Innholdsfortegnelse for 437 i Fortean Times

WE DARE YOU TO LOOK INSIDE! Hallowe’en is almost upon us, so we’ve taken the opportunity to focus this issue on the spooky side of forteana. In our cover story (p30), Brian J Robb provides a short history of one of the most fascinating, if largely forgotten, expressions of our love of enjoyable scares: the travelling spook show. It was a uniquely American phenomenon that grew out of a curious mix of séance room trickery and theatrical illusion, but also combined live acts by ballyhoo merchants (with names like Dr Silkini, El-Wyn and Ray-Mond) with movie monsters and midnight film screenings. Although the classic spook show only flourished from the 1930s to the 1960s, it left its mark on popular culture, with its gimmicky showmanship picked up by the likes…

IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT… As occupations go, celebrity chef is not especially risky; to reputation perhaps, but not to life and limb. Chef to a celebrity, on the other hand, appears to be a rather more perilous gig. And then there is the vexed matter of coincidence. The tragic demise of Tafari Campbell, chef to the Obama family, has excited more than a few ripples in the conspiracist pond. The circumstances of his death are confused and confusing, a situation not helped by what seems to be a kneejerk tendency on the part of high-profile figures to become overly secretive when bad things happen around them. And where uncertainty lurks, theories are born. At first, reports suggested that Campbell was a nonswimmer who had (inexplicably to some) gone…

Where do meteorites come from? The French Academy of Sciences once refused to examine meteorites, on the seemingly logical grounds that since there were no stones in the sky it was impossible that any should fall. The Academy damned meteorites as fake news, in the same class as falls of fish or frogs, until a fall of thousands of meteorite fragments in L’Aigle witnessed by many observers in 1803 (FT143:34-38). These days science is slightly more sophisticated, but meteorites are still a matter of mystery and debate. Generally speaking, meteorites are recognised by their melted exterior, known as fusion crust, formed by the heat of entering the Earth’s atmosphere. Meteorites can be metallic, stony, or a combination of the two. However, not all rocks with a melted appearance are meteorites.…

Back in January 2023, Fortean Times marked the 50th anniversary of the classic Reader’s Digest Folklore, Myths and Legends of Great Britain (1973), celebrating its influence and the lasting fascination this work still holds for many who first read it in their younger days (FT427:28-35). The year 1973 also saw the publication of another book on similar themes which, though smaller and written by just one author, bears comparison in its lasting influence on ghost hunters and the imagination of young readers. This was Haunted Britain by Antony Hippisley Coxe (1912-1988), a long-standing favourite of mine and a work which helped inspire my own early interest in ghosts and folklore. If I had to select one book providing a guide for purely exploring haunted places around Britain, it would certainly be…

ARTHUR BOYT Arthur Boyt carved out a small but particular niche for himself as Britain’s premier exponent of roadkill cuisine, eating almost exclusively meat that he had retrieved from the roadside. He had been consuming roadkill since he was 13 and would eat badger, rat, pheasant, weasels, polecats, hedgehogs, squirrels and even otters – anything he could find dead on the grass verge or the beach, cooking them with vegetables he had grown himself. His motto was “just because it doesn’t have a label doesn’t mean it’s not edible.” Interviewed by CornwallLive about his plans for Christmas dinner one year, he said that he was looking forward to a meal that would include sprouts, roast potatoes and casseroled whale and admitted to being particularly fond of the taste of dog,…

There has been a lot of talk recently about names for the phenomenon we study. Should we use the new term ‘UAP’ rather than ‘UFO’? Both are more modern than the still popular ‘Flying Saucer’. The term UFO – Unidentified Flying Object – was coined by Captain Edward J Ruppelt, who ran the USAF investigation into sightings in the early 1950s to reassure the public that it was something their Government had under control. This official investigation needed a sober term, partly to justify why the USAF was investigating something portrayed in the media as a bit of a joke – something citizens might think not their tax dollars should be paying for. It was probably expected that these sightings would be a short-lived fad in the vigilant days right…

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT DVBARRETT@FORTEANTIMES.COM Troubled by Faith Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum Owen Davies Oxford University Press 2023 Hb, 368pp, £25, ISBN 9780198873006 The 19th century witnessed a mania for asylum-building, an endeavour that coincided with rapid technological advancement, new scientific theories and changing religious landscapes. It was an era when faith in scientific progress often co-existed with older beliefs in fairies and witches. For contemporary commentators as well as historians, this begs the question: at what point does belief in the supernatural come to be interpreted as a sign of mental ill health? As Spiritualism grew in popularity in the second half of the century, for example, some psychiatrists were keen to claim such phenomena as…

All coming together It has become fairly commonplace for spirits, and EMF readings, even voice messages from people who have died, to be picked up by mobile phones. As we are all aware, computers, mobiles, etc all have a heart that is vital to their use: a tiny quartz crystal. Quartz is also renowned for being a ‘stone tape’ and granite comprises 20 per cent quartz crystal. I have learned of many examples of strange repetitive occurrences in places built with granite, for example the Overtoun Bridge (the dog suicide bridge in Scotland, see FT196:4, 218:10) and Berry Pomeroy Castle in Devon. Mediæval buildings, so many in Scotland of course which is notoriously full of tales of hauntings that repeat. And a vast amount in the USA, too many to…

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As Santos Herrera, 22, was driving a bus on the El Caracol-La Rica route between the cities of Jinotega and San Sebastián de Yalí in Nicaragua, the vehicle experienced mechanical problems that led to him losing control of it. The bus slewed off the road and went crashing down a 160ft (50m) deep ravine, smashing its way through a collection of beehives as it did so. This stirred up a swarm of angry African bees, known for their painful stings and short tempers, which descended on the wreckage of the bus and attacked the survivors. Local residents attempted to reach the injured but were driven off by the bees. Amazingly, no one died in the crash itself, but Kenia Soza, 19, Dilcia Amparo, 32, Santos Calderón, 38, Reyna Olivas, 84,…

PAUL DEVEREUX unearths the latest finds, from mystery stone balls to a thundering dance floor KNOCKING THE EDGES OFF It seems not any old rock would do for certain ancestral humans (hominins) 1.5 million years ago, according to researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who have been analysing 150 mysterious tennis-ballsized spheroids uncovered at the Ubeidiya archæological site in northern Israel. They are crude spheres, being just chunks of rock that have been repeatedly knocked into roughly spherical shape using other rocks as tools. Using three-dimensional analysis to reconstruct the geometry of the stones, the researchers determined that their spherical form was “likely to have been produced intentionally”. It is not known to what human lineage the hominins involved belonged to, or why they bashed away so diligently to…

Following the recent US congressional hearing (FT436:28- 31) on UAP (unidentified anomalous/aerial phenomena), the Mexican Congress also held a hearing to explore what their government knows about the subject. It was initiated by Sergio Gutiérrez Luna, a deputy of Morena, Mexico’s governing party, after being approached by Mexican UFO journalist Jaime Maussan. Gutiérrez began the session by getting participants to stand up and swear to tell the truth, after which attendees were then shown footage of UAPs, including shots captured by a fighter jet showing lights floating above the clouds, and given presentations by Maussan, US Navy pilot Ryan Graves, and Robert Salas, a retired USAF lieutenant. Harvard Astronomer Avi Loeb, who runs the Galileo Project, searching for extraterrestrial intelligence (FT410:30, 412:6-7), also appeared via video link. Maussan caused a…

KARL SHUKER highlights mysteries and discoveries from East Africa and South America GOING POTTY OVER A POTTO Some of cryptozoology’s least-known mystery beasts have often long been hiding in plain sight, at least in the sense that they have been documented in books or articles originally published many years ago, but which have never attracted cryptozoological attention. Consequently, whenever possible I try to rectify this sad situation by publicising them, frequently here in my AZ column, as soon as I learn about them. So here is yet another example, brought to my attention very recently on Facebook by FB friend Richard Hing. Richard wondered if anyone had ever heard of a strange creature reportedly existing in East Africa’s Ruwenzori (Rwenzori) Mountains and briefly referred to by BBC wildlife film-maker and…

SHADOW OF THE CAT Let me introduce Felis silvestris silvestris (henceforth FSS), the British wild cat, an animal that once pawed it over the whole island, but that is now restricted to the Scottish Highlands. FSS avoids humans, but when cornered it can be ferocious. I recently had an uncomfortably close encounter with a fearless weasel – a reminder that even small animals can get the heart racing. We might see glimpses of FSS in British folklore. The Welsh hero Cai fought the Cat of Palug on Ynys Mon: in other versions of the legend, King Arthur was killed by this Anglesey kitty. The man and the cat legend from Northumberland has another knight assaulted by a cat. Then there is a curious tale from Leyland, Lancashire, about a cat…

When I was a youngster, I lived and worked as a junior doctor in southern Sweden. Apart from the family home in the city of Malmö, I had a flat of my own in the university town of Lund. As might be expected, neither had any spectral inhabitants. After getting my PhD in 1996, I obtained a scholarship to the renowned Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology in west London. Since the inflated London property prices meant I could not buy a proper house, I had to make do with a two-bedroomVictorian flat at 273 Fulham Palace Road. The flat was just 10 minutes’ walk from the research institute, but otherwise its situation was not the most pleasant: busy main roads to the front and side, a large school behind, and the…

TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE EDITOR AT DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM Wolf Lands Dir Paul Sinclair, UK 2023 Streaming on Amazon Prime Most folklorists work hard, but Paul Sinclair’s output is positively Stakhanovite. A full-on, bootson-the-ground investigator, his multipleTruth-Proof volumes contain a wealth of contemporary lore from his corner of North East England set against a solid canon of traditional legends from the area, as he looks for recurring strands and associations. Sinclair gets out there and talks to people, and from some of those conversations comes his muchanticipated documentary, Wolf Lands. The investigation begins in Flixton, NorthYorkshire, when one night in 2015 a young woman was driving home with her partner and children after a day out. As they approached a junction on the road near Harper’s Chip Shop, she saw…

SLEEPING SPEEDER When police on an autobahn near Bamberg, Germany, attempted to stop a driver travelling at 110kph (68mph), they failed to get a response, even when they sounded their horn and flashed their lights. They noticed that the man seemed to be asleep and had his hands off the wheel, but the car continued to drive at high speed for a further 15 minutes until the man awoke. His Tesla had been operating on autopilot and when he finally stopped, the driver showed signs of drug use. He was also found to have attached a weight to the wheel to fool the system into acting as if he still had his hands on it. Unsurprisingly, he was charged with reckless driving. netherlands.posten.com, 30 Dec 2022. STONED SWANS Medicinal poppy…

The summer of 2023 may mark the highpoint of a renewed resurgence of interest in UFOs both in the corridors of the Pentagon and for the world’s media. But all the fevered online debate around whistleblowers and imminent disclosure obscures the fact that, whatever the latest claims from the USA, UAP are a global phenomenon. So far, the response of the UK Government to US intelligence interest and NASA’s separate, ongoing study, has been muted. The official line is that MoD closed its UFO desk in 2009 after some 50 years acting as the focal point for sightings reported by members of the public (FT304:28-29). This followed the transfer of its surviving files to The National Archives, a process for which I acted as consultant. If you believe MoD’s boilerplate…

COLOMBIAN OUIJA PANIC [427:4-5, 431:4-5] Ouija boards are continuing to fuel panics in Colombia. Following incidents in Hato and Pasto, the largest incident yet reported took place at San Francisco de Asís School in Timbiquí, where 36 children were hospitalised in early July after allegedly “playing with a Ouija board”. The children were reported to be experiencing fainting, temporary loss of sight and anxiety – all classic social panic symptoms. They were sprinkled with holy water by local rector Emilio Balanta and prayed over before they left the school for hospital. “It is a very unusual phenomenon which occurred. A girl started to struggle so the others grabbed her so she wouldn’t hit herself, then another girl started to have the same problem,” said Balanta. “It was a diabolical situation.…

ONLY CONNECT For newcomers to the UFO scene, or even us grizzled veterans of the subject, working out who’s who in the subject is pretty tricky, especially when new whistleblowers, witnesses and experts keep turning up, and particularly with the formation of official and unofficial organisations with annoying and confusing acronyms. After several years of ufological decline this flood of renewed interest in the subject began in 2017, when guitarist for rock group Blink-182, Tom DeLonge, set up the To The Stars Academy (TTSA) along with former CIA intelligence officer, Jim Semivan, and Harold E Puthoff (FT361:28 and passim). It was in December of that same year the New York Times carried the story that Nevada Senator Harry Reid had helped obtain $22 million for aerospace contractor Robert Bigelow to…

Before the advent of popular televisual forays into ghost hunting in the early 2000s (see FT342:54-55), investigations into the nature of ghosts were confined to a relatively small number of teams across the globe. Ghost hunters were happy to sit in the darkness, clutching their thermometers, cameras, notepads and tape recorders, and record the smallest occurrence, hoping to obtain a clue or proof of survival, with the contentious issue of ‘orbs’ being the only thing to disturb the status quo. Then everything changed. Groups, prearmed with confirmation bias, would enter reputedly haunted locations expecting to find ghosts – and in nearly every instance, that is exactly what they discovered. The smallest sound, sensation or incident, normally ignored in any other location, would be presented as “compelling proof” of ghosts. Vague…

In 2009, a séance like no other hit the headlines. The collision of technology, spirituality and celebrity culture exploded in a dramatic evening of spirit contact via the unlikely medium of Twitter. This was set-up: via a psychic medium and scribe with immediate Internet access, celebrities from the recent past were contacted to share their wisdom and messages for their fans and family. This was of course, providing that they fitted within the site’s 140-character limit. The Twitter Séance was an experiment that promised so much, revolutionised nothing and fell into obscurity as quickly as it had begun. But what the séance lacked in retweets, it made up for in sheer ambition. The Twitter Séance, or ‘Tweance’, to call it by its nickname, was announced in October 2009 for a…

The BBC’s periodic interest in the weird seems to have been rekindled of late – from Danny Robins’s excellent Uncanny podcast series to the borderline-unhinged Wolf. However, quietly in the midst of all this, a small breakout has been gaining traction, In Paranormal: The Girl, The Ghost and the Gravestone, the events of 20 years ago in a remote Welsh farmhouse once billed as Britain’s most haunted are investigated by Radio 1 DJ Sian Eleri. She’s a local girl by birth and goes in highly sceptical, certain she’ll be exposing exaggerations and untruths woven into a local legend. We see her leaving the London hurly-burly for the unlit roads of rural Wales – there are a lot of shots of Sian going somewhere – and her homeland in Flintshire, close…

39. THE BLUNDELLSANDS HERMIT Not long ago, I purchased some curious postcards showing a disgruntled-looking, bearded old man sitting on a table, placed on an open carriage drawn by a large horse that is wearing various decorations and ornaments. Two of the cards are marked ‘Hermit of the Sand Hills’. Fortunately, the cards had a typewritten note attached, explaining that this was Jack Johnson, the Blundellsands Hermit, taking part in the May Day procession of 1907, along with a fife and drum band, the Fire Brigade, a troupe of Morris dancers, and various other attractions. The hermit is said to have drawn loud cheers as he trundled along on his float, brandishing his yoke and fish basket. The procession was twice halted for the hermit to be photographed. Blundellsands is…

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,…