Innholdsfortegnelse for 442 i Fortean Times

INDUSTRIAL FORTEANA There’s a distinct whiff of industry to proceedings this month, with three stories from England, the United States and Germany connected with the worlds of coal, iron and steel. First, Paul Cropper – a long-time investigator of all sorts of strangeness, with a particular interest in poltergeist cases – returns to the pages of FT with the fascinating, if little-known, case of a stone-throwing polt in 19th century America. In the city of Akron, Ohio – a hive of heavy industrial activity – a family of German immigrants was subjected to a week-long bombardment of stones both outside and inside their home. Despite the presence of crowds of curiosity-seekers, police, numerous reporters (including one William Clemens, cousin to Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain) and a local…

SEWERGATOR STATUE One of NewYork’s most enduring urban legends has been immortalised in bronze by Swedish artist Alexander Klingspor in a sculpture showing a life-size alligator wrapped round a manhole cover. “The theme of this piece is the legend of the alligator in the NYC sewer,” said Klingspor. “I wanted to pay tribute to the city I love by depicting one of its most popular urban legends”. His sculpture has been put on display in Union Square Park in Manhattan, where it was unveiled at a ceremony attended by Queen Silvia of Sweden on 18 October 2023. editions.cnn.com, 22 Oct 2023. GOO GOO MUCK Authorities in NewYork seemed to be taking a relaxed attitude to unidentified thick fluorescent green sludge oozing its way out of drains in Downtown Manhattan in…

SNAP! In a study published in the British Journal of Urology, Dr Nikolaos Pyrgides from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich reported that the Christmas period is associated with a significantly increased risk of penile fractures. These occur when the erectile tissue of the penis snaps, usually because of forceful bending during over-enthusiastic sexual intercourse. When this happens, there is an audible crack and immediate detumescence, then severe pain, swelling and bruising. “When [patients] present to their doctor their penis often looks like an eggplant,” Pyrgides said, adding that “This injury tends to occur during wild sex – particularly in positions where you’re not in direct eye contact [with your partner], such as the reverse cowgirl.” He also concluded that “Most penile fractures occur in unconventional scenarios, such as during…

AERIAL PHENOMENA In addition to the Northern Lights, many other signs in the heavens were observed in the European skies late last year. On 1 November 2023, at 6.20pm, a strange light, “a blue shiny globe” and mysterious explosive noises were seen and heard over Durmersheim, Germany. The witness said she had first seen the light in the sky, and after that, little blue lights in her garden. “All was lit up for two or three seconds. It really frightened me. It looked like a scene from the movie Armageddon. We looked the next morning, but found no traces.” Normally, such phenomena can be explained as bolides – but no meteor had been registered by the German tracking network, and police had received no further reports; and the blue lights…

RIP HEPPLE When he started “Ness Information Service” (aka NIS, aka Nessletter) in January 1974, Rip Hepple explained that his aim was to “gather information, news and views, to file for future interest and to help keep interested members in touch and as far as possible up to date.” In this he spectacularly succeeded. To receive a Nessletter was less like getting a newsletter, but more like reading a letter from an old friend. From the first issue to the last, Nessletter 164 in February 2018, the “Ness Information Service” appeared, first regularly every two months, later, in age and after the loss of his wife, more sporadically. Rip Hepple had become interested in the Loch Ness monster and in the 1960s helped the crew of the Loch Ness Investigation…

Moving from the bustling metropolis of Munich to a far more rural area of Bavaria, my fortean heart was gladdened when I saw the coat of arms for my new home. Naila is a small town on the edge of the Frankenwald, a few miles from the old internal German border, and the coat of arms (Wappen in German) is dominated on the right hand side by a Wilder Mann. The more formal description is “Shield parted per pale; at dexter quartered of Sable and Argent; at sinister Gules, a savage Argent with apron and coronet of leaves Vert, standing on a mount Vert between two trees of the same and holding a mace by his right hand.”1 Although the current version is quite well groomed, the Wild Man…

Under the Eye of Power How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy Colin Dickey Viking 2023 Hb, 368pp, £23.74, ISBN 9780593299456 In Under the Eye of Power Colin Dickey argues that QAnon is not an outlier, rather it is part of a long established Nativist narrative which runs through American history. Harking back to the writings of Karl Popper, Dickey perceives conspiracy theories as “a secularised version of religion” and contends they must be resisted if a free and fair democratic system is to prevail. Even the Founding Fathers do not escape the taint, says Dickey. Take George Washington: his transition “from an uneducated plantation owner to the head of a new nation cannot be entirely disentangled from his involvement in Masonry”. And yes, this book also examines the…

Cool customers In the long hot summer of 2007, I was holidaying in the little Italian resort of Viserba near Rimini on the Adriatic Sea with my teenage daughter and friends. Every evening, along with hundreds of others, we participated in the famous ‘passegiata’, or stroll, during which we would always stop for a delicious Italian gelato, or ice cream. This, because of the intense July heat, up in the high 30s, had to be eaten quickly before it melted. One occasion particularly sticks in my mind because, having bought our ice creams and eating them rapidly, I noticed a good-looking young couple, one male and one female and almost identical, sitting on a public bench enjoying theirs in a slow and refined manner, unlike everyone else frantically licking up…

CEREAL CHILLER In late December 2023 Joe Miller of SugarloafTownship, Pennsylvania, opened a box of Lucky Charms Smores cereal and a mysterious cryptic note fell out. Believing the note had been in the sealed bag, he was somewhat unnerved and refused to eat any of the cereal, saying, “It just bothers me… it’s the note that really bothers me”. Neatly printed on a small rectangular piece of paper, the note had “LIES” prominently printed on it twice, accompanied by a highly abbreviated and largely incomprehensible message that began “SECRET soc. r tied to drugs/riots/terror/m… JFK warn’d of SS. A sign/*word/sumb. sys unites SS. It’s tied to Saturn, Lord o/t Rings/time: Toyota rgs; NBC/CIA’s bird: cross (+) w/rg/fire (Bayer/KKK); Yale/Harv.’s shield; cube/sq (D. of Ed.); *PYRA’D/A..(Paramt); eye/1/2face/Target; Nazis’ black sun; SPIRAL/e/6/9..(Disney)”…

294: BAWD GAMES (For amplification, see Allison Glazebrook & Barbara Tsakirgis (eds.), Houses of Ill-Repute: The Archæology of Brothels, Houses, and Taverns in the Greek World, Univ. Penn. Press, 2016); also Paul Chrystal, In Bed with the Ancient Greeks, Amberley Publishing, 2016). Reviewing The Outcast Manufacturers, Theodore Dreiser observed: “Fort was never interested in sex… a little more sex and this book might have been popular.” Enter The Animals: “There is a house in New Orleans/They call the Rising Sun./It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy,/And, God, I know, I’m one.” One Roman youth may have carried Burdon’s burden. He was congratulated (Horace, Satires 1. 2. 30-5) by Cato the Censor for using brothels rather than fucking married women. However, when he realised the youth’s frequent visits, the…

KARL SHUKER shares some new information about Mexican mystery cats MEXICO’S MYSTIFYING MAZAMIZTLI Cryptozoologically speaking, Mexico is already known for two controversial cat forms. One is the onza, which, depending upon the precise specimen or report under consideration, may (or may not) be merely a distinctively gracile form of puma (I’ve discussed this subject in detail within my three mystery cat books). The second is the ruffed cat, a name I gave to it due to the sizeable ruff of fur encircling its neck and known (briefly) from some pelts obtained by Ivan T Sanderson before they were apparently destroyed in a flood. On 22 January 2024, however, I learnt of a third Mexican feline cryptid, via some fascinating details posted on his Facebook page that day and the following…

While most celestial events have a duration measured in thousands, if not millions, of years, some are of much shorter duration and risk being missed by conventional astronomy. As a result, the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project has been set up to search for fleeting astronomical events, particularly stars that vanish. Today, astronomers’ view of the sky is cluttered with satellites and debris from over 60 years of launches, all of which could potentially produce glints that might be mistaken for an intriguing phenomenon. Rather than try and do live observation and then filter these out, VASCO has opted to start by using historical data from before the mid-1950s, when there would have been no human-made objects in orbit to confuse matters. Their researchers…

SUPERNATURAL SOUNDS I’ve recently become interested in sudden noises before or after fortean encounters: in what follows, the noises are italicised. Here’s a description from a teenage girl in bed in Devon in the 1970s. She, poor thing, was shocked to see an anomalous ball of light power through her house: “I heard a loud metallic ping like a triangle being struck. A ball of light appeared from the bathroom door and started to move horizontal and evenly…” Here is another British encounter. This time – we are in the 1990s – a middle aged man woke up, walked into his friend’s garden and came face to face – there is no easy way to say this – with a dragonfly dressed in a cap and tunic! “I wandered around,…

In the late 1870s the least desirable real estate in Akron, Ohio, was in a bluecollar neighbourhood known not-so-fondly as ‘Hells Half-Acre’. Close to the ironworks, the seedy precinct was the roughest, toughest and dirtiest in the booming industrial city. At its centre, a huge blast furnace belched fire and brimstone day and night. As one writer described it: “The night sky glowed a fiery red. Flames seethed, smoke writhed, and acrid soot smudged the air. If this wasn’t the devil’s domain, it certainly resembled it.”1 For one wild week in October 1878, as stones, coal and pieces of brick fell outside and inside their house in the heart of that seething slum, it must have seemed to Michael and Maria Metzler that their humble abode had indeed become the…

Cryptozoological coins are not unheard of – for example, Intaglio Mint have a range of coins featuring, among others, the Mongolian death worm and the Jersey Devil, and when the Royal Mint released their A-Z 10p coins in 2018, the L was represented by the Loch Ness Monster – but they are unusual in general currency. The Wilder Mann, though, has a long history on German Thaler coins, starting in 1539 (1). While he has a fairly established form, the early coins show him with a number of accessories. The Lichttaler of 1569 (2) shows him holding a candlestick in his right hand, while the Brillentaler of 1588 (3) depicts him carrying a candle-stick in his left hand, as well as a skull, an hourglass and a pair of glasses.…

As a father, I am used to dealing with difficult questions. Eight-year-old Alice might suddenly ask “What is sex protection?” or “How does a scorpion kill a human? Can I watch it onYouTube?” But I’ll admit I was underprepared for: “If you rub out an F74 curse, does that stop it from coming true, or can it actually set it off?” “Well… some curses could be triggered by touching or trying to remove them,” I started un-helpfully. “But what does an F74 curse do?” “It traps you in your dreams,” Alice replied matter-of-factly, “and you can’t get out until you find a door marked F74.” It turns out this afternoon’s play-ground dare had been inspired by videos posted on the Chinese social media appTikTok throughout 2022.1 As the US edition…

Animals Art, Science & Sound Malini Roy, Cam Sharp Jones & Cheryl Tipp British Library Publishing 2023 Hb, 352pp, £35, ISBN 9780712354332 This book reveals the natural history treasures of the British Library in superb art and highly interesting and informative text. The book covers the exhibition of the same name held at the British Library in London last year. There is so much impressively beautiful material in the book showing the sheer international and historical scale of these holdings in our national collection, in terms of manuscripts and printed books, artwork, photographs, films, sound recordings and even X-ray photographs. Early illustrated manuscripts and particularly mediæval bestiaries feature, being a first attempt to document animal life on Earth since the concept of Noah’s Ark. My favourite mediæval illustration is the…

Out of Darkness Dir Andrew Cumming, UK 2022 On general release Originally titled ‘The Origin’, this film was shot in 2020 and first screened at the London Film Festival in 2022. It is only now getting out into cinemas. When a film takes this long to get a release it’s usually because the studio didn’t know what to do with it or simply because it’s dreadful. I haven’t been able to ascertain why it happened with Out of Darkness – maybe something to do with having been shot during the Covid lockdown – but I can assure you it’s far from dreadful. Set 45,000 years ago, it follows the journey undertaken by a small band of early humans to find shelter and fertile ground on which to settle. Adem, a…

STIFF COMPETITION FOR ‘LEAST POPULAR AUSTRALIAN MAN’ Irish Times, 19 June 2023. Drunken women convicted of torturing singing parrot BBC News, 19 July 2023. NUKE REACTOR LAB HIT BY 'GAY FURRY HACKERS' DEMANDING CAT-HUMAN MUTANTS The Register, 22 Nov 2023. Cathedral protest awakens dead organist who urinated on the Dean slippedisc.com, 30 Nov 2023. TESCO RECALLS CHRISTMAS STUFFING MIX BECAUSE IT MAY CONTAIN MOTHS BBC News, 14 Dec 2023.…

BROOKLYN RABBI RIOT In early January, the discovery of a secret tunnel being dug in the historic Chabad-Lubavitch world headquarters synagogue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, triggered a major brawl between officers of the NewYork Police Department and orthodox Jewish students attempting to defend the tunnel. According to Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad, a “group of extremist students” had covertly dug a tunnel under a row of office buildings and lecture halls to connect the synagogue to a nearby vacant building. On discovering the structure, the building manager called in a construction crew to fix the damage but, according to Seligson, “Those efforts were disrupted by the extremists, who broke through the wall to the synagogue, vandalising the sanctuary, in an effort to preserve their unauthorised access,” resulting in the…

IRELAND IS HUMMING Omagh, in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, is the latest town to be plagued by a mystery hum. Since September 2023, people across the town have been complaining to the council about a persistent and intrusive humming noise, usually occurring between 10pm and midnight. Initially reported from the Tamlaght Road area, it now appears to have spread to other parts of the town. “It’s a bit of a mystery, like the Loch Ness monster really,” said Barry McElduff, a Sinn Féin councillor. Alliance Councillor Stephen Donnelly said reports “usually characterise it as a persistent buzz or hum” that was definitely out of the ordinary and not something like traffic. Many people had told him that the noise was causing them problems sleeping. “For some people, it’s something that…

277: LIBERATED BY LIME The myth Scurvy was defeated by lime juice. The “truth” The opposite is true – when the Royal Navy started insisting its sailors take regular doses of lime, the incidence of scurvy on board its ships rose. At one time, it wasn’t unusual for 50% of the crew on a long sea journey to die of scurvy, a condition we now know to be caused by a prolonged lack of vitamin C in the diet. A cure or preventative would make running a far-flung empire a lot more practical, and generations of seafarers, physicians, scientists and bureaucrats searched for an answer. Neither sulphuric acid nor seawater proved to be the secret ingredient, nor even urine. Progress was hampered by superstition, in-fighting, too much weight being given…

On 30 August 2023, billionaire Egyptian-born former Harrods owner Mohamed Al-Fayed died at the age of 94, almost a year to the day following the 25th anniversary of the death of his playboy son Dodi Al-Fayed and his new lover Princess Diana in a Paris car crash on 31 August 1997. Deranged by grief, Mohamed insisted the ‘accident’ had been deliberately arranged as part of a conspiracy led by the Duke of Edinburgh to prevent a Muslim ever joining the Royal Family. One man with an even stranger theory about Diana’s death is David Alice, the Canadian creator of an extensive website, THE DIANA-MORRISSEY PHENOMENON, devoted to proving the disaster was uncannily predicted a decade beforehand in British indie band The Smiths’ classic 1986 album The Queen Is Dead –…

Satanic claptrap I have to confess that my fortean principles slipped a bit when reading FT439. When I saw in Phantom Flings that one of the brides married her ghost groom atThe Asylum Chapel (p.8), I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that was somehow appropriate. Shame on me! I found ‘The New Demonology’ by Bob Rickard (pp.46-50) to be an excellent treatment of the craziness surrounding the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare. I hate to think what the parents and children must have felt and experienced during this insane saga. I remember reading Michelle Remembers many years ago. I don’t recall how I came to read it, but I remember thinking then that it was a heap of nonsense. I’m surprised I even remember it. Bob also mentions Dungeons & Dragons…

Tokyo is not famous for tradition or antiquity. Flattened first by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and again by World War II firebombs, it is the sleek bottomless bottle into which young Japanese provincials have poured themselves for a century and a half. In this thoroughly modern metropolis they can find new lives, jobs, convenience and endless entertainment. Meanwhile domestic and international tourists swarm around its elegant cousin Kyoto, queuing for traditional culture, and the Japanese countryside ages and empties. Those who visitTokyo from overseas are generally looking for the futuristic neon city of robot restaurants and the Shibuya Scramble Crossing. But behind the skyscrapers and between the karaoke bars and pachinko parlours we can still find the homes of Japan’s old gods. The Japanese are known for their…