influencing countless films, games and stories up to the present. However, expectations for the 1984…

PECULIAR POSTCARDS

21. IF LONDON WERE VENICE In 1905, at the height of the Edwardian postcard mania, Valentines of Dundee thought of a novel enterprise: why not take some postcards of traditional London landmarks and adapt them to show canals and gondolas, as if the metropolis had undergone a strange transformation into some Venetian rendezvous? A correspondent to Picture Postcard Monthly of January 2006 has pointed out that there were six cards in all: Piccadilly, the Law Courts, Cheapside, Bank and Exchange, Trafalgar Square and Fleet Street. The Piccadilly card shows gondolas on their way round this famous landmark, and the Bank card has a policeman directing the busy nautical traffic from a platform. The ‘If London were Venice’ cards are today quite scarce, but after 15 years of looking for them, I am…

PECULIAR POSTCARDS

TELEVISION FT’s very own couch potato, STU NEVILLE, casts an eye over the small screen’s current fortean offerings Paranormal Caught On Camera Blaze As has been noted before in these pages, one of the inevitable results of so many people carrying phones capable of capturing unconvincing fortean footage is a proliferation of programmes that aggregate such clips and present them with varying degrees of criticality. Paranormal Caught On Camera exemplifies this approach, hitting every motif we’ve come to expect: “From poltergeist activity to lights in the sky, these first-hand accounts just might turn sceptics into believers!”; or, in some cases, the reverse, but this isn’t really considered. The individual episodes are resolutely cookie-cutter in format: starting with the nowclassic portentous intro: “Does THIS shocking footage really show A DEMONIC ATTACK?”…

HOW TO SUBSCRIBE ANNUAL SUB of 12 issues (inc p&p) UK £48; Europe £58; USA $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues); Rest of World £68. Please see house ads in the latest issue for details of special offers. NORTH AMERICA (US & CANADA) Subscribers should contact: IMS, PO Box 866, Virginia Beach, VA 23451, USA. Telephone: 800-428-3003 (toll free) or order online at www.imsnews.com. UK, EUROPE & REST OF WORLD Major credit cards accepted. Cheques or money orders should be in sterling, preferably drawn on a London bank and made payable to Dennis Publishing. Mail to: Fortean Times, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH16 3DH. NB: This address should be used for orders and subscriptions only. Telephone payments and queries: 0330 333 9492. E-mail payments and queries: customercare@subscribe.forteantimes.com HOW TO SUBMIT Fortean Times reserves all rights…

FORTEAN TIMES is a monthly magazine of news, reviews and research on strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents. It was founded by Bob Rickard in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort (1874–1932). Born of Dutch stock in Albany, New York, Fort spent many years researching scientific literature in the New York Public Library and the British Museum Library. He marshalled his evidence and set forth his philosophy in The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). He was sceptical of dogmatic scientific explanations, observing that some scientists tended to argue according to their personal beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and that inconvenient data were ignored, suppressed, discredited or explained away. He criticised modern science for its reductionism, its attempts…

LETTERS CONTACT US BY POST: PO BOX 1200, WHITSTABLE CT1 9RH, OR E-MAIL SIEVEKING@FORTEANTIMES.COM PLEASE PROVIDE US WITH YOUR POSTAL ADDRESS Polite debate Nigel Watson reported on the suggestion that the ancient aliens thesis was inherently racist because it refused to acknowledge the ability of people of colour to construct impressive edifices [FT409:32]. Now, while I don’t deny that some aficionados of ancient aliens may be bigots, for me, as someone who has followed the genre ever since von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods was serialised in a Sunday newspaper back in the 1960s (as ‘Was God a Spaceman?’), I never got a sense that racism was a significant factor. Rather, it seemed to be driven by a desire to embarrass plodding, conventional historians by showing them how ‘outside the…

Marine mirage I witnessed this sea mirage (not sure if it’s actually a Fata Morgana) on the horizon of Southsea Beach, Hampshire, at about 6pm on 18 July 2021. Some of it was on Hayling Island. In all of my 40 years of living in Portsmouth I have never seen this phenomenon before. Glitch in the Matrix? Rob Shaw Portsmouth NOTE: A Fata Morgana is a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon. The Italian term translates the name of the Arthurian sorceress Morgan le Fay (‘Morgan the Fairy’), due to a belief that these mirages, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land conjured up by her witchcraft to lure sailors to their deaths.…

In Barranquilla, Colombia, a five-year-old girl died after a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on her in a park. The girl was playing with her older brother in a square in La Colechera Park in the El Silencio district when she tried to hug the 150kg (330lb) statue, but it was not fixed in place and toppled over, trapping her underneath. Emergency services and neighbours freed the girl, but she died of traumatic brain injuries before reaching hospital. Rafael Vaca, a city councillor, said that the figure had been in the park for six months, but that no one knew how it had got there. Metro; newsbeezer.com, 2 June 2021. Iran Khorramdin, 74, and her husband Akbar, 81, were arrested in Tehran, Iran, for drugging, killing and dismembering…

Space Liberace After the publication of the Space Liberace story [FT408:32-39], I found more evidence of the Liberace space/UFO connection. A programme from a 1979 Liberace concert at the Garden State Arts Center (now called the PNC “Pittsburgh National Corporation” Bank Arts Center) in Holmdel, New Jersey, shows Liberace under what looks like a futuristic UFO-shaped building. The title of the programme is “Stairway to the Stars”. The other image is from a vintage postcard of the arts centre looking like a UFO landing. Could this be more proof of Liberace’s extraterrestrial origins? Jeffrey Vallance Canoga Park, California…

It Happened to Me…

It Happened to Me… Further strange episodes My mother’s family came from Mullingar in southern Ireland, and in the late 1950s she used to take my sister and me for three to four weeks in the summer. My father would follow on later. My grandparents had a farmhouse just outside the town. One evening when I was aged about six we had gone to visit my aunt who lived a 10-minute walk from my grandparents. I decided to walk back to the farmhouse. I crossed a vast field and reached the driveway to the farmhouse. The driveway was quite long, 80 to 100 feet (24-30m). There was a solid high hedge to my left and farm buildings to my right. I must have walked half way down when something stepped…

It Happened to Me…

PECULIAR POSTCARDS

PECULIAR POSTCARDS JAN BONDESON shares another deltiological discovery from his prodigious collection of postcards. This month’s pictorial blast from the past presents an inventive postcard series imagining a watery version of the English capital 21. IF LONDON WERE VENICE In 1905, at the height of the Edwardian postcard mania, Valentines of Dundee thought of a novel enterprise: why not take some postcards of traditional London landmarks and adapt them to show canals and gondolas, as if the metropolis had undergone a strange transformation into some Venetian rendezvous? A correspondent to Picture Postcard Monthly of January 2006 has pointed out that there were six cards in all: Piccadilly, the Law Courts, Cheapside, Bank and Exchange, Trafalgar Square and Fleet Street. The Piccadilly card shows gondolas on their way round this famous…

PECULIAR POSTCARDS

READER INFO HOW TO SUBSCRIBE ANNUAL SUB of 12 issues (inc p&p) UK £48; Europe £58; USA $89.99 ($161.98 for 24 issues); Rest of World £68. Please see house ads in the latest issue for details of special offers. NORTH AMERICA (US & CANADA) Subscribers should contact: IMS, PO Box 866, Virginia Beach, VA 23451, USA. Telephone: 800-428-3003 (toll free) or order online at www.imsnews.com. UK, EUROPE & REST OF WORLD Major credit cards accepted. Cheques or money orders should be in sterling, preferably drawn on a London bank and made payable to Dennis Publishing. Mail to: Fortean Times, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH16 3DH. NB: This address should be used for orders and subscriptions only. Telephone payments and queries: 0330 333 9492. E-mail payments and…

WHY FORTEAN? FORTEAN TIMES is a monthly magazine of news, reviews and research on strange phenomena and experiences, curiosities, prodigies and portents. It was founded by Bob Rickard in 1973 to continue the work of Charles Fort (1874–1932). Born of Dutch stock in Albany, New York, Fort spent many years researching scientific literature in the New York Public Library and the British Museum Library. He marshalled his evidence and set forth his philosophy in The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). He was sceptical of dogmatic scientific explanations, observing that some scientists tended to argue according to their personal beliefs rather than the rules of evidence and that inconvenient data were ignored, suppressed, discredited or explained away. He criticised modern science for…

STRANGE DEATHS UNUSUAL WAYS OF SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL BACKGROUND IMAGE: CASEY HORNER/UNSPLASH In Barranquilla, Colombia, a five-year-old girl died after a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus fell on her in a park. The girl was playing with her older brother in a square in La Colechera Park in the El Silencio district when she tried to hug the 150kg (330lb) statue, but it was not fixed in place and toppled over, trapping her underneath. Emergency services and neighbours freed the girl, but she died of traumatic brain injuries before reaching hospital. Rafael Vaca, a city councillor, said that the figure had been in the park for six months, but that no one knew how it had got there. Metro; newsbeezer.com, 2 June 2021. Iran Khorramdin, 74,…

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