Immortalising monsters

ALAN MURDIE stops for a beer at The Last Resort, where Aileen Wuornos is said to haunt the bar

In his enjoyable book The Frighteners (2018) FT’s Revd Peter Laws drew attention to the marked popular tendency of revelling in true stories of murder, crime and horror. Now, merely being curious and wanting to read or hear about such things is a very human characteristic. George Orwell reflected in an essay in 1946 – “Decline of the English Murder” – on how, relaxing after a perfect Sunday lunch in “blissful circumstances, what is it that you want to read about? Naturally, about a murder.” Orwell then went on to deplore how in the aftermath of World War II a growing casualness and brutality was becoming apparent in contemporary homicides, compared with the more discreet and passion-driven domestic crimes that had characterised the settled and buttoned-up pre-war years. In one…

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Fortean Times (Digital) - 1 Issue, 423

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