Innholdsfortegnelse for 447 i Fortean Times

DEVILS IN DISGUISE Dr Donald Omand, the Church of England vicar who in 1973 famously attempted to exorcise Loch Ness, has put in only fleeting appearances in these pages over the years, so we’re particularly pleased to present – at long last – a full-length article (p.30) from fellow man of the cloth Rev Peter Laws detailing the incredibly strange career of this eccentric Anglican. Omand squared his religious convictions with a belief in second sight, genuine vampirism and the power of evil to taint and take over not just people, but places too. It was this notion that saw him attempting to use the power of Christ to banish demons from a stretch of Yorkshire coastline, Loch Ness and, eventually, the ‘Bermuda Triangle’, not to mention a good number…

ORKNEY ODYSSEY When their cat Dexter vanished from their home in Ledbury, Hertfordshire, Geoff and Shannon Smith spent weeks searching the town for her, but with no luck. Four months later they got a call from a vet in Orkney, more than 600 miles (966km) away, who had scanned a stray’s microchip and identified her as Dexter. A local woman had discovered Dexter living in her lambing shed and taken her in to be checked. The Smiths have no idea how Dexter could have made her way to the Orkney Isles but speculate that she might have hitched a ride with a travelling fair. They were hoping to make the trip to retrieve her, but said “We’re looking at ways to get there, but it’s a lot of money. She’s…

FROM FORT TO FART Charles Fort’s birthplace of Albany, NewYork, is in the grip of a foul and untraceable odour that has been causing residents to gag since September last year. Described as a horrible combination of urine and flatulence, the smell appears to be strongest in the North Albany neighbourhood around the Interstate 787 and Interstate 90 interchange and varies in intensity depending on the weather. Despite investigations by the Department of Environmental Conservation, the origin of the stench has proved impossible to pinpoint, although prime suspects are a local composting facility, low tide from nearby lakes or the Hudson River exposing anoxic mud, and the county’s water purification and sewage treatment plant. nypost.com, 30 Mar 2024. MALODOROUS MUXTON Since January, villagers in Muxton, Shropshire, have been suffering from…

OCCULT CRIMEWAVE Hampshire, and particularly the New Forest area, remains in the grip of a grisly plague of allegedly occult animal killing and mutilation. In 2019 St Peter’s Church in Bramshaw had “Satanic” symbols painted on its door and mutilated animal corpses repeatedly left in the churchyard (FT389:4-5). In 2020 this was followed by sadistic attacks on local sheep and cows which saw a ewe stabbed to death and left with a crude hay cross and a broken pitchfork beside it, and another killed and sprayed with a pentagram (FT391:18). In 2023 five pig hearts surrounded by candles were left on a marker stone at Stagbury Hill, a local Bronze Age monument (FT434:7). This led to a fruitless police search for alleged “Satanists”, although the deaths and mutilations appeared to…

FAIRIES ON THE MARCH British and Irish folklore are choc-a-bloc with references to fairies appearing as marching soldiers. Take, for instance, this Victorian account from Mellor Moor (Lancashire): “On other occasions the fairies are supposed to exhibit themselves in military array on the mountain sides; their evolutions conforming in every respect to the movements of modern troops. Such appearances are believed to portend the approach of civil commotions, and are said to have been more than usually common about the time of the rebellion in 1745-46.” The idea that what is to happen on Earth, happens first in fairyland is, of course, a common trope. We see it with fairies’ funerals anticipating funerals in the human community. Sometimes, though, the fairy armies are uncomfortably close to the human forces they…

My article on ‘Middle-Aged Mulder Syndrome’ (FT415:58-59) seems to have touched a nerve. The response has been two follow-up articles in Fortean Times and some lively correspondence. Now that the dust has settled, I thought I’d review these responses and offer some further thoughts of my own. First: what is Middle-Aged Mulder Syndrome? The ‘condition’ was inspired by Darrin Morgan’s 2016 X-Files episode “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”. For much of the episode, it’s clear that Mulder has become seriously disillusioned because “much of the unexplained has been explained.” Mulder is now middle-aged and wondering whether his whole life hasn’t been a waste. ‘Middle-Aged Mulder Syndrome’ is when a veteran fortean, disillusioned by the number of mysteries that have been explained in mundane terms, similarly becomes disillusioned by what…

The Book of Beasts Folklore, Popular Culture and Nigel Kneale’s ATV Horror Series Andrew Screen Headpress 2023 Pb, 434pp, £22.99, ISBN 9781915316097 Interest in speculative fiction screenwriter Nigel Kneale has seen a 21st-century cult renaissance, mostly regarding his creation, the rocket scientist Quatermass, but here Andrew Screen puts the focus on Kneale’s ATV series Beasts. Broadcast in 1976 during the golden age of British television plays and supernatural/thriller anthology shows, even amidst this bizarre telly miscellany, Beasts is something of a strange … well … beast. Each episode is tangentially related to animals or sometimes the animalistic within human nature – diverse beastly menaces, from an invasion of super-rats to a possessed kaiju film costume, ensues. Screen dives deep into this strangeness, seeking possible inspirations for Kneale’s manifestations. The range…

The Exorcism Dir Joshua John Miller, US 2024 On general release If there is one subgenre that has ruled horror in recent years, it is that of the religious horror, as new entries find their way onto streaming services and cinema screens with ever-increasing frequency. 2024 has already enjoyed a number of occult horror successes, with the release of Exhuma, Immaculate, Late Night with the Devil and The First Omen. Now, Russell Crowe – after last year’s The Pope’s Exorcist – returns in another film on the same unholy theme in the aptly titled The Exorcism. Though the two films are unrelated, the Aussie actor appears to be carving out his own niche here by continuing to star in horrors that find him entangled with Catholic exorcisms in one way…

Alien Abductions From a sceptical investigator’s point of view, I think the most fruitful alien abduction cases to consider would be those involving multiple witnesses, and especially those involving young children. When the children are then interviewed again years later, and they are still sticking to the same story, this makes it less likely to be a hoax. The only other ‘rational’ explanation is mass hallucination, although I’ve never found any convincing evidence for this. Is there such a phenomenon? Once you have discounted hoax and mass hallucination, there are not many other alternative solutions left. One relatively recent case was that of the four members of the Devereux family, recounting their close encounter and missing time experience, related in the documentary The Real 4400. Several years later, all four…

Since 1995, Tim Skelly from Ottawa in Canada has been restoring furniture as a hobby. Over the years he has found all sorts of things left in drawers and cupboards, but with a gentleman’s dresser he bought at auction he discovered something he’d never seen before. As he was working on the item, he turned over the smallest of its drawers and found a series of handwritten notes in pencil on the bottom, with the earliest dating from 1942. “It’s kind of like one of those little treasure hunts. It’s so interesting. They’re all relatively personal notes,” Skelly said. The notes are hard to read, although most seem to be about weather or family life. The clearest was the most recent, written on 10 June 1982. “In the last one…

James David Russell, 39, was arrested for the murder of David Flaget, 70, after Flaget’s remains were found upside down in the passenger seat of his car outside Russell’s home in Clark Fort, Idaho. On further investigation, police found that parts of Flaget’s body were missing, and on searching Russell’s house discovered a bloodstained microwave, glass bowl and knife, as well as what they describe as “a thermal artefact” – a body part to which heat has been applied. They also found “a cleanup kit” used to dispose of remains and evidence, but did not find all the missing remains. As a result, prosecutors added the charge of cannibalism to that of murder, the first time that it has been used in the state. On being questioned, Russell admitted eating…

DATING GIGANTOPITHECUS One perennially popular identity proposed by cryptozoologists for North America’s bigfoot (sasquatch) and especially for the largest variety of Asian yeti (should any of these cryptids exist, that is!) is a surviving population of the prehistoric giant ape Gigantopithecus blacki, closely related to today’s orang-utan species. This identity has been looked upon favourably because of traditional palæontological researches suggesting that this largest of all known ape species survived until at least as recently as 200,000 years ago. However, it has now received a chronological setback, due to new researches indicating that Gigantopithecus may actually have died out as far back in time as 300,000 years ago. This mega-ape (twice as big as any living species) is currently known from four isolated fossil mandibles (lower jawbones) and numerous fossil…

On 10 August, the world-famous Atlantis Bookshop in London’s Bloomsbury will present ‘Henry Lincoln Day’, a conference celebrating the vast contribution of this enigmatic man to a whole new genre that he largely created. Famous for his 1982 bestseller co-written with Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (HBHG), Henry left us in 2022, aged 92 (obituary FT420:26; interview FT431:40-43). But, as Atlantis Bookshop co-owner Geraldine Beskin says: “It would be terrible if he were forgotten. Let’s give a whole new generation a chance to discover him and his immensely influential work.” It’s probably fair to say that there might be a slight element of idolisation in the conference hall that day, but it won’t come from us. Hagiography is not our style – and…

A common motif in SF movies is that, with the noblest of intentions, Earth-dwelling boffins send signals into space in the hope that someone or something will pick them up and reply: in some cases said aliens also harbour noble intentions, but more often they do not. In reality, we’ve been incontinently chucking out signals for over a century, so any receiving interstellar body is as likely to get The Goon Show as a carefully-crafted message from NASA, which sent up a lot of such signals in 1974. Anyway, our radio telescopic ears all remain cocked and ready. One such observatory is Chilbolton in Hampshire, which – 27 years later – appeared to receive a somewhat unorthodox but nonetheless startling reply, described in The Chilbolton Incident (Prime) Beginning with aerial…

45. ENGLAND’S HEAVIEST CONSTABLE John William Stephens was born in Attleborough, Warwickshire, in or around the year 1860. In December 1877, he enlisted in the Royal Artillery at Portsmouth, serving abroad in Mauritius and Natal. During the Anglo-Zulu war, Stephens served in the Gatling gun battery with Colonel Evelyn Wood’s flying column, seeing a good deal of action and being awarded a campaign medal. He remained in the Cape Colony until 1886, when he was posted home. He mustered out of the Royal Artillery in December 1889, after 12 years of service as a private soldier. Since he was a hearty eater and no friend of locomation, his girth increased alarmingly After leaving the army, Stephens became a police constable in Leicester. Since he was a hearty eater, and no…

New evidence has emerged about the photos of a UFO shadowed by a Harrier jet over Scotland from a friend of the two witnesses. Retired chef Richard Grieve claims he worked alongside the two young men who saw and photographed the diamond-shaped object north of Pitlochry one night in August 1990 (FT423:30-35). Grieve first came forward in July 2022, when he contacted ufologist Philip Mantle by email. He told Philip: “The two people who took the photograph were chefs at Fishers Hotel in Pitlochry… I know this to be true as I worked in the hotel at the same time.” This was significant because the link between the photographer and a hotel in the town was not in the public domain at that time. Before then, stories about them had…

On 11 February, bricklayer Giovanni Barecca from Altavilla Milicia, near Palermo, Sicily, called the police and said: “Come and get me. I have killed my family.” Barecca, 54, confessed to killing his wife Antonella, 40, and their sons Emmanuel, five, and Kevin, 16, by torturing them with hot irons during a botched exorcism as he believed they were “possessed by demons”. Police arrested Barecca and his accomplices, Massimo Carandente and Sabrina Fina, a herbal tea vendor and a lifestyle coach, who were described as “religious fanatics”. They allegedly belonged to a small “cult” with about 10 members, including Barecca, that was obsessed with demons. The trio had tied up Barecca’s family and tortured them over the course of a week. Initially they carried out exorcisms on Antonella and Emmanuel, killing…

299: OLYMPIC SPECIAL ‘A Healthy City Loathes Athletes’ Thus Galen (Protrepticus 11), echoing a famous dramatic diatribe by Euripides who did not however scruple to prostitute his pen in celebration of Alcibiades’s chariot race victories. Should here be said that it was the owners, not the drivers, who were hymned by poets such as Pindar, perhaps the first attested sportswriter. (For an ancient debate on the pros and cons of the Games, see Lucian’s Anacharsis). These celebrations of owners allowed the fame of Spartan woman Kyniska, twice winner of the chariot races. Quite how she gained this position is unclear, albeit Aristotle says women owned two-fifths of all Spartan properties. Actual drivers included Karrotes, who won when his 40 rivals all crashed (shades of a bad Grand National) and Antikeris…

THE CAT AND THE CARAVAN John Broomhead, 68, from Aintree, Merseyside, regularly takes his caravan toTansley in Derbyshire for holidays with his partner and recently decided to go public with a startling experience he had there in July 2022. The couple would frequently host barbecues at the site, and, Broomhead says: “It was just a normal day. We’d been having a nice evening with friends but at around 11pm, we decided to call it a night and I went to put out the fire. I heard a rustling noise, but obviously thought nothing of it. In the corner of my eye, I could see a black shadow moving; at first, I thought it could have been a dog or a cat – but it was huge.” He estimated the animal’s…

ROGER CORMAN Roger Corman, who has died at 98, blazed a trail through cinema as “King of the B-Movie”, first as a director, then as a producer, churning out cheap, fast and lurid quickies with titles like Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Caveman, Caged Heat!, Ski Troop Attack and Night of the Cobra Woman. Later, for the SyFy Channel, he made films like Sharktopus and Piranhaconda. Corman saw himself as a craftsman rather than an artist and his philosophy was “make’em quick, make’em cheap and make’em popular” – it clearly worked, as when he came to write his autobiography it was called How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. His films found favour on the drive-in circuit and later on late-night psychotronicTV due…

Britain’s pre-eminent scientific group, the Royal Society, has recently placed scans of some 250,000 documents and illustrations online (https://makingscience.royalsociety.org/) These date from 1660 onwards and cover a wide spectrum of topics including several fortean ones. Back in FT35:6-9 (Summer 1981) I published an account of the famous spontaneous human combustion case in Ipswich which saw an elderly woman called Grace Pett reduced to cinders in 1744. She was said to be a fisherman’s wife living in the parish of St Clement’s who was a regular pipe smoker and, on the evening preceding her death, “had drunk plentifully of gin”. Another source reckoned she “had the reputation of being a witch” and indeed a long poem was published at Ipswich around 1875 listing her dabblings in the black arts. My article…

The Science of Weird Shit Why Our Minds Conjure the Paraanormal Chris French MIT Press 2024 Hb, 374pp, £30, ISBN 9780262048361 Chris French, emeritus professor of anomalistic psychology at Goldsmiths College, London, spent much of his academic career investigating everything from ghost sightings to UFO abductions to reincarnation to dowsing to unusual sleep phenomena to why people believe in conspiracy theories – good fortean topics all! In 2000 he set up the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) at Goldsmiths which, among other things, ran public seminars for some 20 years, with a huge range of speakers. One of the things I liked about them was that French, an avowed sceptic, would invite speakers he fundamentally disagreed with (including the late Icelandic Prof Erlendur Harraldsson [FT403:18] on reincarnation and Rupert Sheldrake…

“It’s summer hauntology,” says Adam S Leslie. “It’s sun-faded Lyons Maid ice cream menus, old road maps that seem to change whenever you look at them, a brass band on the green. And an ice cream van that you can never quite glimpse, chiming out creepy old folk songs on the other side of the village…” We’re discussing his superlative new novel, Lost in the Garden. Not so much a road trip as a nightmarish amble through tangled country lanes with a melting Fab lolly dripping down your sleeve, it’s set in a perpetually sun-drenched England populated by the reawakened corpses of much-missed relatives. “I wanted to evoke those endless summers of childhood,” continues Adam. “The days spent roaming fields and woodland, and the woozy, oppressive, slightly hallucinatory heat –…